At least The Weeknd’s countless backup dancers were wearing relatively COVID-safe costumes during the Super Bowl LV halftime show.
Their mouths and noses were entirely covered, oddly enough, by bandages — which also neatly covered what looked like KN95 masks. The bandages, according to an interview the Weeknd gave to Variety, are intended to be a symbol about the superficial nature of beauty in Hollywood.
That was kind of hard to parse from just the halftime show, however, and soon enough the fashion choice from Sunday’s performance was quickly turned into memes and jokes.
Certainly an interesting fashion choice.
Image: Kevin C. Cox / Getty Images
There were superhero jokes.
And mentions of CTE, a huge concussion-related problem in football.
Appreciate this daring homage to football’s CTE issue.
— Emily Nussbaum (@emilynussbaum) February 8, 2021
The somewhat obvious jokes about face masks.
it’s just nice to see lots of people in masks
— Dave Itzkoff (@ditzkoff) February 8, 2021
There were pretty apt comparisons to jock straps.
Sorry but are they wearing jock straps on their face?
— Patrick W. Gavin (@pwgavin) February 8, 2021
Folks noticed the look was seriously similar to the people from the movie Us.
And if the internet has taught us anything it’s that literally everything is a SpongeBob meme waiting to happen.
And yes, I even got in on the action with my own dumb joke referencing a deep-cut from The Office.
The halftime show, overall, though was fun and entertaining enough, considering a large portion of the audience was made up of cardboard cutouts.