The Washington post perspective on Madonna at 64 once again changing society and how women should age..

[Spicechinodiva]

This is what Robin Givhans who is 58 and grew up with Madonna had to write to give the original audience their voice. 

 

Like she states she's the only one that came from the MTV era still getting major label deals and better promotion and press and like everybody said the Janet Jackson tour wasn't given this kind of global attention,  Cher announced a tour and yeah it's no press but Madonna does and it's all people are talking about or covering on social media m 

 

But here's her entire article.  

 

It's her perspective.  Not an opinion but a perspective to see why it's being celebrated..

Madonna’s upcoming tour will defy society’s limits on female pop stars

Madonna's upcoming tour will mark 40 years of pop-culture greatness as it defies generations of stereotypes about gender and age.

Madonna has announced the North American and European dates of her concert tour, during which she will perform her most popular, era-defining songs.
That’s 40 years worth of club dancing, provocative shape-shifting and s**-positive proselytizing. Madonna was one of the foundational female artists of the MTV dance pop genre, and this tour will be a testament to that legacy and a test of cultural boundaries. 

In “Madonna: The Celebration Tour,” the performer will be pushing against timeworn assumptions about gender and age at a moment when public dialogue can be very mean and very unforgiving on those very subjects. 
Godspeed, Madonna.
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She announced her intentions on social media in a video that features a game of truth or dare — a reference to her 1991 film of the same name — with a clique of pals including Jack Black, Amy Schumer, Judd Apatow and Lil Wayne. The video is shot mostly in black and white and at times looks out of focus. 
Everyone appears a bit scruffy and like they’ve had a long night of loopy carousing. 
The effect is a video that is raw and self-consciously, gleefully transgressive, which is Madonna’s favorite kind of story to tell.
At the height of her fame and influence in the 1980s and ’90s, Madonna managed to offend pretty much everyone who considered themselves part of the establishment or who believed themselves to be charged with setting moral codes of conduct and defining social acceptability. 

She rankled the sensibilities of the Catholic church, Moral Majority and evangelicals. 
She made a career out of punching up at the powerful and the privileged. 
She stood on the side of outsiders. 
And for this — and her danceable beats and keen sense of aesthetics — she was beloved. 
She was especially vocal in speaking up for the LGBTQ community and celebrating elements of their culture, including ballroom and drag.
Most everything that made Madonna such a compelling cultural figure now has become a test, a challenge, a question. 

When she incorporated ballroom culture into her video for “Vogue,” she was applauded for shining a spotlight on this dance style created within the Black and Latin LGBTQ community. 
Now, there are conversations about cultural appropriation and whether she did enough to elevate the originators.
As a performer, she was always moving forward, always latching on to the next thing simmering just outside the mainstream. 
She altered her look to mark each new chapter, and her audience applauded her.
But the culture is less likely to applaud the looks of a 64-year-old woman unless she is perceived as somehow defying the march of time or aging gracefully — which is to say walking quietly into the sunset wearing expensive cashmere and sensible shoes.

And Madonna has not been quiet❗

She recently caused a kerfuffle on social media for making note of how, with her book “s**” in 1992, she paved the way for performers such as Cardi B and Miley Cyrus to sing freely about their ***uality; she’s been taken to task for wearing the traditional attire of people from North Africa; she likes to craft social media videos of herself in extreme close-ups that make her look ghostly and imperfect rather than glamorous and flawless. 

She continues to provoke. 

Her admirers applaud her for maintaining the same edgy sense of indiscretion that she had in her 20s. She is also admonished for still having such audacity. 

Madonna hasn’t changed, and the culture is conflicted about that.

It will be quite something when Madonna takes the stage and all the familiar beats begin to play. 
Fans won’t be coming to see her stand behind a microphone and belt out a ballad. 
The performance, in all its sweaty and **** athleticism, has always been the draw: the voguing, the bullet bras and, of course, the look. 
She was the club-hopping ragamuffin, the Marilyn Monroe doppelganger, the dark-haired heretic, the platinum s** goddess. 
Her look has always told her audience something about how she sees gender and s** at a particular moment. 

Her body has been a statement about the politics of ***uality.
What will that look like now in this seventh decade of her life? 
Surely, it can be wondrous and engaging and tantalizing. 
But it can be hard to convince popular culture of that. When the 50-something actresses returned to the “s** and the City” revival with all the familiar outré costumes and melodramatic storylines, they were practically pilloried for having the nerve to have aged.

Society has been terribly begrudging of women as they get older. 
Each milestone brings new rules and limitations related to appearance. 
At 30, women are expected to be womanly rather than girlish. 
At 50, they are to aim for sophistication or elegance. 
After 65, there are no rules because women basically become just a head on an invisible body — exceptions are few.

Madonna is the MTV godmother bringing her personal playlist and bump-and-grind aesthetic back to the stadium crowds. 
There’s something exciting and unnerving about the prospect of this high-wattage video star returning to the stage with such bravado. 
Her brand of exhibitionist feminism put the female body directly in the spotlight, and that became fundamental to her public identity. 
As she goes back and performs her catalogue now, how will the music change? 
When she sings “Beauty’s where you find it” from “Vogue,” will it resonate differently?

One wants her to be as dynamic as she was decades ago. After all, there’s a good deal of nostalgia embedded in this tour. But the reality is that no performer can ever go backward. (Most probably don’t want to.) The excitement isn’t in a repeat performance of “Vogue” or “Like a Prayer.” The thrill is in the possibilities of what those songs can become.

The anticipation is not merely in hearing a fresh take on the old tunes. It’s also the exhilaration of this Madonna, still disruptive and full of swagger. Just by stepping onstage, she gives popular culture a new chapter in the female story.

Edited January 19, 2023 by Spicechinodiva

[Stefani]

Quote

maintaining the same edgy sense of indiscretion that she had in her 20s

Eh I dunno about that. The edgiest thing she did while in her 20s was... sing Like a Virgin? Compared to her antics in the past 10 years like when she posted the n-word on IG, wore grillz, smoked weed, and posted tons of selfies while on the toilet or that one where she was held at knifepoint, she was positively tame in her 20s. 

Edited January 19, 2023 by Stefani

[Turogue]

3 hours ago, Stefani said:

Eh I dunno about that. The edgiest thing she did while in her 20s was... sing Like a Virgin? Compared to her antics in the past 10 years like when she posted the n-word on IG, wore grillz, smoked weed, and posted tons of selfies while on the toilet or that one where she was held at knifepoint, she was positively tame in her 20s. 

You're forgetting Papa Don't Preach (teenage pregnancy and the difficult relationship between a girl and her father) and the Open Your Heart video (peepshow dancer being observed by single men, a single woman, two embracing men and of course a very curious young boy).

[Kiss my]

[Spicechinodiva]

6 hours ago, Stefani said:

Eh I dunno about that. The edgiest thing she did while in her 20s was... sing Like a Virgin? Compared to her antics in the past 10 years like when she posted the n-word on IG, wore grillz, smoked weed, and posted tons of selfies while on the toilet or that one where she was held at knifepoint, she was positively tame in her 20s. 

She hasn't smoked w**d since her ex left and since when was w**d is bad it's now proven not to be. Hint the legality in states cos better that ****'s that put you to sleep 

[bitbitboi]

I feel like she has written down a list of all things that are not openly allowed to do in public, and then she does them all to the t. That's it. Not a personal and not even an artistic motivation whatsoever other than to push some buttons to create public discussions and some controversies here and there so people keep calling her name so she stays "relevant".

S3x? That's an activity for the personal space. The same with d1ugs. I don't think it's about what she does but about the fact that she insistedly does it in public. I don't think she wants to "change society", she just wants to make people uncomfortable so they can pay attention to her. She can do whatever she wants and not give a single explanation in her personal life, but stop shoving it on people's face, because that's when other opinions and lifestyles are taken into consideration as well. It's not (always) about mere prohibitions, it's about not stepping on other people's spaces, which is basically what living in society means. And whoever follows her for these same reasons seem to want someone who can do rebellious things and piss people off just because they are resentful for past unjust experiences and they can't do it themselves. That's called living vicariously through someone else. But create your own story, pick and choose your battles and whatever you really like best, and live your own life. Madonna will not change the world, that's a collective endeavour, and people are not taking her seriously now because she's become one note and is only really tooting her own horn.

Also, and this is the worst part... There's so much she has learned over the years that she's not sharing (for example, like Dolly Parton or Cher are doing in interviews at the moment) because she's decided to talk about d1cks, t1ts, 4ss and hump1ng 24/7 instead. A MESS.

Edited January 19, 2023 by bitbitboi

[Frankie8]

This article had to have been written by a fan of hers. Nowadays Madonna is seen as a joke. An artist of yesteryear clinging to some sort of relevency at any cost.

[Spicechinodiva]

44 minutes ago, bitbitboi said:

I feel like she has written down a list of all things that are not openly allowed to do in public, and then she does them all to the t. That's it. Not a personal and not even an artistic motivation whatsoever other than to push some buttons to create public discussions and some controversies here and there so people keep calling her name so she stays "relevant".

S3x? That's an activity for the personal space. The same with d1ugs. I don't think it's about what she does but about the fact that she insistedly does it in public. I don't think she wants to "change society", she just wants to make people uncomfortable so they can pay attention to her. She can do whatever she wants and not give a single explanation in her personal life, but stop shoving it on people's face, because that's when other opinions and lifestyles are taken into consideration as well. It's not (always) about mere prohibitions, it's about not stepping on other people's spaces, which is basically what living in society means. And whoever follows her for these same reasons seem to want someone who can do rebellious things and piss people off just because they are resentful for past unjust experiences and they can't do it themselves. That's called living vicariously through someone else. But create your own story, pick and choose your battles and whatever you really like best, and live your own life. Madonna will not change the world, that's a collective endeavour, and people are not taking her seriously now because she's become one note and is only really tooting her own horn.

Also, and this is the worst part... There's so much she has learned over the years that she's not sharing (for example, like Dolly Parton or Cher are doing in interviews at the moment) because she's decided to talk about d1cks, t1ts, 4ss and hump1ng 24/7 instead. A MESS.

That's gay culture sweetie