You Don't Have to Get Naked

Shut up, and sit down. Welcome to Being On Stage, the only podcast that gives you motivation, inspiration, and confidence to be better on stage. No matter how you entertain, sing, dance, band, comedian, public speaking, MC, drag, burlesque, performance art, or street performer, this is the show for you. Hey Rockstars, welcome back to the Being On Stage podcast, and as always, thank you so much for tuning in. You know, the original title of this episode was going to be, Suck Cells, but iTunes doesn't like those kind of words in the title of podcast episodes, so we went with, You Don't Have To Get Naked. I feel like one of those Rocky and Bullwinkle episodes, you know? Yeah. At the end of it, it's like, coming up next, Bullwinkle gets lucky, or Boris gets a squirrel, I don't know. But yeah, so that's kind of how I feel, I have to come up with two different names. But no, so, tonight was the Super Bowl, so it's Sunday, February 2nd when I'm recording this and uploading this. Actually, it's probably still going on. We went out for dinner, as we do every Sunday night as a family. My mother, my wife, me, and my daughter. Tonight we happened to go to one of our downtown Mexican restaurants, never been there before, really good little place, but they had the Super Bowl on, as most places with the television does tonight. We didn't expect it, we were just going for dinner. But we happened to get there right before the halftime show, so we enjoyed the halftime show, or shall I say, the Super Bowl strip time show, because that's kind of what it felt like. And I actually, I posted on my personal Facebook. A.K.A. the Super Bowl strip show. But truly, like, I'm sitting there with my daughter, who's 15, and I kind of felt like we were at a strip club, in a way. And listen, the halftime show, for those of you maybe not in the United States, halftime show is a big deal for the Super Bowl, which is the football championship, basically. And this year, Shakira and Jennifer Lopez split. And, you know, when I heard it was going to be Shakira and Jennifer Lopez, I did get a little bit of a fear that it was going to turn into exactly what it turned into. So, you know, I'm not going to go over the whole show. A couple years ago, I did that. I did, like, a watch with me for the halftime show. And I ended up covering the Justin Timberlake halftime show, which was pretty good. People, a lot of people hated it, but it was pretty good. Last year's Maroon 5, I thought parts of it were phenomenal. Other parts of it were basically, obviously, obviously something special for television. I felt like that was the same, a little bit for the Shakira-Jennifer Lopez one this year, is kind of felt like it was made for television. Which, I mean, it's the Super Bowl halftime show. It is made for television. It's not made for you to enjoy it there. But it was, from beginning to end, it felt like it was meant to be overly and overtly sexy and sexual. I mean, Shakira is a belly dancer, and I think belly dance gets a bad rep for being a sexual dance. And it's not the case at all. I don't want to say friends, but I'm familiar with a few different belly dancers. One in particular, my favorite. She is from Russia, and I think her name is Ebru. I can't pronounce her name. But she's phenomenal. I follow her on Instagram. But belly dance is not just sexy. You know, there's an art form to it. There's so much strength involved in belly dancing. So much control of your midsection and your core. And so, I mean, I admire belly dancers. But from beginning to end, it just felt overly sexual. And I think that a lot of times, especially for female entertainers, there's that pressure to, you know, wear less and less clothing on stage in a sense of getting attention, boosting your career, and things like that. And that's usually, you know, that's usually why women do it. And men do it, too, you know. You see the men that go out on stage with, like, all the muscles and everything, and they're topless. And you see artists that go out and, like, just overly, you know, making overly sexual videos and things like that. And listen, I'm not going to lie to you. Sex sells. Like, we all know that if you get on stage and you got a body and you start taking some clothes off, you could be an average singer and a mediocre dancer. But the minute you start taking clothes off or wearing less and less clothes, you're an immediate hit. And I think that sends the absolute complete wrong message to performers. Specifically, young female performers. And I want to kind of take a stance a little bit that, you know, this podcast in no way endorses the stigma that sex sells or that you have to be overly sexual to get ahead in the entertainment industry. Because I can tell you from personal experience, you don't. I mean, there's always going to be a time and a place. Like, I was not a person that was overly sexual. But there was a time and a place. And actually, there was a whole span of my career where, you know, I did more sexy movements. And while I did not take it all off, I would do outfit changes in the middle of my show to a smaller, tighter, but decorated outfit underneath or like down from like a long sleeve shirt to a tank top type of thing. But I'm a big guy, you know, so I was never able to go out there and just like bear my six pack on stage and make the ladies go crazy. You know, I was never able to do that. And I think that's one of the reasons why I'm so excited to be here. And I think that it's very empowering to do that. Don't get me wrong. If it's an empowerment thing that you're going for, by all means, you know, share your body. But if you're doing it for the simple fact of if I do this, I'm going to get ahead in my career, then I got news for you. You might as well label yourself what's called a sellout. Because what a sellout does is they forsake their talent and what they want to work for in their dreams for what they want to do in their career. Or whatever's popular and what's going to get them, you know, famous. What's going to get them more followers, more audience members, more fans. And I got news for you. If that's where you're at, you know, if you're at the point where you're taking clothes off. And listen, exotic dancers aside, because that's a whole other genre. That again, like let's belly dancing, exotic dancers, pole dancers, even chair dancers, hula hoop artists, all of them have a bad rap because, you know, a lot of times with your performing, you have to wear form fitting clothing or limited clothing. We'll say gymnast, for example. You know, a lot of times it's like a sports bra and Spanx or something. But the point here is, is are you doing it artistically or are you doing it sexually? Because if you're wearing minimal clothing for the fact of getting attention and for, you know, having that rise out of your audience for, for lack of a better term, then you're doing it for the wrong reason. So if you're doing it because it's part of your art, it's a safety thing because you can't have baggy clothing hanging off of you. That's completely different. You know, aerial artists, things like that. Hula, I mentioned it before, hula hooped artists, pole dancers, things like that. And I'm not talking like the strip club pole dancers. Like there was a point in the Super Bowl halftime show where J-Lo actually was on a pole. And I remember it because, and I, I mean, I say I remember it like it happened three, four years ago, it's been like an hour. But I remember looking at it and it, and as soon as it happened, I'm like, are you effing kidding me? Right there in the middle of the restaurant. Like I could not believe she was hopping on a pole in the middle of the Super Bowl halftime show. Now I'll give it to her. She did it very tastefully. It was not a sexy pole dance. It was more about strength and more about flow than it was about sex. But it's the fact of the matter. You're in the Super Bowl halftime show. This is like. This is like the show of a lifetime. There are people that have performed all their lives, made millions of dollars and never made it on the stage at the Super Bowl. Like this is big time, especially if you're really good with work and camera angles when you perform, which a lot of more famous celebrity performers have to be more camera oriented than audience oriented. And that's the other thing is I'm starting not to like the Super Bowl show so much because there's not a whole lot of focus on the audience. Um, the last two years are pretty good, but this show, like they're my, I mean, Shakira crowd surf, but you could tell it was certain individuals that were just carrying her through the crowd. Um, but this show was not audience oriented whatsoever. It was very, it was meant to be overly sexual. It was meant to get attention. Um, it was meant to, to draw you in and make you feel like you were watching something sexy. And I think that it, again, I'm going to repeat myself. It sends a very poor message out there. These are two strong female entertainers that have actually. you know previously spoken about you know being a strong independent woman and you know stick holding true to your beliefs and i mean hell jennifer lopez has a song that says i'm still jenny from the block like i ain't forgot where i come from i don't forget my roots yet here you are on stage doing everything sexual um crotch thrusting and i mean granted belly dancing it has that sexualness to it but this was a whole another watch the halftime show from start to finish it's like jaw-dropping sexy like i felt like i was in a strip club and the strip clubs where i live they can't get naked like they just can't um it's legal thing so i felt like i was in a strip club to be completely honest with you so i'm kind of going on and on event here about the super bowl halftime show uh needless to say i'm kind of disappointed in it and i'm actually gonna go and say i'm not kind of i am i am completely uh disappointed in the halftime show this year uh it's exactly what i thought it was gonna be when i heard it was shakira and jennifer lopez however me and my wife did think that uh they were gonna do hips don't lie together so jennifer lopez could show off her body um although they didn't do hips don't lie and jennifer lopez didn't really do a whole lot of belly dance movements with shakira uh she still very much showed off her body her movement and her strength and the fact that i think she's like 40 maybe even 50 i'm not sure uh but she still got it like i'll give it to you she still got it but they went too far they went way too far on the sex scale for what the show is and what it's supposed to be and and what it means for your career and i think that sometimes you got to dial it back so for you as a performer no matter where you are in your career whether you're on the super bowl halftime stage or whether you're getting ready for an open mic night down at joe's pub uh just keep in mind your performance is not going to be as good as it used to be and i think that's your performance is not about your body your performance is not about your level of sex appeal your performance is the is about your talent and your relationship with the audience when you share that talent with them don't forget that and as always oh i almost forgot oh my god i almost forgot uh listen if you haven't done so yet my calendar's open hop on my calendar we'll chat we'll get you going towards your next step uh building your talent and your ability to performance building your performance into a paid career wherever you want to go i'll help you get you there just jump on my calendar go to beingonstage.com slash calendar put in your name email and phone number i'll call you at the date and time you're choosing and we will get this thing popping so in a non-sexual way i get a non-sex appeal way like you'll never hear me tell you sex sells unless you're having sex on stage as part of your entertainment i guess which hopefully you're not doing that all right let me wrap this thing up i think i've gone just a little too far with that last comment thanks again for tuning in i appreciate it and as always rock stars keep on shining