Shelving: Madonna and Me

Despite the critical line that fans are somehow less capable, or at least, clouded by bias, when it comes to talking about music, I think fan narratives are important. However, when the artist in question is someone as iconic and influential as Madonna, I expect more.

Madonna & Me is a nice collection of -- mostly hagiographic -- essays about Madge, but I wish more were said about her appropriation of drag culture, her position as a woman who is privileged on a lot of axes and how that informed her choices, and her fame. There were a few dissenters: Amanda Marcotte , who called her music "derivative without being cheesy," and Kate Harding, who admitted to having no definitive opinion on Madonna whatsoever. Those two stood out for me, but while her failings were never really ignored, they were shoved to the backburner.

Granted, I'm saying this as someone who's never been much of a Madonna fan. I'm kind of jealous. Madonna played such an integral part in a lot of women's personal histories, I have no idea why she has never held that appeal for me. I thought her songs were a little too platitudinous, her voice a little thin and trebly, plus I was a huge Cyndi Lauper fan. I thought you had to pick a side: Cyndi or Madonna, and I was solidly team Cyndi. In jr. high and early high school, I was more into gender benders like Boy George, Annie Lennox, Bowie, Pete Burns from Dead or Alive (sue me), and Love & Rockets' Daniel Ash, my first real rock 'n roll crush that wasn't named Peter Tork. Her playing with sexuality and feminine tropes -- the idea that a woman can be sexual or sexy and still be strong or in charge didn't interest me as much as much. What Madonna was doing didn't seem that revolutionary, just reactionary. The only song of hers I ever really liked was "Oh Father" because it seemed to come from a place of deep hurt.

There's a quote from bell hooks used in the book's introduction that I think would have been a great jumping off point. She says:

In part, many black women who are disgusted by Madonna's flaunting of sexual experience are enraged because of sexual agency that she is able to project and affirm with material gain has been the stick this society has used to justify its continued beating and assault on the black female body.

WOC and poor and working-class women of all races don't have the same luxury of playing with sexuality -- at least not without consequences. I grew up with the message that it was "trashy" to flaunt oneself like that (my grandmother would have called her "raunchy"). I know now there's a lot of internalized misogyny tied to that, but as a kid, even when it's wrapped in a "go girl, express yourself" package, it just didn't move me.