No matter what was in that video, at school on Monday I would mostly be known as the teacher’s pet—attentive, obedient, and smart. Ms. Johnson loved me, even when she sent me to the principal’s office for stomping to my cubbyhole that once. I literally wrote love letters to Ms. Mulholland, the teacher’s aide. She had the most beautiful smile and pretty pink sweaters. I adored these women. I wanted to emulate them, too. In addition to choreographing ridiculous dances to Madonna songs, I spent countless hours reading to a mangy pile of stuffed animals. I held the book out, just like Ms. Johnson did, so they could all see the pictures after I finished reading each page.
My models of womanhood were multitudinous. Madonna signaled brazen creativity, a flexible kind of beauty; and Ms. Johnson and Ms. Mulholland signaled intellect and kindness. She was untamable; they were fair. She was talented; they were sweet. I wanted it all, even at eight years old.
Despite my bossiness when it came to creating dance routines, as a child I was preternaturally meek, known for clinging to my mom’s side at backyard parties and whispering to my brother on the playground. But these women all represented different versions of a confident femininity. I had a hunch that one day I’d be able to own this kind of confidence myself, but at first, I just needed to dress up in it and dance around a little.
In high school, I felt like my sexuality was a ticking time bomb. This was in no small part because I was surrounded by Christian leaders who preached that young women’s desires were dangerous and must be tamped down, just as young men must learn to control their inevitably animalistic urges. None of us were really represented in that righteous picture of adolescent sexuality. My sweet boyfriends weren’t untamable hulks, just as I wasn’t a virgin or vixen. We were all just kids trying to feel good—guys and girls exploring sex and
power with the brave aid of Captain Morgan rum poured in 7-Eleven Coca-Cola Slurpees.
At thirty-one, I still want it all, even as I’ve grown more sober about how difficult it is to contain all these parts of myself in one little life. I spend all day staring at a screen, trying to write a convincing op-ed, and then hit the bar, hoping for a really good set by a DJ who appreciates everything from ’90s hip-hop to Annie Lennox to, of course, Madonna. I pay my mortgage on time and in full, but I haven’t lost the taste for reckless euphoria now and again—the 4:00 AM taxi ride home, leaning on the window as I coast over the Manhattan Bridge and stare at the twinkling lights of the most mad and beautiful city on Earth. I think about having children of my own, as I also realize that I finally own my unique sexuality. I know my body. I know what I like. I understand the complexity of Madonna’s plea to “Express Yourself ” as only a grown woman could.
I’m not claiming that girls today aren’t damaged by some of the cartoonish images of sexuality they see around them. Surely it’s not good for young women to view their sexuality as defined by others’ probing eyes rather than by their own instincts and senses. And of course, a culture that objectifies women at younger and younger ages is also one that trains men to objectify women at younger and younger ages.
But Madonna didn’t teach me to be a heathen or a bitch or a slut, as some fear-mongers would claim. She taught me to be brazen, unapologetic, and multidimensional. She taught me to be the star of my own fantasy, not to acquiesce to others’ ideas of what was appropriate or beautiful. She gave me the confidence to request that my dad get his mammoth video camera out and tape the dance moves I’d painstakingly choreographed to go with each line and beat of Madonna’s best anthem of all, “Vogue.” It wasn’t about the miniskirt; it was about the imagination. Madonna taught me that there’s nothing wrong with confusing people—to drape one’s self in pearls one day and rosaries the next, clad in a pink evening gown with a leather coat, a little sweet and a little dangerous.
Articles of Faith
Shawna Kenney
AS A PUNK-ROCK girl growing up in Podunk, Maryland, Madonna was my dirty little secret. The few girlfriends I had in high school did not share my interests in slam-dancing and skateboarding, so more often than not, I found myself at shows with a steady group of guy friends. For all of our proclaimed rebelliousness, we dressed pretty much the same: baggy shorts, slip-on Vans, big T-shirts worn thin and stretched out from skating. We shaved, cut, and bleached our hair as much as our parents would allow. Old photos reveal my hairstyle as a hybrid of Tony Hawk’s ’80s-era signature bangs-in-the-face and the short new-wave look of the Go-Go’s. I wore earrings and a bra but was otherwise as androgynous as Boy George.
Maximum RocknRoll
was my bible, and I didn’t kiss a boy until after graduation; if any of my peers were attracted to me, I was clueless about it. It’s not that I hated my body—I just never thought about it much. Part of punk’s ethos was to question authority and reject mainstream models, and in my mind, this automatically extended to
what I’d seen of femininity. There were very few women in the punk scene of the ’80s, and definitely none in my town. This was pre-Internet and pre–mall-punk stores—a time before bands made fitted tees or sexy tanks for girls, and a time when new wave, pop, and punk never mixed. Shirts I bought at hardcore shows came in no smaller size than a men’s large, which, on my five-foot-two-inch frame, hung unflatteringly down to my knees.
Witnessing Madonna’s “Holiday” video on MTV at age sixteen was a confusing revelation to me. Here was a woman strutting around confidently in a mesh half-shirt, black bra showing through, with big bleachy hair, lots of jewelry, sultry eye makeup, and a graffitied jean jacket! She
looked
kind of punk. She
acted
kind of punk, giving that cheesy photographer the brush-off and going back to her “street friends” by the end of the video. But she sounded like Minnie Mouse—so I kept my fascination with the pop sensation buried beneath the Dead Kennedys and Minor Threat throughout most of high school. Still, when a friend’s five-year-old sister later pointed to the picture on the cover of Madonna’s “True Blue” album and said “Shawna,” I couldn’t have been more (secretly) flattered.
Suddenly, I became aware of my female body, and in Madonna saw something familiar and accessible. I, too, grew up in a working-class home. I was short and muscular, shaped more like her and Paula Abdul than Whitney Houston. Like me, Madonna was also raised Catholic. Punk rock had become my church and I knew at a young age that I wanted no part of organized religion, but this was not an option in my strict Catholic home. My sister and I begrudgingly participated in church activities until we were old enough to leave home.
Our church youth group hosted a Halloween party while I was in high school and I finally decided to publicly display my adoration of Madonna. I painstakingly put together a Material Girl costume. My dad had always said her black bracelets looked like “vacuum cleaner O-rings,” so I knew where to get those. I wore cropped white painter’s pants splattered in pastel pink paint, which I topped with a white,
navel-grazing mesh shirt over a black sports bra (the closest thing I could get to her sexy lace one). I tied a black stocking around my head as a headband, teased my blonde skater-bangs up into a bunch with my sister’s Aqua Net, and threw on three sets of rosary beads as necklaces. My black-and-white checkered slip-on Vans worked well, though they weren’t quite the black boots she wore in the video. The fake mole I drew above my upper lip completed my look—the cherry on an ice cream sundae.
The Halloween party was packed by the time I arrived. Loverboy blasted as I entered the little wooden community center and searched for my friends. “Nice outfit,” said one girl in passing. “Sexy!” noted one of the guys. Things were looking better by the minute. I found my friends; we grabbed cups of Coke to chug while watching other people do their awful ’80s dances dressed as bloody monsters, black cats, Martians, robots, and superheroes. Halfway through a fistful of chips, our youth group leader pulled me aside, saying she had to speak with me in private.
“Your belly button is showing,” she whispered.
“Yeah?” I said.
“It’s bothering some people. Father Duncan, in particular.”
“Wh-wh . . . he doesn’t like my costume?”
“I’m sorry,” she sighed. “I think you look adorable, but he’s asked me to ask you to go home and change, or put on a coat.”
I was shocked. All night I’d felt so pretty, glammed-up in a way I’d never been before—not wearing the army shorts my mom hated so much, not wearing a shirt three sizes too big. My belly button was just too powerful, apparently, and even my rosaries couldn’t save me. I drove myself home, confused and ashamed. Was I really dressed inappropriately? Would I be labeled a slut? Did God care about what I looked like? Was “sexy” never to be a word in my vocabulary? I asked myself:
What would Madonna do?
I did not have the words or guts to stand up for myself yet. I went home and changed into an oversized sweatshirt.
For a long time after the party, I just sulked. Eventually, I started mixing baggy with fitted, playing with clothing until I found my own style. I’ve learned that I don’t need to (or want to) look like a boy to fit in. Punk wasn’t just a style of music or fashion for me, but a philosophy of questioning authority and doing things as an individual. I might not rock the heavily hair-sprayed bleached hair or ride a skateboard anymore, but I still carry these beliefs with me. I’ve also learned that one of the most revolutionary things a woman can do is to be confident with her body. Women who are physically unabashed, especially those with body types outside of what’s celebrated in the media, always get backlash. But fuck the status quo: We can make our own rules. Madonna helped me to see this as much as punk rock did.
A few years after my teenage youth-dance debacle, Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” video aired to much controversy. I had grown my hair long and allowed my natural dark curls to take over. I wore a black slip-dress out to a club one night, and someone said to me, “You look like Madonna in that new video.” I smiled sweetly and just said thank you.
Strike a Pose
Kim Windyka
WHEN THE 1990 music video for “Vogue” came out, I was fresh out of preschool. As a big, bad almost-kindergartener, it appealed strongly to my more mature sensibilities. From the retro black-and-white shots to the sharp dance steps, it took all the self-control I could muster not to jump through the screen every time it appeared on my living room television. I just couldn’t wait until I was old enough to strike a pose and rap about Ginger Rogers—though I hadn’t the faintest idea who she was, I did know that she could “dance on air.”
But what really captured my attention and curiosity was the Material Girl’s wacky, pointy-coned bra. I clearly had a long way to go until I developed anything close to resembling breasts, but I had a sneaking suspicion that even the majestic Madonna herself couldn’t naturally possess such alert ta-tas. Was it MTV magic, or did these amazing boob-enhancers exist in real life? I wasn’t content to sit idly by and ponder such important grown-up mysteries; I needed to find out for myself. Fortunately, it just so happened that Mom had to run
some errands at the mall the following week. This was my big chance, and I was not going to mess it up.
Even though I was less than five years old, I did have some sense of how absurd it was to hunt for the elusive cone bra. Still, when you’re that young, you don’t really question your obsessions much. You are simply driven. I hadn’t even thought about what I’d do if I
did
locate one; my Madonna fervor was so intense that I couldn’t see past the pure, gleeful satisfaction of coming face-to-face with this fashion revelation. I’d worry about logistics later.
As we strolled through Sears, past the matronly pajama sets and slippers, I could see the promised land of lace and underwire beckoning in the distance. Acting as casually as any child on a mission might, I made a beeline for the bras and haphazardly grabbed the first black one I saw. It was massive. Upon further inspection, I also discovered that it looked nothing like Madge’s avant-garde underwear. Not even a little bit. There were no real “cones” to be found, just two very big, very round cups. Yet time was certainly of the essence, and I could work with this!
Skipping past the charm and jumping right to desperate pleading, I did my best puppy-dog eyes and hugged the bra to my nearly concave chest. “Mommy, can I pleeeeeease try this on? Madonna wears this. In the ‘Vogue’ video. Pleeease?!” At this point in my life, my mother was both acutely aware of my Madonna obsession as well as experienced in dealing with my frequent flights of fancy. She barely batted an eyelash at my request; she knew instinctively that this was not a battle worth fighting. Calmly, with purpose, my mother strode over to the middle-aged saleswoman, and as cool and collected as could be, she asked the woman a question that I’m sure she’d never heard before—in reference to a double-D bra: “Excuse me, may my daughter try this on?” The woman glanced quizzically at her, then at me . . . then back at her again. My mom acted quickly, taking it as a yes. “Thank you so much,” my mom emphasized, smiling through gritted teeth at the clearly confused woman. Bouncing with barely
contained glee, I followed the two into the fitting room, preparing myself for the truly magical transformation that was about to occur. Once I removed this juvenile, constricting sweater and tried on the sultry, sexy underwear, I’d be well on my way to becoming my childhood idol. Right?
My mom held the gigantic bra in front of me, and I slipped my tiny, pasty arms through the straps. “Don’t just stand there, let’s get to it,” I quietly sang to myself in eager impatience. I purposefully had my back to the mirror, wanting to milk the moment, yet as my mom hooked the back and then tried unsuccessfully to shorten the straps, I knew it was all wrong.