I will never forget an interview with singer Henry Rollins that I saw years ago. He was talking about Madonna – he’s always been an outspoken fan – and he He said: “When you’re asleep, it’s on.”
Over the past 40 years of a brilliant career, Madonna has earned a reputation as one of the most hardworking people in show business. Her intense work ethic was seen again recently when she put her staff to work on the now suspended resume by a exhausted “boot camp”, which reportedly involved training sessions lasting up to 11 hours a day.
You may say that, more than anything else, Madonna She is a performance artist in the sense that her music (as awesome as it is) has always seemed like just a device with which she can get our attention and get a reaction. Madonna is also a disciplined artist – an intentional artist, planning her next moves carefully. When we’re asleep, she’s awake, thinking about how to get us to talk about her again.
So with all of the above, do you really think Madonna didn’t know what she was doing when she posted this fall on Instagram Pictures Of herself in lingerie taking selfies on the hotel bathroom floor? Or when she started styling herself like an alien from the bar scene in Star Wars: A New Hope, with shaved eyebrows and kabuki-like makeup? Or when she pounced on TikTok, again in her underwear, licking her lips and shaking her breasts?
One commenter commented on this post: “Someone is doing an interjection.”
Stories about fansthey“Above Madonna”strangeThe behaviors have increased over the past few months. Another commenter said, “The woman has lost her mind, it’s time to retire.”
the retirement? During these same few months, it’s probably not coincidentally that Madonna has been preparing for an upcoming world tour (the Celebration Tour, which kicks off in July), which is expected to be her biggest ever.
But I don’t think Madonna’s recent actions can be attributed to self-marketing alone. It was always about more than that. As a longtime Madonna fan, I’ve come to see that no matter what she’s being criticized for, that’s what she asked us to examine. It has put a big zig zag on our cultural face.
When I was in college (her first album, Madonna, came out in 1983, my freshman year), people would criticize Madonna for being too sexual. I remember, in English class, a professor called it “indecent.” We’ve come from then until now in terms of sex positivity; The endless discussions at the time about Madonna’s alleged “obsceneness” look like a Neanderthal now.
This is thanks in part to Madonna. It was always about exposing the ugliness of our negative attitudes towards women who express their sexuality. and their strength. When Madonna wore this “Toy Boy” belt buckle and pulled from her thigh, millions of people were upset. Millions of others felt inspired.
So what is Madonna trying to tease now? What are you doing with all those screw posts? Again, look at what you are being criticized for. She was told to “calm down”, to “act her age”. She was told she was old. 50 Cent actually called Madonna “Grandma”, while the irony Her “old ass” on social media last year. “LOL at 63 people asking her to relax please,” the rapper captioned a photo Madonna took of herself sitting forward on a bed in black lingerie. Friends reveal why Madonna refuses to grow up safe He said Address in the New York Post.
I think Madonna’s final issue as an artist is ageism. She wants us to be uncomfortable with an older woman having sex because we We are not comfortable with her. She wants us to look at ourselves and ask how we feel so judged, exactly.
Getting older is the last frontier of waking up, in many ways. While you shouldn’t judge someone for — well, almost anything — you can still make fun of them for being older. Meanwhile, it’s no surprise that Hollywood turns on movies where we laugh at older ladies for making a fool of themselves. (See Diane Keaton, the legend who deserved better, in Booms.)
Madonna says no to all of that. She dates men 30 and 40 years younger than her. You go to nightclubs and dance the night away. She climbs on Jimmy Fallon’s desk and flashes his fans. But she does it all with good humor – knowing full well that she doesn’t look like the dazzling young woman she once was, and knowing what the haters would say about her she’s supposedly trying to “recapture her youth.”
Madonna has always explored what it means to be sexual, to be sexual, and to be sexual. Now she’s exploring what it’s like to be an older woman—the absolute taboo, for many people, who think old ladies should just go away. She knows that these people may not understand what she is doing now, and they will slander her again. And you think they are squares.
Is he still hurting her feelings? I think it must, which is why she finally asked people to stop “bullying” her. Because it hurts getting old. It hurts to say that you are old. And Madonna, the woman who always expressed the “girl feeling,” now expresses—through publications that define her sometimes with strange borders—the sadness at not being that girl anymore.
But I also think Madonna is having a lot of fun. On one of her TikToks, she posted an old TV interview in which a reporter asks, slyly, “When Madonna turns 50…60, what are you going to do?” “Who do you know?” Madonna replied. “I hope to have fun.” Then she posted pictures of herself in the present day — looking glamorous, posing, dancing, drinking wine from a carafe, all to her 1983 song “Everybody.”
The song says, “Everybody get up and do whatever you want.” By that, I’ve always meant Madonna everybody – Including, now, older women like her.