Why are people surprised?

The super bowl was yesterday. We continued our tradition of not watching, because we don't actually care about football and the commercials seem to have been slipping the past several years as well. (We used to look them up on YouTube just for the fun but...meh.)*

There was the usual hair on fire ranting and raving about the halftime show.

And I find myself giving fellow Christians the side eye. Because seriously, when did we start thinking the super bowl halftime show was a family friendly event? When was it supposed to be? For that matter, professional football games aren't really super family friendly with the scantily clad cheerleaders on the sidelines whose sole purpose that I can see is to titillate. (They're not like actual cheerleaders who cheer and do stunts. Aren't they maybe more like "dancers"? I don't know. I don't see their purpose.)

To me, the event should have been simply a "Yup. There goes popular culture doing its thing." And then you can either choose to watch or not based on your own interests.

I like Shakira's music - but I'll be the first to tell my kids they can't watch her videos. Even the one she made of the recording of the theme for Zootopia is...risque. And that's for a cartoon. Her character IN the cartoon is a cartoon version of her scantily clad self. It's her brand.

JLo's brand is similarly scantily clad.

Pop stars aren't out there dancing around in modest clothes. They just aren't. So why is anyone surprised that for a huge venue like the super bowl they didn't change things suddenly?

I really wish Christians would stop showing their rears with commentary about the culture acting like the culture.

Instead, why don't we get our own house in order and live for Jesus - all across the board, inside and outside the church - and give the culture a reason to look at us and want what we have. That's not going to happen if we're spending all our time wagging our fingers at them.

As for the feminist/Latina/whatever representation deal - I'll leave discussion of that to people who care more than I do.