The Super Bowl halftime show earlier this year, featuring Jennifer Lopez and Shakira, saw the Federal Communications Commission receive approximately 1,312 complaints from viewers who felt the show was inappropriate, as CNN reports.
During the controversial performance, the singers, wearing revealing outfits, pole-danced and made numerous sexually suggestive gestures. Many viewers, who were watching with their children, subsequently made complaints to the FCC that there was not adequate warning beforehand about what the show would entail.
One viewer said that the performance “was extremely explicit and completely unacceptable for an event where families, including children, are watching.” The viewer added that they had to “send my children out of the room so that they weren’t exposed to something they should not have seen.”
In addition to complaints about being inappropriate for children, some complained that the show was also inappropriate in the context of the “MeToo” movement, and that it even promoted sex trafficking. “No wonder there is sex trafficking when you call this family entertainment,” one viewer complained, before adding “Where’s the Me Too women? Do you not see the hypocrisy?”
Subsequently, many viewers threatened to boycott Pepsi (the sponsor of the halftime show), as well as the Super Bowl and the NFL in general.