Put It Away, Grandma

Weekend23.05.2015

Put it away, Grandma Is Madonna pushing the envelope or just pushing her luck? Pic: John Shearer/Invision/AP) Pic: 0DGRQQDPLVRJ\Q\ ECENTLY on stage at Coachella, ting herself on the front line of an increas- during the performance of a track 6X]DQQH+DUULQJWRQWDNHVDIDQȁVDSSURDFKWR ingly toxic war between young and middle- titled ‘Bitch I’m Madonna’, there aged women. It is a fight she cannot win and was an Ageist Kissing Incident. KXQWLQJRXWWKHWKHHOHSKDQWLQWKHURRP0DGRQQD she should learn to age well.” 5The pop queen of the same name (age 56, Paglia continued that older women using album sales 300 million) gave Canadian VKHVD\VKDVKLJKOLJKWHGWKHIDFWWKDWZRPHQDIWHU Photoshop were a disservice to feminism: rapper Drake (age 28, album sales five mil- “The ultimate issue here is the media- lion) an unscripted kiss — not a peck on the DUHUHJDUGHGDVFXOWXUDOFDVWUDWLDQGVKRXOGOHDYHWKH fuelled nuclear arms race being waged cheek, but an actual snog. VH[XDODUHQDTXLHWO\ǿDQGWRWKH\RXQJDQGEHDXWLIXO between middle-aged women and the young The rapper’s reaction was viscerally women whose dewy nubility they vampiri- ungracious; it was as though he had been cally covet. This is a war that ageing women licked by ebola, his face curling in disgust as “Stop crying. Nobody wants to kiss you.”) act your age, that’s disgusting, ewwww. can never win: cruel time conquers all.” he wiped his hand across his mouth. Madonna was unimpressed, swiftly tell- Here’s the thing. We allow a certain kind Or as an online commentator at Billboard Afterwards, having realised his epic faux ing one fan, “Don’t kiss Drake. No matter of middle aged female sexuality. Discreet, magazine said of Madonna’s Interview pas, he backtracked on Twitter: “Don’t mis- how many times he begs you to”. Marilyn implied, covered up — but even by our shoot: “Those who find these ridiculous interpret my shock!! I got to make out with Manson added some ghoulish gallantry in forties our sexual selves become labelled as photos ‘hot’ are necrophiliac.” the queen Madonna and I feel 100 about that i-D magazine by suggesting that Madonna ‘cougar’, with all the predatory baggage that Necrophiliac? Yikes. Madonna, as her job forever.” (100? What? Years old?) “looks hotter than ever. I’d also like to let it word entails. requires, looks better than most 36-year- But it was not so much the initial clod- be known that I still have a crush on This does not happen to men. So when olds, never mind 56-year-olds. Hers is not a dish, uncouth reaction of the rapper as the Madonna and I would definitely fornicate Madonna, at a calendar age regarded as typical 56-year-old face and body, thanks to wider response afterwards which howled of with her.” Madonna’s response? “Um, clinically dead when it comes to raunch, mountains of work, internal and otherwise. ageism and misogyny. Screams of ‘ugh’ thanks.” prances her sexuality the same as she has Yet Paglia urges her to follow convention, echoed around the internet. An older This might all sound like a snog in a tea- always done, she incurs that special kind of to “learn to age well”. That she is ‘compet- woman had kissed a younger man — not like cup, were it not representative of wider wrath reserved for women who refuse to ing’ with younger women over the prize of Mrs Robinson, or anything Oedipal, but just social attitudes. Madonna is a menopausal yield to what is expected of them. youth. What old-school nonsense. Why straightforward, age-irrelevant sexual woman (or at least we presume she is, as she Interestingly, it’s not just the Piers Mor- should you ever retire your sexuality intent — at least, for on-stage purposes is biologically the right age), and menopau- gans or the twitchfork mobs shouting at because a calendar says so? Has anyone told anyway. sal women are cultural castrati. Display Madonna to put it away. Some of her most similarly aged George Clooney, Lenny Kra- Piers Morgan waded straight in: “So overt sexuality at your peril, ladies, and pre- vociferous critics have been feminists. vitz, Brad Pitt, Antonio Banderas and all the Drake proves that kissing Madonna is about pare to be tarred and feathered both online When she got her nipples out — yes, aged 56 other men we regard as sexy without mak- as ghastly as I always thought it would be.” and off, with calls of put it away, Grandma — for Interview magazine, Camille Paglia ing vomiting noises because they are over (To which another tweeter crisply replied, go home, stop embarrassing your children, wrote in The Times how Madonna was “put- 50?

 ,5,6+(;$0,1(5 :HHNHQG _  DQGWKHPHQRSDXVH Or as Madonna herself asked Jonathan from bra-burner to bra-flaunter, she has as-yet unknown cultural phenomenon, the year-old girls. She knows better, I’m sure.” Ross in 1992, when she was 34, “Is there a always been subversive, operating from hot menopausal minx? Again, the should-know-better argument. rule? Are people just supposed to die when inside the corporate poptocracy. We are all living far longer these days — We remain conditioned to categorise and they’re 40?”, crossly adding, “That’s just stu- She didn’t just prance about singing pop do women really have to spend the second pigeonhole anything connected with pid.” tunes — she has always been vocal about half of their lives pretending they are not women, age and sexuality. Obviously, no matter how hot someone is, equality for women and gay men, her grea- still hot to trot? “Women are still the most marginalised age and generation has some influence. Ma- test fanbase. And now that she is older, she “Of course women in their 50s are still group,” Madonna told Out magazine. donna is not on my teenage daughter’s pop shows no signs of toning herself down until sexual, but their sexualities, one would “They’re still the group that people won’t let radar. BBC Radio 1,which appeals to a pop she is ready, rather than acquiescing to hope, have advanced beyond that professed change.” audience aged 15-30, caused a fuss in Febru- society’s wishes. by 20-year-olds,” writes Meghan Murphy in Perhaps her most authentic menopausal ary when it refused to play tracks from her Could this pushing against the conser- her Feminist Current blog. “And I wish, in admission was during a recent interview — new album, based on her age and “rel- vative boundaries of supposed end-stage, her efforts to (supposedly) push boundaries, again with Jonathan Ross — when she evance” to that age group (she’s not alone — public, female sexuality (fellow performers that Madonna would push past the conven- spoke about her feelings of loss when her they don’t play Kylie or Robbie Williams Cher and Tina Turner never quite thrust tional, inauthentic, superficial performance own teenage daughter moved out. A deeper either). Her fans are older, and have grown like Madonna), make her a pioneer of the of sexuality presented by objectified 20- loss than anything romantic, she said. up with her since her 1982 debut. She may be world’s most successful fe- But this is not about pop, it’s about female male pop star, a cultural phenomenon, who, sexuality and its built-in obsolescence. We three decades into her career continues to have long decided that once a woman is no 6RZKHQ0DGRQQDDWDFDOHQGDUDJH challenge our ideas of female sexuality (her longer biologically fertile, she is no longer “ music is secondary, frankly), but she still sexually desirable. acknowledges the ordinary everyday loss of Check out how Hollywood casts female UHJDUGHGDVFOLQLFDOO\GHDGZKHQLWFRPHVWR children growing up and leaving. actors the same age as male actors to play Of all the incarnations of Madonna, their mothers. Older woman sexuality is UDXQFKSUDQFHVKHUVH[XDOLW\WKHVDPHDV perhaps Menopausal Madonna will help almost regarded as a perversion (see the smash the last barriers for women — sex, “necrophiliac” comment above). And ageing, and our real place in the world. Madonna, putting her best nipples forward, VKHKDVDOZD\VGRQHVKHLQFXUVWKDWVSHFLDO is challenging this clapped-out perception I Here’s the link to that Drake moment: as only she can. NLQGRIZUDWKUHVHUYHGIRUZRPHQZKR As someone who has long confronted www.youtube.com/ dominant perceptions head on, initially UHIXVHWR\LHOGWRZKDWLVH[SHFWHGRIWKHP watch?v=XmHNM90pK0M helping to change our view of ‘feminist’

,5,6+(;$0,1(5 :HHNHQG _