CULTURE

The Wrath of Woman: 2023 Is For Breakup Anthems

The Stories Behind Miley Cyrus and Shakira’s Breakup Anthems

Miley Cyrus 'Flowers'

via Miley Cyrus / Youtube

When Angela Bassett set the car on fire in Waiting to Exhale. When Aubrey Plaza spirals for a full episode after finding the condom wrapper in White Lotus. When Rosamund Pike fakes her death, frames her husband — Ben Affleck — for murder, and disappears completely after discovering his affair with EmRata in Gone Girl. Chefs kiss to all of it. Because one thing about me? I love the wrath of women.

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CULTURE

Meet the Man Who Wants to Sue the NFL for $867 Trillion (Because J. Lo Made Him Horny)

Coach Dave Daubenmire claims that the "crotch shots" in the Super Bowl Halftime show put him "in danger of hellfire."

By Featureflash Photo Agency

Update 4/14/2021:Coach Dave is at it again.

This time he specifically called out Right Wing Watch before sharing his thoughts on the tragic killing of 20-year-old Daunte Wright by police officer Kimberly Potter in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota. After pulling Wright over — reportedly for having an air freshener hanging from his rearview mirror, Potter claims to have mistaken her gun for her taser, and fatally shot Wright as he was trying to get away from her.

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CULTURE

2020 in Review: 12 Months of Unique Horror

A month-by-month review of the best and worst (mostly worst) of 2020.

Cardi B - WAP feat. Megan Thee Stallion [Official Music Video]

2020 was a year when time lost all meaning and traditional markers of change — graduations, seasons, parties, holidays — blurred into an indistinguishable slideshow of Zoom calls.

Each month, it seemed, another unavoidable news story exploded onto the headlines, dominating attention, commanding every facet of our collective attention.

This year, each month seemed to have its own color, its own unique tune of horror that required both countless headlines and its own array of memes. As E. Alex Jung writes for Vulture, "Nothing made sense this year — unless you were on the Internet." Each catastrophic event, with its mind-blowing amounts of human suffering and its cataclysmic historical implications, took on new meaning when refracted through the mirror of social media.

In some ways, this year brought us closer together; in other ways, it tore open the last semblances of any illusion that we're all in the same struggle, instead revealing the brutal inequalities that define our society. When all faced with the same roster of calamities, it became clear that some people could suffer through while losing little save for the opportunity to go bar-hopping on Saturday nights, while others were pushed off the brink into the precipice of disaster (that is, if they hadn't already been swimming through the fetid ruins of the capitalist dream).

So, this list is not meant to be a universal summary of the way 2020 was horrifying. No list could ever summarize what 2020 or what a history of inequality and human greed has done to individuals around the world this year.

Instead, it's my reflections on the ways certain events seemed to dominate our collective consciousness in ways few events ever have before, let alone in such rapid succession.

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Music Features

On This Day: Shakira Liberated Everyone's “She Wolf”

"I was in the studio in a bad mood that day, then I got inspired and went to a corner and I wrote the lyrics and the melody in 10 minutes. The image of the she wolf just came to my head, and when I least expected it I was howling and panting," Shakira said.

Shakira - She Wolf (Official HD Video)

11 years ago, on July 10th, 2009, Colombian singer Shakira released the first single off her third studio album.

"She Wolf" is a synth-pop banger built on a B minor progression. It was, in many ways, an insane song, born out of the singer's own frustration and ennui.

"I was in the studio in a bad mood that day, then I got inspired and went to a corner and I wrote the lyrics and the melody in 10 minutes. The image of the she wolf just came to my head, and when I least expected it I was howling and panting," Shakira said.

Though the music was composed by John Hill and Sam Endicott, lead singer of post-punk band The Bravery, the lyrics were all Shakira's own. "[Shakira] contacted him (Hill), asking if he had any stuff," said Endicott. "We never had her in mind. We just made the thing independently of her, and then she liked it a lot, and she sang over it. She used some of the melodies we put in there and then wrote these crazy lyrics about being a werewolf. And that's how it happened."

Shakira - She Wolfwww.youtube.com


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Shakira & J. Lo's FULL Pepsi Super Bowl LIV Halftime Show

The Federal Communications Commission is responsible for monitoring broadcast media, enforcing its guidelines on "obscene, indecent, and profane content," and fielding complaints from the public.

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Culture News

Let's Get Political About Jennifer Lopez's and Shakira's Butts

The Super Bowl halftime show bared a lot of truth.

Jennifer Lopez

Rob Latour/Shutterstock

Depending on who you ask, it's unclear who won the Super Bowl.

Some say the highest trophy went to Jennifer Lopez, who commanded the stage with age-defying athleticism, from pole dancing to expert choreography, leading millions of viewers to Google her age (50 years old, that's right). Many say that Latin music won the night, with Bad Bunny joining Lopez to represent Puerto Rico and Shakira, 43, bringing Colombian and Middle Eastern cultures to the spotlight on the Super Bowl halftime stage. Or, as The Cut says, it was "a very good night for butts"; between the awesome powers of Shakira and J-Lo, we had "a dance routine choreographed by butts, for butts...Hips don't lie, and as it turns out, neither do butts!"

But, as with any sporting event, there were angry spectators who didn't like what was happening, who yelled out their displeasure, and who occasionally ranted that "this is America!" for seemingly no reason. Criticism of Shakira and Lopez's halftime performance ranged from shaming the provocative nature of their costumes and choreography to the "un-American" cultural references embedded throughout their performances.

Is the Super Bowl American?

During Shakira's performance of "Hips Don't Lie," the Grammy Award-winning artist paused to give a nod to her Colombian-Lebanese roots. She leaned down to allow one lucky camera to capture a high vocal trill accompanied by a tongue-wagging movement. While the ululation confused many (and inspired a truly cringe-worthy amount of memes), others recognized it as Shakira's version of a zaghroota, a traditional cry of joy in Arabic cultures. Shakira, whose first name is Arabic for "grateful," was mostly raised in Barranquilla, Colombia by her Spanish and Italian mother and Lebanese father.


In fact, her father introduced her to the doumbek, a traditional drum in Arabic music that often accompanies belly dancing. She first heard the beat in a Middle Eastern restaurant when she was four years old, and she fell in love with the performance. During Sunday's halftime show, Shakira brought her signature belly dancing to the stage, where Middle Eastern viewers recognized their culture represented proudly before millions of Americans. Some took to Twitter to point out the traditional dances from Carnaval de Barranquilla, the second largest carnival in the world—which takes place in Shakira's hometown. She also performed the Champeta, a dance that originated in Africa and has its own version in Branquilla, Colombia; and many pointed out that Shakira's zaghroota was part of her version of "Son de negro," another traditional dance performed in Colombia to celebrate African ancestry.


Jennifer Lopez created equally dramatic moments in honor of Latinx culture. The Bronx-born Puerto Rican singer gave new renditions of hits like "Jenny From the Block" and "Waiting for Tonight." But then came a symbolic interlude when Lopez turned the stage over to her 11-year-old daughter, Emme Maribel Muñiz, to lead a children's choir in a cover of Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA." The performance was staged with the children encased in cage-like decorations, a symbolic nod to the thousands of immigrant children being held at the border, most of whom come from Latin American countries. When Lopez returned to the stage, she was wrapped in a feathered version of the Puerto Rican flag, whose white star represents the U.S. commonwealth and white stripes stand for human rights and individual freedom.


"Family Friendly" Sexism?

However, while Shakira and Lopez's halftime performance celebrated Latinx culture with nods to the Latinx diaspora and its numerous contributions to what we know as "American culture" today, ignorance still marred many viewers' perceptions. Criticism ranged from racially charged complaints that "this is not an Arabic country" and that cultural traditions were somehow inappropriate to show on national television to overt, sexist shaming of both Shakira and Lopez for their provocative dancing.

screenshot from Twitter users @magarnets and @amberskyez


What most critics seem to have in common is a belief that the Super Bowl halftime performance is a "family show," and therefore viewers are entitled to modesty from female performers. Perhaps they also believe that J. Lo is simply too old to pole dance. In a nod to her critically acclaimed performance in Hustlers, Lopez showed off her athleticism with a pole dancing routine in her set, and she was also joined by Shakira for a final hip-shaking pose. Critics found this be too sexualizing and objectifying of women–which it was, if one looks at it through the lens of the default male gaze, which has always warped how we see women in media, placing women in the Edenic role of the seductress and entirely dismissing their cultural origins and personal ability to exert control over their own bodies. But hey, that's Twitter for you.