Madonna is 51 and Desperate
Madonna is 51 and desperate. Divorced, engaged in a futile battle against aging, and dating dudes old enough to be her adopted sons, Madge is the epitome of a celebrity too big to fail. She is determined to bludgeon her way into the hearts and minds of anyone who will listen. Her current Rolling Stone cover story, "Madonna Looks Back," feels like the start of the latest reinvention tour - a kinder, gentler, self-reflective Madonna.
Madonna is also a woman struggling to bury her demons inside a mountain of goodwill. Today, she's in Malawi breaking ground for her Raising Malawi Academy for Girls. Madonna will be the Oprah of southeastern Africa. The Raising Malawi Foundation (co-founded with Kabbalah Centre Co-Director Peter Berg) was formed in 2006 to provide support for over 2 million orphans who live in the fourth poorest country in the world. It's the kind of work you'd expect tom the mother of Jesus. Or a contradictory pop singer.
GALLERY: Remember the '80s When Madonna Had Big Eyebrows and Wasn't So Angry?
Written between the lines of her career ruminations and celebrity do-gooderisms (and believe me, I'm all for anyone willing to do some good in the world - regardless of the motivations), there are a few career lows that need to be remembered for the record. Just like Arnold Schwarzenegger's reinvention as a respectable head of state cannot erase the memory of "Junior" (the 1994 film in which he plays the world's first pregnant male), Madonna's bid for sainthood does not expunge her creative lapses in judgement.
Here are some career lows to hide from the Malawi children.
Kissing Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera
At the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards, Madonna played groom to Britney Spears' and Christina Aguilera's brides. As if the whole female-sexual-tension-schtick wasn't obvious enough, Madonna planted a wet one on both of her mini-me's to seal the faux controversy. It was a desperate, contrived act for an artist with a new single ("Hollywood") to promote. Madonna is a business woman and she knows that fake lesbian sex sells.
Every Movie She's Ever Made
Madonna had to marry two guys to weasel her way into movie roles: Sean Penn for 1986's "Shanghai Surprise" and director Guy Ritchie for 2002's "Swept Away." They aren't the only ones who got suckered. Madonna has made 19 movies (aside from concert films or documentaries). They're all horrible. She can't act. Someone should tell her.
The October 3 episode of SNL brought us the 2009 version of Madonna trying to steal someone else's thunder. This time, it was Lady Gaga. It was just as embarrassing as all of Madonna's other attempts at escaping irrelevance.
Her Trainer
The picture says it all. She looks like all the parts of a chicken you avoid eating or a rubber band ball that need to be snapped. There's gotta be a better way to age.
She's trying to do good works to give her post-hotness years some meaning and fulfillment and you have to poo all over it and her and mislabel it as a "bid for sainthood"? Why?
Also, not all of her movies sucked. "A League of Their Own" and "Desperately Seeking Susan" are truly good films that were big hits.
And I have NO doubt that at 51, she looks WAY better naked than you do.
Madonna shacks up with younger fellas. Nothing new. She's been doing so for years, one of whom she married. Did you cry foul when she was shtupping Carlos Leon or Vanilla Ice? Moreover, as some of the chatters have rightly observed, would you make the same hue and cry over an older man bumping uglies with a much younger woman? Madonna figures into that scenario as well, viz: Warren Beatty.
Sure, the Britney/Christina moment was pure contrivance, but so was the Sex/Erotica/Body of Evidence trifecta of 1992/93. So is Madonna's career and image overall. It's almost a game of spot-the-ripoff to see whose spirit she'll channel in her next photo shoot. One minute she's Marlene Dietrich, the next she's a roller-discoqueen.
I hate to seem like a Madonna apologist or lackey. I'm as critical of her misfires as the next person and I too wish she would have stayed the hell away from any film set that didn't have Susan Seidelman's name on the director's chair (that's a Desperately Seeking Susan reference, folks), but Evita and A League of Their Own do have their defenders.
Inconsistency of your remarks do not make for a compelling gestalt hypothesis. And by the way, I'll gladly take Junior over a half-dozen other wretched Schwarzenegger films, including Red Dawn, Eraser, End of Days, and so on.
This writer is full of crap. In the refereenced photo, Madonna looks fantastic. 51 y.o. women would die to look like her. Unnatural? I guess then that "natural" means being a flabby overweight self indulgent blob, huh? Let me guess . . . just like you!