February 03, 2004, 8:59 a.m.
Stale Pop Tarts
The show’s over.

By Nicole Gelinas

What is up with the old women?

Madonna bid for the title of Dirty Old Lady of American Pop last year, when the brittle baby boomer engaged in some calculated tongue calisthenics with (first) Britney Spears and (second) Christina Aguilera at the MTV Video Music Awards. Each young lady is half Madonna's age. Demi Moore provided some competition for the title with her public display of toy-boy actor boyfriend Ashton Kutcher. And now, Janet Jackson.

Jackson is 38 years old. Justin Timberlake is not. So the bizarre coercive-seductive dance between Jackson and Timberlake at the Super Bowl halftime Sunday night had a most unintended effect from what I will imagine is the perspective of its sponsors: It wasn't really offensive, titillating, or even regular sexy — even in the manufactured pop-world sense. It was just plain funny, in a pathetic kinda way.

I'm not sure what age range CBS-MTV suits were hoping to reach with their entertainment spectacle. But I watched the game in a focus group of fairly affluent Westchester County residents who range in ages from about six to past 50. None in attendance seemed to find the show erotic. The 14-year-old boy present didn't display the slightest interest in Jackson's exposed breast-tissue specimen, even in a jaded-but-embarrassed-teenager sort of way.

MTV's producers can strip their stars completely naked if they want. But human sexuality is still governed by natural law. Who's going to be brave enough to tell Madonna and Jackson that young men haven't evolved so much since the 1980s that they fantasize about women their mothers' age?

MTV has distorted the sexual narrative so much that it's supposed to have nothing to do with reproduction, and everything to do with public pleasure, self-gratification, exposed skin, and all the rest of the elements on the video-production checklist.

But young men are still biologically programmed to desire to mate-and to desire to partake in such, um, activity with women of childbearing age. That means women who are not nearly eligible for AARP, no matter how scantily clad.

Britney is mainstream sexy because she is young. She is cute. She is blonde. She has big blue eyes and a pleasing hip-to-waist ratio. She's accessible, not scary, to teens. Madonna, Demi, and Janet are all over the hill. Let's be realistic: If all you're selling is sex, you'd better at least understand that your product has a shelf life. When will the producers wake up and tell their aging stable of no-talent stars: You're just too old for the show!

Corporate-spectacle creationists like those responsible for Sunday's sexless debacle can keep pushing the line of broadcast standards past the basest denominator of decency, alienating legions of people of values with some disposable income.

But in the process, they do something to themselves that conservative critics can't do. They make themselves look outdated, out-of-touch, and silly.

— Nicole Gelinas is a freelance journalist in New York.