Jennifer Lopez is back – back on stage, back on the dating scene and back making headlines. Hosting the American Music Awards, she performed a mash up of recent hits on stage including Billie Eilish’s ‘Birds of a Feather’, Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Not Like Us’ and Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga’s ‘Die With a Smile’. That’s not what everyone is talking about, though.

In a choreographed moment during her rendition of ‘Lose Control’ by Teddy Swims, Lopez was approached by two male and female dancers before kissing them both. ‘I had to kick things off, you know that, turning it up to the biggest songs of the year and dancing my heart out for all of you,’ Lopez said after the set.

Before we get into the inevitable uproar, it’s worth remembering the cultural legacy of on-stage kisses at music awards shows, which began with Madonna, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera locking lips during a joint performance of ‘Like a Virgin’ at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards. Since then, everyone from The 1975’s Matty Healy to Tate McRae have smooched on stage – with dancers, partners and sometimes even fans. This is nothing new or inherently outrageous.

And yet, Lopez’s steamy on-stage moment has sparked a tired debate. She has been called everything from ‘cringe’ and ‘embarrassing’ to ‘desperately trying to stay relevant’. This is thinly veiled misogyny posing as cultural commentary. As a 55-year-old artist, it’s clear that a lot of these social media critics don’t think Lopez is qualified to express her sexuality on stage anymore. Despite the fact she has been a music icon – and a sex symbol – for the best part of 30 years. Not many people could pull off the crystal-covered Michael Ngo catsuit Lopez wore during said performance, but she did along with seven (yes, seven) other incredible outfits.

Then followed absurd commentary about whether her ex-husband Ben Affleck, who she was married to for two years between 2022 and 2024, would be ‘cool’ with the public kisses so soon after their divorce. A divorce, we hasten to add, that was filed last August and settled in February, even though Affleck and Lopez had already been separated since last April. Not only have they spent more than a year apart, but their divorce settlement was swift and amicable, and it’s widely thought that the exes have remained on good terms. Why, then, would Affleck be bothered by Lopez kissing her dancers as part of an awards show performance? It was only a few months ago that he praised her for being ‘spectacular’ in their film, Unstoppable, so it’s curious that anyone would get offended by Lopez’s behaviour on his behalf.

Rather than telling us anything particularly interesting about the singer’s ‘divorce era’, her relationship with Affleck or whether she’s trying to ‘stay relevant’, the backlash surrounding Lopez’s AMAs kiss is more revealing of the puritanical state of pop culture. It seems that when any female artists, and it is almost always female artists, express even a modicum of sensuality on stage, a tirade of regressive, out-dated criticism follows. We’ve seen it recently with younger artists like Sabrina Carpenter too; she was scorned during her Short n’ Sweet tour in Paris after simulating the ‘Eiffel Tower’ sex move with two male dancers on stage and performed a similar gag at her show in Copenhagen. Instead of being accused of being ‘desperate to stay relevant’, Carpenter was criticised for performing in a sexually suggestive way in front of children. Petitions were even launched off the back of her performance, despite clear age restrictions and the shows prohibiting anyone under the age of 15 from attending without an adult.

Carpenter’s response to the backlash was refreshing. ‘My message has always been clear,’ she said earlier this year, ‘if you can’t handle a girl who is confident in her own sexuality, then don’t come to my shows. Female artists have been shamed forever. In the noughties it was Rihanna, in the ‘90s it was Britney, in the ‘80s it was Madonna… It’s essentially saying female performers should not be able to embrace their sexuality in their lyrics, in the way we dress, in the way we perform.’

It’s a message Lopez’s naysayers would do well to listen to. She’s just a woman enjoying herself on stage, when and why did that become a crime?

Lopez’s AMAs show also marked one of her first performances since her greatest hits tour was cancelled last year. In the immediate aftermath of her separation from Affleck, she was set to embark on 30 shows to celebrate her career, which were cancelled because she needed ‘time off to be with her children, family and friends’. Perhaps a year later she is out the other side and settling back into her confidence – a confidence she has earned as one of the highest grossing female artists of the century. If that means kissing her dancers on stage, why not? When did pop performance have to become so serious?