Madonna and Me (14 page)

For someone grappling with the notion that submission can reflect our authentic selves, watching a very public icon play so fearlessly and defiantly with the roles thrust upon her can bring a sigh
of relief. Whether it be her dancing exuberantly in front of a gospel choir, or embarking on a crime spree that defies the norms of what “good girls” do, Madonna strategically does what she wants and raises a middle finger to those who condemn her.

When it comes to the many depictions of subversive desire that Madonna has constructed over the years, I would argue that it’s not really about sex for her either. I realize that statement is laughable, given how sexuality infuses almost everything she does, that the imagery she puts into the world is dripping with it, but submission and dominance are just items in the unlimited toolkit of her persona. Much like the submissive sexual act, the sexually charged music video is her way of saying “Here I am, stripped bare, and I’m sharing it with you,” even if that vulnerability is nothing more than temporary performance.

After twenty years of Madonna videos, I am now in a place where I am open about and even proud of my private desires. In so many ways, over so many years, it was Madonna that gave us a mainstream window to a place where we could feel comfortable with ourselves, a safe harbor to explore those desires we most feared being exposed. Perhaps her greatest cultural contribution is her ability to make us feel normal.

Laura M. André

 

 

 

 

 

MADONNA HIT ME in the gut every time I stepped into the women’s bathroom at Pepper’s Pizza in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Given my early graduate school dining and drinking habits, this happened frequently. She instilled a certain fear in me, so at first I tried to ignore her. I knew she’d bring up the same old nagging issues I didn’t want to acknowledge. But (especially if I was alone) I’d eventually be drawn to her, so I stopped and reluctantly met her gaze. And in those fleeting moments, my hands started to sweat, my knees weakened, my heart pounded, and I’d once again have to acknowledge the fact that I was a depressed, emotionally cut off, deeply-closeted lesbian who was living a lie and paying the price for it.

The “Pepper’s Madonna,” as I like to call it, is a life-sized poster featuring Patrick Demarchelier’s well-known photograph of Madonna dressed in a black leather biker vest, with a chauffeur’s cap perched on her head and a lit cigarette hanging from her lips. Her crossed arms indicate a pose that is slightly protective, but more
emphatically intimidating. While the cap shades one eye, the other is narrowed almost completely, rendering her gaze either languid or piercing, depending on how one interprets it. I prefer the latter, since I’ve never considered Madonna to be passive. For me, the Pepper’s Madonna is an icon in the truest sense of the word: an image that not only pictorially represents an important figure but also possesses symbolic power as an object. Like the icons popular in Eastern Orthodox churches, the Pepper’s Madonna instilled in me equal measures of fear and reverence for the looming issue that was my sexuality.
Truth or dare?
Madonna pulled both out of me, just like an icon should.

The placement of the Pepper’s Madonna was brilliant. In the dingy women’s bathroom, the BDSM-inspired, Tom of Finland–style image suggested illicit homoerotic encounters between Madonna and every woman who entered that room. In that guise, Madonna’s confrontational pose and gaze pointed explicitly to my own coming-to-terms with my sexuality. It wasn’t that I desired Madonna sexually, and it wasn’t that I desired to be her. What I found to be irresistible was her sexuality itself, and the easy way she seemed to express it. I wanted that confidence, that sense of power that comes from not giving a shit about what people might think of you. It seems ironic that the queen of reinvention would have prompted me to become more real and to live my own truth, but over the course of several years, that’s exactly what she did.

I was in high school when Madonna first hit the music and fashion scenes—her first single, “Borderline,” is still one of my favorites. I was at the perfect age to fully appreciate her—old enough to understand her savvy brilliance, and yet young enough to go childishly crazy over her particular brand of pop. I was never a wannabe Madonna; she never influenced my sense of style (I was, and still am, a strict prepster), yet she provided the soundtrack of my teens and
college years. But as much as I loved her then, it’s the later Madonna who really influenced me.

Beginning with 1989’s
Like a Prayer
, Madonna shifted toward becoming the mature artist that she is today. Alongside her, I was transitioning out of college and into a more grown-up phase in my own life. I had graduated from college with one degree (in art history), but was embarking on another, more serious, career-minded degree in architecture. And I was slowly coming to terms with my sexuality. I never seriously dated anyone in high school, and by my early twenties I still hadn’t had a sexual relationship. It was beginning to dawn on me that part of the reason for this was that I just wasn’t attracted to guys. Women were much more appealing, both physically and emotionally, yet growing up in the conservative Midwest I had few role models of alternative sexualities and a strong cultural bias against homosexuality. My crushes on women were secret and forbidden—in a few cases I was truly in love—and I was miserably depressed as a result. Madonna, on the other hand, was exhorting me to express myself, and echoing my deepest wishes in the songs “Like a Prayer” and “Cherish.”

The Pepper’s Madonna photograph was used for the cover of the notorious single “Justify My Love,” which caused quite a lot of controversy when it was released in 1990. I remember how MTV banned the video, mostly due to nudity (one shot reveals a woman’s nipples—
gasp!),
but also because of its (oh-so-fleeting) portrayal of homoeroticism between both men and women. Watching the video today, it’s hard to imagine what all the fuss was about—a couple of frames reveal two shirtless men snuggling on a sofa, and two androgynous women draw mustaches on one another (while Madonna giggles in the background). The song’s rather benign lyrics were also inexplicably slapped with a warning label. I clearly remember the first time I heard the song, though—it aroused in me the same feelings the Pepper’s Madonna would incite several years later: the promise of erotic potential mixed with an undeniable desperation. I was a
sexually repressed twenty-four-year-old woman who had never so much as gone to second base with anyone, boy or girl.

Those feelings also surfaced when Madonna was on her Blonde Ambition tour. I was living in Italy, participating in a study abroad program through my university. I had developed a deep attraction to a woman back in the States who seemed to have similar feelings toward me, and we were exchanging increasingly suggestive letters. I was sexually ready to burst, but had no outlet. I spent that summer fantasizing about her and rebuffing a guy who kept making passes at me. Meanwhile, the Italian newspapers were full of front-page headlines about how the Pope called for a boycott of Madonna’s appearance in Rome, but I was obsessed with the possibility of traveling to Turin to see her perform. Ultimately, I couldn’t convince any of my friends to go with me, and I was running out of money, so at the last minute I decided not to make the trip, which I regret to this day. I was able to watch the HBO broadcast of the tour’s final night in Nice when I returned to the States in August. While the show horrified my conservative mother and sister-in-law, I was riveted. The athleticism of the performance amazed me; I was enthralled with the spectacular Gaultier costumes, impressed by the art direction, and most of all, intrigued by Madonna exuding such raw sexuality dancing and cavorting around suggestively with her female dancers, Niki and Donna, as well as the male dancers.

I could no longer resist or deny my sexuality to myself, and it was time to take the leap. The woman I was in lust/love with and I moved to Los Angeles that month and began a serious, committed, and sexual relationship. For a brief period (maybe a year), I felt like my problems were solved. However, I was still closeted to my family, friends, and coworkers. Again, Madonna was way ahead of me, carousing with Sandra Bernhard and Jennifer Grey, hanging out at lesbian bars, and generally stoking the gossip about her sexuality. Publicity stunt or not, Madonna’s Sapphic flirtations in the early 1990s gave rise to an unprecedented wave of lesbian chic that started
to make it more acceptable, socio-culturally, to be gay. That meant something to me, and helped crack open the closet door, if just a little.

By the time I entered graduate school in 1995, my first girlfriend and I had broken up, and a brief rebound relationship was on its last legs. By this time I was out to a few friends and to my parents, who were not at all supportive, and I was mostly unhappy. It all began to change after I embarked on my third relationship. It lasted almost ten years, and during that time I fully embraced my sexuality, my parents grew to accept and love me for who I was, and I earned a PhD. After that relationship ended in 2006, I became depressed again.

Then, in 2008, I met the love of my life, and I found that even on my darkest days, it was impossible not to dance to “Music.” I healed. It’s only in retrospect that I have gained insight into the significant influence Madonna has had on my life, especially my growth over the past few years. I think I’m finally catching up to
Ray of Light—
I now live my life to the fullest, I am completely open about my sexuality, I am in touch with my spiritual side, and I’m happier than I’ve ever been—and I know I owe a debt of gratitude to Madonna.

Although I’ve worshipped the Pepper’s Madonna, I can’t call myself the world’s biggest Madonna fan. I’ve never seen her perform live and there are entire albums I’ve never heard, but she’s been a constant source of inspiration, as an artist and an entrepreneur, over the course of my life from high school on. I have a tremendous amount of respect for her, and as she gets older—as I get older—I look forward to the ways that she will model what it means to be a vibrant, sexual, spiritual, strong woman over fifty. She’s come a long way from the curvy, under-depilated, post-Punk, East Village
Italiana
she was back in the day. I’ve come a long way, too.

And I feel like I just got home.

“Family is everything. Family comes first. It’s not what I expected it to be, but nothing ever is.”

Kelly Keenan Trumpbour

 

 

 

 

 

EVERY LITTLE GIRL wants to know what her name means. After I mastered writing the five letters that made up “Kelly” in kindergarten, I learned that my name meant “warrior maiden.” I tucked this information into my back pocket, and when life called for an extra shot of bravado—whether I was asking a boy to dance with me, taking the bar exam, or giving my first lecture in front of a crowded room—I could muster a silent whoop of a warrior cry, plunge in, and hope that through my name, the universe had given me better than even odds of coming out the other side.

Twenty years before I knew what “Kelly” meant, let alone how to spell it, Madonna was learning to write her own name. While the meaning behind my name stayed hidden, a fun tidbit I could share at my pleasure, hers wore its meaning like a vestment: the Virgin Mary, Mother of Christ. Those seven letters didn’t just identify her, they represented one of the most famous mothers of all time. Imagine
being a little girl, and before you have even set foot in the neighborhood of imagining what motherhood might mean to you as a woman, your name holds you to the highest standard of maternity that Western Civilization has to offer.

In the Catholic faith, “Madonna” is a term the devout use when praying with reverence and endearment to “my lady,” or the mother of Christ. When little-girl Madonna walked into her family’s Catholic Church, she would have seen people kneeling and praying, asking for the religious Madonna’s intercession as they passed small beads through their fingers and meditated on her virtues: grace, favor, fertility, and mercy. The people in her pew would hear her name and think of the mother of Jesus before they would think of the little girl sitting next to them. In Catechism class, she would have learned that this other Madonna, though mortal, was the only woman who didn’t need a man to reproduce.

Now consider what it would be like for five-year-old Madonna to grow up in the Ciccone household. When she hears “Madonna,” she doesn’t just think of Christ’s mother, she thinks of her own mother, an attentive, loving woman named Madonna Louise Fortin Ciccone. Any awe or pressure little Madonna might have felt from her name was likely softened by the knowledge that she was named for her own mother—not Christ’s. Now imagine if this flesh-and-blood mother, who must have been more comforting to little Madonna than any rosary or marble statue could ever be, dies of breast cancer the same year Madonna learns to write her name.