Oh, Madonna. When she’s not being dragged down a flight of stairs by overzealous backup dancers or Photoshopping bondage ropes over Martin Luther King, Jr’s face in an attempt to promote her new album, she’s still making waves and crashing through barriers and revolting, the way she’s always done. This time, I think she’s gone too far. Here’s what she had to say in a recent interview with Out, on the heels of her latest album, Rebel Heart.
“Gay rights are way more advanced than women’s rights. People are a lot more open-minded to the gay community than they are to women, period… It’s moved along for the gay community, for the African-American community, but women are still just trading on their ass. To me, the last great frontier is women.”
Listen, Madonna. This is not how you sell records. This is not how a formerly fierce advocate of gay rights behaves. Amplifying your own struggle at the expense of other marginalized groups is not the way.
I don’t really like Madonna. I’ll sing happily along to “Like A Prayer” because it lends itself so well to interpretative dance when drunk, but other than that, her music has never moved me, and her entire shtick of being the loudest girl in the room with the tattered lace and the sinewy arms and the ropy neck never really appealed. She’s been in the game for a long, long time, but her role has changed. No longer the center of attention, she’s your eccentric aunt who wears wigs just slightly askew and flirts a little too aggressively with cater waiters at family functions. Her latest statements are her attempt at clinging to relevancy, a ploy meant to pound the drum of feminism but only serves to exemplify her privilege as a white woman and marginalize the very people that have historically constituted a large swath of her fan base.
Culture has evolved. Yet, Madonna is still doing the same old thing, and that’s not something that’s going to work. People are talking about her, but now, it’s for the wrong reasons. Madonna, I implore you. Take a seat.
[Out]
Original by Megan Reynolds @mega_hurt
