She is playing the only part a woman is supposed to play in a sports show: the cheerleader. A cheerleader with a great voice and a great paycheck (being it in cash or in publicity), that’s for sure, but still it’s only a completment to the main “thing”: football, not music nor fashion.

All female band, all female dancers? That’s exactly the point, female entertaining for a mainly male audience.

She spends the whole song slut-shaming another woman for wearing skimpy clothes, then goes and poses for GQ magazine and other publications wearing a thong and a half-shirt that exposes the bottom half of her breasts. I don’t have a problem with her posing for magazine covers; if she’s confident in her figure, she should be able to flaunt it. But her hypocrisy stinks.

I was completely amazed by her earth-shattering performance at the Super Bowl and I was screaming when Destiny’s Child popped up, but I still can’t get past the fact that, with all of her “good-girl Diva” facade, she sure has a history of contradicting herself.

Does it matter that in the past 10 years of a television spectacle that is primarily an excuse to make tons of money off of it’s audience through advertisements only half of the halftime performances have featured female performers.? And that if you extend that time frame to include the early 2000s as well, the number only grows in favor of female performers. I don’t feel that this is mis-representative of any demographic. The Super Bowl, and it’s advertisements and production, are not aimed at primarily at women. Women, and their viewership, are a marginal benefit to this event that can be coaxed into watching via female-friendly advertisements and halftime shows. If you asked the majority of viewers of the Super Bowl if they had any interest in Beyonce’s performance, I’m sure you would get quite a bit of disinterest and more than a few outright negatives.

And no, you don’t have much of an option in regards to the Superbowl. It’s not an event that is tailored to appeal to or involve you. You don’t hear rednecks complaining about being underrepresented in the “Vagina Monologues” do you? Maybe that is a poor example, but there are plenty more. I personally think more rednecks could benefit from seeing that life-changing show.

Where are the female commentators, referees or coaches? Not being hired, clearly. The majority of commentators and coaches all have experience playing the sport. You don’t hire someone who doesn’t have the necessary experience. If women want to start getting football related jobs, they need to start playing football or involving themselves with the business of football itself. For example, it would be difficult for me to get a job selling cars if I knew little to nothing about cars. When it comes to the skimpy outfits, you know as well as I do that that has nothing to do with football. That is advertising. They are appealing to their target audience: college and middle aged men.

Now we come to Beyonce’s performance, which I will admit was incredible. I am not a fan of her music, or of pop music in general. But I know a performer when I see one and you would have been hard pressed to have put on a better halftime show than I saw that night. Madonna certainly tried last year, but I was bored to tears. Don’t get me started on Tom Petty in 2008. But if you weren’t expecting the rest of Destiny’s Child to show up, you just don’t keep up with the news. It’s been plastered everywhere that they are collaborating again. Didn’t they release a song on YouTube a few weeks ago? It’s all about money, once again.

As for the all-female band….awesome. Gimmick-y, but awesome. She wanted to send a message and we got it, but there is no need to beat us over the head with it.

In conclusion, I don’t feel that Beyonce taught us anything, nor was it ever her intention do so. She earned her big-fat-paycheck by putting on the best halftime show that I’ve seen in a decade. But it wasn’t a feminist cry to her sisters. It was a spectacle. It was “girl power.” It was a means of getting more viewers to watch the Super Bowl….and it worked.