Madonna

[Artoo]

Queen telling it how it is.

[floridagrl]

Stunning!

[floridagrl]

Perfect and breathtaking throughout. This is the best show on earth. Legendary.

The best!!

[Artoo]

On February 6 2014, Like A Virgin producer Nile Rodgers mentioned his collaboration with Madonna during a Google+ Hangout with Billboard: “I don’t have any unreleased Madonna material because Madonna knew exactly what she wanted her album to be when we did Like a Virgin. The only song that I had any input of bringing into the mix was a cover of Rose Royce’s ballad Love Don’t Live Here Anymore. That was a final last-minute decision.”

Info thanks to Today in Madonna History.

The big unreleased songs from the LAV era are ‘Desperately Seeking Susan’ and ‘Warning Signs’. If I get them I’ll be very happy.

[AndiIversen]

Love how she won't ever stand down and she's of course not taking any crap

[Shadowplay]

Queen telling it how it is.

I had two icons when I was young(er): Madonna and The Cure.
I have NEVER read a bad word regarding Robert Smith's face, or hair, or body shape in these years. Never. And, of course, Robert aged a lot, like anybody else. This is the only reference to his look I found on YT, when they performed at Rock n Roll HoF induction: "People are talking about looks but his bouncing happiness and smiling is a sight to behold".
I do not know why Madonna can be so bullied and vilified instead: because she is a woman? Because of her "in your face" attitude? It cannot be only a matter of misogyny/ageism, as she says. They never talk of Cher or Debbie Harry with this violence and in this disrespectful way. I do not really know why it happens.

Sometimes I feel like a MJ fan in the 00s, when Michael was mocked and ridiculized 24/7... haters wanted him dead, a victim to idolize after that June 25, in the most hypocritical way, and the fact Madonna is still with us seems to aggravate their violence.

[madgikman]

Shadowplay omg growing up M and The Cure were all I listened to as well as Siouxsie and the Banshees. They're my top 3.

[nympho]

Well, while I agree with many of what she posted and I applaud her for not being silenced and speaking her truth, I don’t think it’s only a matter of “ageism and misogyny” as she just posted and has said many other times.

Michael Jackson’s has been brought as an example here, he was not a woman nor “old” and yet he was bullied and mocked by the media and public for his appearance for years. I cannot even imagine how it would have been if he was still alive now in the social media era.

But I’ll bring another example of a young man: Zac Efron. How many times he’s been trending on Twitter in the last year, or even with comments and jokes on TV shows, because of his “new face” and the way he looks now because of botched plastic surgery? Really really mean comments. (And he later had to explain it wasn’t even because of plastic surgery).

So, people can be mean and disgusting judging other people’s face, weight, look or whatever they find funny or shocking. But she cannot use the ageism and misogyny card every time she appears on TV and she’s talked about. That’s not the reason. Or at least not the main one.
People are not talking about her looking old. But about the way her face looks after all the plastic surgery she’s done.

And then there’s the comment about a “long lens camera distorting her face”… It was not a bad candid photo some paparazzi took while she was on the street with no make up or whatever… it’s a 3 min live TV show appearance.
She then chose to use this picture in her IG post to claim, what? Her “real not distorted face”?



At this point I think, and I really think it’s a real “problem” she has, that maybe she’s not able to recognize herself in pictures without filters or photoshop work done, so she believes that’s how she really looks and that unedited pictures are the ones distorted. (And yes, of course every celebrity, you and me, we all use filters and edit our pictures… but not accepting yourself without it it’s a different thing).

I am NOT saying people have the right to be mean to her (or anybody else) because of the way she looks. She could look as she wants to and she’s damn right about people only talking about this shit instead of the real important topics.
But, while it’s 100% true that women and specially over 40s, have a tougher time than men, she cannot use, or at least not completely, the ageism and misogyny card every time her face is discussed. And using those extremely photoshopped pictures won’t help, imo. It only makes it more “shocking” for general public every time they see her “real” look now.

[Forreal]

^ So MJ or other young celebrities have been attacked for her looks and this should be taken as a point that what is happening to Madge has nothing to do with ageism?? WTF????

You go and read comments and u see 80% of them is all about “ aging gracefully “ and her “ not accepting her age”….. and I don’t even dig into misogynist ones because i could go on and on

And I m not denying she could be victim of a distorted perception of her own image, but is it that enough to justify such aggression and hostility towards her?

I believe instead that social media are bringing out the worst from people and I applaud her after all simply for keeping on and living her life regardless of people pointing her finger: that’s a lesson after all.

[nympho]

^ So MJ or other young celebrities have been attacked for her looks and this should be taken as a point that what is happening to Madge has nothing to do with ageism?? WTF????

You go and read comments and u see 80% of them is all about “ aging gracefully “ and her “ not accepting her age”….. and I don’t even dig into misogynist ones because i could go on and on

And I m not denying she could be victim of a distorted perception of her own image, but is it that enough to justify such aggression and hostility towards her?

I believe instead that social media are bringing out the worst from people and I applaud her after all simply for keeping on and living her life regardless of people pointing her finger: that’s a lesson after all.

I clearly said and even underlined that I think that’s not the only reason. As people can be equally mean and disgusting to men and young people when it comes to look, weight or botched plastic surgery. I posted those two examples but I could bring dozens.
Yes. Of course there are misogynist comments and ageism for her and many other women. But I don’t think that was the main problem at least this time. It was not mostly about “she shouldn’t be doing that at her age” or “she shouldn’t dress like that for a woman her age” etc. it was mostly “what has she done to her face?”, just like they said for Zack Efron, Simon Cowel or whoever looks weird after surgery.
And that’s why I said that she always focus on the ageism and misogyny cards… and while that’s unfortunately true, it’s not ONLY about that. And that her mega edited pictures and that comment about the lens should give us a clue about what’s going on.

I agree (we all can, I guess) on your last paragraph. I never said people have any right to act that way.

[Forreal]

Ok so the fact that her actual face doesn’t match the pic u see on social media, that justify such bullying behavior? ( and I m not saying U’re implying that)

And again, when I go on the comment section all I see on the big part of the comment is “ why she can’t accept the fact she’s aging and insist with surgery?”…… or “why she doesn’t accept to age gracefully? “ …. It’s all about like other people is in charge of other people life and tell them how to age, act and live their life…… that’s crazy!!

And I think M making that post, she doesn’t specifically relates to the Grammy night only, but she also took a chance to reflect and make a general statement about what she’s been through these last years .

[Forreal]

I had two icons when I was young(er): Madonna and The Cure.
I have NEVER read a bad word regarding Robert Smith's face, or hair, or body shape in these years. Never. And, of course, Robert aged a lot, like anybody else. This is the only reference to his look I found on YT, when they performed at Rock n Roll HoF induction: "People are talking about looks but his bouncing happiness and smiling is a sight to behold".
I do not know why Madonna can be so bullied and vilified instead: because she is a woman? Because of her "in your face" attitude? It cannot be only a matter of misogyny/ageism, as she says. They never talk of Cher or Debbie Harry with this violence and in this disrespectful way. I do not really know why it happens.

Sometimes I feel like a MJ fan in the 00s, when Michael was mocked and ridiculized 24/7... haters wanted him dead, a victim to idolize after that June 25, in the most hypocritical way, and the fact Madonna is still with us seems to aggravate their violence.

I can totally relate with all u said.

[AlphaMale]

Queen telling it how it is.

That's the woman I love.

[floridagrl]

I stuck by her when she released three cringe tinge albums in a row. Do you think I am going to abandon her because she's had facial surgery? You're sadly mistaken if that's your thoughts.

Obviously, this is directed to anyone who tries to convince me to abandon. Unfortunately, I have family and friends who can't believe I still throw my money at her.

[Forreal]

[Forreal]

LOL

[Forreal]

[Forreal]

[Forreal]

Because ageism is not the issue right?

[Shadowplay]

^oh well, I think it is a matter of… social media platform. They offend non binary and trans people on facebook (sam, elliott page, etc) where there are older haters. and they offend madonna on twitter bc they are younger, anti-boomers, etc.
Every S M platform has its own peculiar haters, unfortunately

[madfan13]

Does anyone have access to the new opinion column about M on the New York Times (Madonna’s Face is a Brilliant Provocation)? Would be cool to read it. Or excerpts at least?

[autumnwind]

Whatever madonna has done to her own body, no one is in the position and has a right to shame her look and tell her what to do. What they are doing is bullying and humiliating for her to be shamed a nd degraded.
using her millions ways of photoshop is not an ex cuse for them to do such a behavior to someone famous.
I think people are just sick. And dumb.
They need to sit and calm down gracefully
or just go dead early. They don't attribute nothing to society or the world but online garbage shi.t.

[autumnwind]

The agism and misogyny is real and serious. For her case, they are the worst. I don't know where that kind of hatred and hostility is coming from. Maybe haters from other singers fans???

[AndiIversen]

Does anyone have access to the new opinion column about M on the New York Times (Madonna’s Face is a Brilliant Provocation)? Would be cool to read it. Or excerpts at least?

here ya go!

" With blond braids looped over her ears, dressed in a long black skirt and black jacket accessorized with a riding crop, one of the best-selling female recording artists of all time stepped into the spotlight at the 65th annual Grammy Awards Sunday night. Madonna was there to introduce Sam Smith and Kim Petras, a nonbinary performer and a trans woman. She began by referring to her four decades in the music industry, and praised the rebels “forging a new path and taking the heat for all of it.”

Was anyone listening?

Social media’s loudest roars weren’t about her speech, her longtime L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy or her upcoming world tour. They were about Madonna’s preternaturally smooth and extravagantly sculpted face.

All of Madonna’s features looked exaggerated, pushed and polished to an extreme. There was her forehead, smooth and gleaming as a porcelain bowl. Her eyebrows, bleached and plucked to near-invisibility. Her cheekbones, with deep hollows beneath them. The total effect was familiar, but more than slightly off.

People noticed.

“Madonna confuses fans over new face,” wrote The New York Post.

People posted her picture side by side with that of Jigsaw from “Saw,” or Janice from “The Muppet Show,” and made jokes about “Desperately Seeking Surgeon,” while extremely online plastic surgeons hastened to guess about exactly what procedures she had undergone.

Beyond the question of what she’d had done, however, lay the more interesting question of why she had done it. Did Madonna get sucked so deep into the vortex of beauty culture that she came out the other side? Had the pressure to appear younger somehow made her think she ought to look like some kind of excessively contoured baby?

Perhaps so, but I’d like to think that our era’s greatest chameleon, a woman who has always been intentional about her reinvention, was doing something slyer, more subversive, by serving us both a new — if not necessarily improved — face and a side of critique about the work of beauty, the inevitability of aging, and the impossible bind in which older female celebrities find themselves.


Throughout history, many aesthetic interventions were meant to be subtle, invisible, private, whether it was Cleopatra slipping off to bathe in donkey milk, Queen Elizabeth I patting a toxic mixture of vinegar and lead on her face, or a 1950s housewife discreetly touching up her grays. Does she or doesn’t she? Only her hairdresser knows for sure!

It wasn’t just hair dye. It was an entire industry, a panoply of things women wore and bought and did that no one was supposed to see or sense or know about. Corsets and underwire to snatch your waist and hoist your bosom. Cosmetics to conceal blemishes and blend seamlessly into your skin. And cosmetic surgery, nips and tucks that were meant to leave you looking like you just had great genes. To varying degrees it was artifice, smoke and mirrors and pretense; hours of labor and thousands of dollars, all meant to leave a woman looking effortlessly beautiful — like herself, only better. And, while there were exceptions — Marie Antoinette hairdos that defy gravity (and logic), Cardi B-esque Brazilian butt lifts that leave women with deliberately exaggerated silhouettes — for most women, for most of history, the watchwords have been subtlety, secrecy and shame.


Madonna has always had a complicated relationship to that approach. She has reinvented herself, over and over again, from her arrival on the New York City club scene in thrifted bustiers, fingerless lace gloves and crucifixes, to her ascension to Hollywood royalty in her Marilyn Monroe “Material Girl” look. There was androgynous Madonna, dominatrix Madonna, hippie kabbalah Madonna, designer-chic Madonna, retro-disco Madonna and Madonna as Madge, cosplaying landed gentry while she raised her family in the English countryside. And of course no outfit could be more memorable than the birthday suit she wore in Sex, the book-length photography project she undertook with Steven Meisel.

In the wake of the Grammys, people complain she no longer looks like Madonna, but which Madonna comes to mind? She’s been a blonde and a brunette, butch and high femme. She’s worn castoffs and couture. She’s adopted and abandoned an English accent. She’s shown us her roots and her underwear, deliberately putting the hidden parts on display. Every new version of Madonna was both a look and a commentary on looking, a statement about the artifice of beauty, and about her own right to set the terms by which she was seen.

“I have never apologized for any of the creative choices I have made nor the way that I look or dress and I’m not going to start,” she wrote on her Instagram on Tuesday. “I am happy to do the trailblazing so that all the women behind me can have an easier time in the years to come.”

The latest look is not altogether novel. Back in 2008, New York magazine declared: “Out with the gaunt and tight, in with the plump and juicy. There’s a new face in town — and it’s a baby’s.” The article’s prime example was Madonna herself, whose refurbished face it compared to a restuffed saddle. But fashion is fickle. In 2019, Elle reported that “toddler-round cheeks, tumescent pouts and immobile foreheads” were “officially over.” Last week, “The Cut” called it again, with a feature on how the “sexy baby” look died.

Is it possible that Madonna has been so blinkered by her fame and wealth that she’s lost the ability to see herself objectively, like Michael Jackson pursuing an ever-thinner nose or Jocelyn Wildenstein doing … whatever it was she was doing? Yes, but whatever her intentions, the superstar has gotten us talking about how good looks are subjective and how ageism is pervasive.

In the end, whether she meant to make a statement or just to look younger, better, “refreshed,” almost doesn’t matter. If beauty is a construct, Madonna’s the one who put its scaffolding on display. "

[Shego]

Disliking how she looks in one thing. Starting a competition and posting photos of yourself or your 100 years old mother to say how better you look, get few likes, and seek for validation about yourself that you no one else will give you, is literal mental illness