America loves football, but we may love the Super Bowl halftime show even more wholeheartedly. In 2020, for example, the Super Bowl’s football component attracted 102 million viewers, but 104 million people watched the halftime show, which that year featured J.Lo and Shakira.

The Super Bowl is the biggest TV advertising event of the year by far, and the halftime show draws excitement weeks in advance. This year’s has been no exception, with enormous buzz around anticipated performers Eminem, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar, and Mary J. Blige.

But stars alone do not a superb halftime show make. It takes hundreds of dancers to make the event into a complicatedly choreographed, riveting, hashtagged, and widely discussed extravaganza of a performance that helps the Super Bowl reach $482 million in ad sales. (Not to mention the massive revenue from Super Bowl tickets: the NFL does not release this, but the Los Angeles Times reports that the cheapest ticket for tonight’s Rams vs. Bengals game is $5,663, and that the average ticket price is $10,540.) And this year, despite the incredible amount of money generated by both the game and the halftime show, those dancers have revealed some grotesque exploitation.