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Madame X: Misogyny and Ageism


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no one said shit to Tony Bennett for recording a whole album with a much younger collabortaor

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3 minutes ago, Aries said:

no one said shit to Tony Bennett for recording a whole album with a much younger collabortaor

so fuckin true!

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2 hours ago, Aries said:

no one said shit to Tony Bennett for recording a whole album with a much younger collabortaor

Indeed

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On 4/20/2019 at 5:31 AM, davejr. said:

 

15 years after this interview. Madonna is on her 14th album.

I Love her so much! Her intelligence, how smart she is. Sometimes I feel sad about that many people don't get her. That says a lot about society. Why is it so hard to let her do her thing? Whatever I'm glad she is still around us. Giving us a new peace of art. It has  just begun.

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Boston Globe

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2019/05/07/madonna-latest-persona-anti-ageist-warrior/qvALDvMWXV7cPZgcHMa9EK/story.html

Madonna’s latest persona: anti-ageist warrior

By Renée Graham Globe Columnist

May 7, 2019, 4:40 p.m.

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Of all the outrageous stunts that Madonnahas pulled in a sprawling career that began in the 1980s, nothing may be as unforgivable as getting older.

At least that seems to be a common sentiment as she prepares to release her latest album, “Madame X,” next month. She’s also gearing up for an accompanying tour that sold out so quickly in Los Angeles and Brooklyn that numerous dates had to be added. (Boston is also on her schedule.)

In recent years, it’s been a given that every Madonna write-up will find a way to mention her age and how she needs to start acting it. There’s a droning narrative that, at 60, Madonna is at least a decade past her sell-by date and should leave the bustiers, gold grills, and attention-grabbing shenanigans to younger performers for whom she paved a way forward.

Fortunately, the iconic entertainer is having none of it.

“People have always been trying to silence me for one reason or another, whether it’s that I’m not pretty enough, I don’t sing well enough, I’m not talented enough, I’m not married enough, and now it’s that I’m not young enough,” she says in an upcoming British Vogue interview. “So they just keep trying to find a hook to hang their beef about me being alive on. Now I’m fighting ageism, now I’m being punished for turning 60.”

This is always — and only — a woman’s fight. In September, Bruce Springsteen will celebrate his 70th birthday. No one is telling “The Boss” it’s time to hang up his guitar. Mick Jagger, 75 and recovering from heart-valve replacement surgery, is expected to be back on the road twitching and strutting his way through “Satisfaction” and “Brown Sugar,” as he has been doing for more than 50 years.

Oh, President Trump will be 73 next month, and two Democrats vying to replace him are former vice president Joe Biden, 76, and Senator Bernie Sanders, 77.

But sure, Madonna, who turns 61 in August, is now too old to be, well, Madonna.

In truth, Madonna was criticized for aging before she entered her sixth decade. In 2016, The Independent, a British newspaper, cited research by the University of Southern California marketing professor Jeetendr Sehdev that claimed millennials found Madonna, then 57, “embarrassing” and “desperate.” Said Sehdev, “This is not about Madonna’s age and her sexual image but about her being perceived as inauthentic.”

Of course this is about Madonna’s age, especially since she’s compared with much younger stars like Taylor Swift and Adele. It’s also about a culture that has no idea what to do with Women of a Certain Age who refuse to be confined by ageist and patriarchal definitions of female propriety.

If Madonna seems ridiculous now, it’s because she’s always been ridiculous. This is the woman who outraged audiences by performing “Like a Virgin” while crawling and writhing on the ground in a wedding dress at the 1984 MTV Video Music Awards. Five years later her “Like a Prayer” video garnered Catholic Church ire for depicting burning crosses, stigmata, and a black religious statue that comes to life and kisses her. Everything she did was a plotted provocation, and it made her very famous and very rich.

But there was a more serious goal, too. Madonna challenged discomforts around sexuality and women’s sexual desire, shoving it in every disapproving face. Yes, Grace Jones did it first and better, but Madonna was a giddy libertine as conservatism became a fire in this nation’s bones. And while the Reagan administration turned its collective back on communities ravaged by AIDS, she loudly championed the LGBT community. This month she received the Advocate for Change Award from GLAAD, the LGBTQ rights group, at its 30th annual Media Awards.

Years ago, former Jefferson Airplane and Jefferson Starship singer Grace Slick stopped performing, claiming that “All rock-and-rollers over the age of 50 look stupid and should retire.” I suppose Madonna could have resigning herself to making albums where she serially murders the Great American Songbook, like Rod Stewart. Then again, she never seemed the type to settle quietly into musical dotage.

And I say this as someone who isn’t her biggest fan. Her self-involved “tributes” to Prince and Aretha Franklin deserved all the shade and scorn heaped upon them. She was dragged for her use of the n-word on social media, for which she offered a standard non-apology.

There’s no shortage of reasons to criticize Madonna, but her refusal to go quietly into that good night isn’t one of them. I’d expect nothing less from the woman who sang, “Express yourself, don’t repress yourself” — Madonna gonna Madonna. And in a career filled with triumphs, missteps, and twisty reinventions, Madonna may have found her most resonant incarnation — a tireless warrior against the sexism of ageism.

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