Today I’m writing from a mixed Gender Studies and Cultural Studies perspective adding, obviously, some very personal views. The gist of my argumentation can be summarized as ‘let 50+ women display their bodies as they wish and destroy Grok so that it can’t produce fake images of naked women’, but, logically, arguments like this are never that simple. So, let’s begin with JLo.
Jennifer Lopez’s Las Vegas residency started back in December when the star’s haters where at their most active, following her fifth tour ‘Up All Night: Live in 2025’, the first in six years after ‘It’s My Party’ (2019). Lopez is now 56 and her skimpy showgirl outfits unleashed a torrent of ageist abuse on Twitter, Instagram, and Tik-Tok, asking ‘granny’ to cover up, even though there is no longer a specific age-appropriate dress code for performers. In the opening night of her Las Vegas show, Lopez addressed the haters’ complaints before her audience: “I do laugh at some of the things sometimes, ‘cuz they do say funny things too. Why is she always dressed that way? Why don’t she dress her age? Why is she always naked? And I say, ‘If you had this body, you’d be naked too’.” Last night, she turned up at the Golden Globe awards ceremony wearing a spectacular 2003 naked dress designed by Stéphane Rolland for Jean-Louis Scherrer, a bold statement designed to further silence the haters. Instead, she was saluted with another wave of extremely nasty ageist comments.
I’m not a Jennifer Lopez fan, as I’m not into her kind of music and I find her taste in outfits rather vulgar, even when they are haute couture (remember the Versace green dress?). I much prefer Kylie Minogue who, despite being a year older (57) and dressing sexy, is never the object of the ageist abused poured against Lopez, at least that I know of. Haters, it seems, dislike in particular the excess of Lopez’s self-presentation, which is miles away from Minogue’s classy style. However, leaving my personal preference for Minogue’s style (and music!) aside, I wish to defend Lopez against the haters.
Lopez’s body is, most visibly, the product of the star’s intensive investment in it, from punishing gym workouts to plastic surgery, and the fact is that it’s a spectacular, unique body. As a work of (commercial) art, Jennifer’s body is much above the quality of her music, and if she chooses to display it, barely dressed or totally bare, that’s her prerogative. If I had a body like hers, let’s be honest, I would also display it (and monetize it). What is causing the wave of ageist hatred is that her ultra toned body breaks the rules of ageing, though I’m not sure who this is a problem for. Is it women who hate Lopez for the impossible high standards she imposes on us, 50+ women, or is it men who can’t stomach the idea of being sexually aroused by a ‘granny’? (By the way, Lopez is not a grandmother yet). I used to feel anxious about the demands that Lopez and similarly stunning 50+ women impose on the rest of us, but now I see them as fantasies that have little to do with me or most 50+ women. I flaunt my brain (I live off it!), she flaunts her curves. We both self-exploit, though, yes, I know, her self-exploitation has its roots in women’s constant sexualization, which she is contributing to prolong into old age. Also, she makes much more money than I.
In this, Lopez’s teacher is, indeed, Madonna. Just last week, Madonna unleashed yet another wave of ageist hatred with the new Dolce & Gabbana campaign. The video for the add, which I found quite sexy, shows Madonna cavorting in and outside bed with two Italian-looking men, one of them possibly in his 40s, the others in his 20s. Madonna, 67, is currently dating a 29-year-old very attractive man, so you cannot say that the video is unrealistic, at least from the point of view of her private life. However, the video displays a few questionable elements. One is that Madonna’s face looks far smoother than the wrinkled face of her older companion (at least twenty years older than her), which is quite contradictory and suggests that either digital effects have been used or that her plastic surgery has reached a new height. It’s not normal for 67-year-old women to have zero wrinkles or to display thigh completely free from cellulite or stretchmarks.
The other downside is that the video’s triangle has incestuous undertones: this could be nonna having sex with her son and grandson, if this is how we want to read the story. Or with two gigolos. One thing is the image of a performing star on the stage in concert and quite another a sexy audiovisual fantasy that can be easily backfire. I like Madonna far less than I like Lopez, for her insistence on highlighting sex above everything else in a woman’s life and because she’s guilty of endorsing the abusive sexualization of female performers. Yet, I’ll defend her choice to monetize her ageing body as she chooses. To me, she looks ridiculous, not because her self-presentation is inadequate, but because she’s trying too hard to stay sexy. Like JLo, Madonna is excessive and vulgar. I find Dame Helen Mirren (80) far more attractive because she is far more elegant. JLo and Madonna, I insist, are both excessive and vulgar because they have always been so. Minogue and Mirren have always been classy and will remain beautiful till the day they die.
Now, Grok. Here I am, defending 50+ women’s choices to display their fit, half-naked bodies and in the meantime villain Elon Musk has given all the idiot male and some idiot female haters the perfect tool to undress women and humiliate them online without their permission. Grok’s new feature is really not very different from having the creep in the classroom draw naked pictures of his high-school classmates using pen and paper back before smartphones existed. The difference is that AI users are now legion and have managed to flood the internet with a myriad nasty naked images, not of only of adult women but also of children. There had already been a number of scandals about deepfake porn involving famous stars and, yes, high-school girls, but the Grok scandal is the last straw. My view is that Grok is just an instrument and that its users are the real scandal, as the images they have generated reveal how extensive misogyny and paedophilia are. If this were not the case, the use of Grok’s naked feature would be just a minor anecdote. Musk has now stopped non-paying X users from having access to this particular feature and has made paying users legally responsible for their use, but this is by no means sufficient. The many images already circulating will not be erased, and privileged users will be even more likely to do as they please, being less afraid of the consequences.
I don’t know if there are already any Grok-generated images of the naked bodies of Madonna and Jennifer Lopez, and I wonder whether the idiots abusing women’s rights over their own image have ageist prejudices (it might seem so, since many minors’ images are being violated). Is Grok being used to make ageing women look older, I wonder? For that would also be a sort of misogynistic perversion. Musk tried to poke fun at the whole thing having Grok generate a ludicrous photo of himself clad in a bikini, but this only shows how sick his sense of humour is and how little he understands the huge problem. Perhaps women should use Grok to generate humiliating images of naked men, but this is not a response any woman has proposed so far. Rather, women are debating whether we should stay on X (well, the ones who are still there) and fight the bastards or leave the platform, and let it further sink into the cesspool it already is. I’m surprised, in fact, that any self-respecting women are still on X.
So, to sum up, the choices made by JLo and Madonna to display their spectacular mature bodies as they choose are cancelled by the rise of AI naked applications like Grok. I don’t think that ageing women are the object of the manipulated images, but the point is still valid: none of the women abused and humiliated on X have given their permission. The disgusting men who are generating the images (the women, too) are perpetrating a very serious crime. I was told off, by the way, by a woman expert on sex crimes, who told me that by calling this men ‘disgusting’ I dehumanize them, and thus diminish the chances of their re-education. I’m sorry, but I disagree. From the creep who used pen and paper to the creeps that use AI, there is a very human line of male behaviour that needs to be rooted out. I don’t know how to combine this with JLo’s and Madonna’s sexualizing of their own bodies, but I know that we need to strike a balance that guarantees the respect for women’s choices and denies men’s access to tools that manipulate their images and multiply them online. That manipulation is, I insist, disgusting, and so are the manipulators.