Type “NFL” on X, and the first post that appeared a few days ago was from an account named Giordano Bruno. The picture it carried was of Super Bowl 2026’s headliner, Bad Bunny, with the caption: “🏈 Dear NFL, Americans are sick of this crap 🤮.” What followed was a myriad of comments backlashing at the league for choosing him. One wrote, “Seriously, this is who you hire for a football game? @NFL.” Another said, “I don’t want to watch a man in a dress that sings in Spanish.” A third fan expressed, “So tired of this woke nonsense.” Now, what is the relation between the LGBTQ+ community and Bad Bunny? Let’s go back in time.
2026 Super Bowl halftime show headliner Bad Bunny admits he is heterosexual and likes women
In March 2020, John Paul King of Washington Blade reported that rapper Bad Bunny, known as a longtime LGBTQ ally, had never discussed his own sexuality until an interview with the LA Times. In that conversation, the Puerto Rican recording star said, “It does not define me. At the end of the day, I don’t know if in 10 years I will like a man. One never knows in life. But at the moment I am heterosexual and I like women.”
Bad Bunny wears skirts, kisses a male backup dancer, and dresses in drag
Three years later, in October 2023, Michelle Ruiz of Vanity Fair interviewed Bad Bunny following accusations of “queerbaiting.” He had worn traditionally feminine clothes like skirts, kissed a male backup dancer, and performed in drag for his “Yo Perreo Sola” music video. Bad Bunny explained, “I get endless number of negative comments and sexist and homophobic ones, without being homosexual, for dressing like that. Maybe the queer person suffers more, but it is not like I put on a skirt and go out, and they say–Look how cool. They’re going to attack me either way. You don’t know the reasons why a person is wearing that. You weren’t in his mind when he decided to put on a skirt or a blouse. You don’t know what’s inside him, what’s in his heart.”
Bad Bunny dedicates Super Bowl headlining opportunity to his people, his culture, and his history
Two years later, in September 2025, the National Football League announced Puerto Rican musician Bad Bunny as the headliner for the 2026 Super Bowl halftime show in Santa Clara. John Ferrannini, Assistant Editor for the San Francisco Bay Area LGBTQ community, reported the rapper stated in a release, “What I’m feeling goes beyond myself. This is for my people, my culture, and our history.”
Fighting misogyny, racism, homophobia, and transphobia
In September, Bernardo Sim, Out’s deputy editor, explored Bad Bunny’s popularity in the LGBTQ+ community. He highlighted how Bad Bunny has worked for years to challenge the “machista” archetype that dominated reggaeton as a musical genre for decades. Bad Bunny has been trying to help fight misogyny, racism, homophobia, and transphobia within the Latino community—an aspect that keeps getting lost among U.S. audiences.In February 2020, Stephen Daw of Billboard reported that Bad Bunny and Sech performed “Ignorantes” on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. The rapper made a statement with his shirt. Bunny was dressed in a long skirt and a large pink jacket, which he stripped away to reveal a white shirt that read: “Mataron a Alexa, no un hombre con falda,” which translates to: “They killed Alexa, not a man in a skirt.”Also Read: Bad Bunny takes a subtle dig at a conservative news network on the latest episode of Saturday Night Live | NFL News – The Times of India
