Madonna has always been something of a triumph of ambition over art. Heralded by some as the ‘queen of pop,” the material girl and her calling card of synthesised sex and vicarious vulgarity could easily have made her the ‘queen of porn’ in a not too alternate reality.
Descending from the skies like a plucky priestess riding a gigantic inflatable penis, Madonna was heralded as the great liberator and savior of hormonal teens everywhere, who were crying out for a pop tart like Madge to save their senses and damn their souls from the vapid, gaudy, and sterile cultural climate of the mid-1980s.
Madonna, it has to be said, once struck an immensely catchy, hard-to-ignore, and all-consuming power chord, but that chord has been out of tune for some time now, and the recent pics of Madonna topless are a tragic reminder of just how low Madge’s glittery star has sunk.
Perhaps it was inevitable for a performer as comically crass, viciously vain and addicted to attention-seeking as Madonna was in her prime, that she’d end up going topless at some point in her career. It’s just that no-one dared to contemplate that Madonna would wait until she was at the ripe old age of 56 until she decided to unleash her bosom on an unsuspecting public.
You have to give it to the crafty old self publicist though. Getting her t***s out certainly put her back in the spotlight. As the Machiavellian maestro no doubt knew it would.
Madonna is also media-savvy enough to know that there would be a lot of dopey sycophants and eager pleasers out there whose wits and standards have been brutalized and lowered through a heady brew of 1980s pop and boob tubes, to excitedly applaud her soft porn pics and take what is in essence a mid-life crisis and rebrand it as a powerful statement for all women.
Take Claire Cohen writing in the Telegraph for instance. Rushing to Madonna’s defense, as if Madonna ever needed defending, the columnist believes we should all applaud Madonna’s decision to dip her toes into the world of soft porn, sorry, to pose topless in a ‘romantic way’ for the December issue of Interview magazine.
“Madonna’s decision to pose topless has nothing to do with showing-off her wrinkle-free cleavage – nor male titillation. That she’s an older woman is powerful, yes. But, to me, it seems pretty clear that this is far from a pop star trying to prove that she’s ‘still hot’ in her fifties. Madonna’s age is just a convenient stick to beat her with. It’s an easy reason for critics to cry ‘put ’em away’ without, on the surface, seeming sexist. Because there’s always something, isn’t there? Always a reason that a woman’s body isn’t deemed ‘suitable.”
Imagine for one red hot minute if Bob Dylan or Paul McCartney, were to appear on the front page of Rolling Stone magazine, wearing nothing but a thong, a cowboy hat and covered in baby oil, whilst languidly lying on a bearskin rug and suggestively smoking a pipe. It’s not a pretty image is it? Yet would hordes of male hacks rush to their defense and snarl, “They’re not desperate! Don’t ridicule them!” Before righteously declaring, There’s always a reason why an older chap’s body isn’t deemed ‘suitable’ isn’t there fellas.” You get the drift?
Later on in the same piece, Cohen asks, “Here is a woman still at the top of her industry, after almost 40 years. She’s weathered numerous musical trends and managed to stay relevant. Why shouldn’t she pose with her breasts exposed?”
Such a trite and generally meaningless statement is akin to asking why shouldn’t a mother who has breastfed three kids, weathered numerous domestic incidents and managed to stay on top of her game for 40 years, finally live the dream and pose with her breasts exposed? It just ain’t happening. For dignity’s sake!
On some sort of roll, Cohen then goes on to defend Madonna’s bare breasts exposed by calling it too real for us mere mortals to handle.
“For stars such as Madonna and Keira Knightly, choosing to bear their breasts is a feminist statement, not a requirement. They are saying: ‘Here I am. Take me, or leave me’. Of course, Madonna and Knightley both have exceptional body types compared to us mere mortals. But, the fact remains. When it all gets too ‘real,’ we simply can’t handle it. Just because Madonna’s in her fifties, why should she hide away?”
Hiding yourself away, or going topless so the world can shun or savor your assets may not sound like much of a feminist choice for an over-the-hill starlet like Madonna to be left with, but if you dare to disagree you’ll be quickly condemned as a sexist pig quicker than you can snap, “You’re too old love, put ’em away.”