When it was announced that Hamilton's Schuyler sisters would perform "America The Beautiful" at the 2017 Super Bowl, fans were immediately thrilled. With the combined talent of Phillipa Soo, Renée Elise Goldsberry, and Jasmine Cephas, we knew we'd be in for an unforgettable performance, but it turned out to be even better than we could've expected. During their performance, the trio changed the lyrics of "America The Beautiful" to include "and sisterhood," starting Super Bowl LI on the perfect note.
The Super Bowl can very easily make women feel excluded, so changing the "American The Beautiful" lyrics to specifically include us in this moment is especially significant. Besides the constant stereotypes about women not really liking football, there have been countless past Super Bowl commercials that use sexism and objectification to sell products. Even though Nielsen found that women make up 46 percent of the Super Bowl audience back in 2014, three years later, it still feels like we're an afterthought. But thanks to the addition of two simple words, Soo, Goldsberry, and Cephas made it clear that women are here and we are paying attention. You can see the brief but powerful moment in the video below at about the 21-second mark.
Within seconds of the lyric change, viewers started enthusiastically tweeting about it. That includes Hamilton creator and writer Lin-Manuel Miranda, who definitely approved of the Schuyler sisters' latest performance.
Though there will surely be (completely unwarranted) controversy surrounding this moment, there seems to be an incredible amount of support already. Maybe these talented performers will start a new trend of adding women to the spaces where we've been excluded. If it takes off, who knows? Maybe sisterhood can be a permanent part of "America The Beautiful."
