Madonna and Me (37 page)

LAURA BARCELLA
is a writer and editor who is perpetually trying to decide between San Francisco and New York. She has written about pop culture, feminism, and lifestyles for more than forty publications, including the
Village Voice
,
Salon, Time Out New York, ELLEGirl, BUST, NYLON, AlterNet
, and the
Chicago Sun-Times
. She’s also the author of
The End: 50 Apocalytic Visions From Pop Culture That You Should Know About . . . Before It’s Too Late
, a teen pop-culture book about the apocalypse (Zest Books, 2012), and has contributed to the anthologies
BITCHFest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism From the Pages of Bitch Magazine
,
Somebody’s Child: Stories About Adoption
, and the forthcoming
It’s All In Her Head: Women Making Peace With Troubled Minds
.

In addition to being a longtime word nerd, Laura has been obsessed with Madonna since she was six. As a kid, Laura had Madge-themed birthday parties with decorate-your-own-T-shirt puffy-paint stations. She has also bought
almost
every album Madonna’s ever made, despite her college-honed gravitation toward mopey indie rock.

You can learn more about Laura at
LauraBarcella.com
.

THE BIGGEST THANKS go to my parents, who always encouraged my writing efforts no matter how ridiculous those efforts seemed at times. I know my late dad would be insanely excited and proud of my work on this book.

Cheers also to all the friends, families, and therapists(!) who have listened to me discuss this project for years, from its inception as a rosy nascent idea, to my obsession discouragement when it looked like it might not happen. These folks encouraged me in so many small and large ways.

A massive thanks to my agent, Brandi Bowles, for her unwavering support of this project, even when it was deal-less. (And thanks to Erin for introducing me to Brandi in the first place.)

And kudos to my editor, Laura Mazer at Soft Skull, who helped me many times along the way, offering lots of strong feedback and advice throughout a winding process.

Thanks to Jessica Valenti for writing a kick-ass foreword despite being utterly swamped. And thanks to all the uber-talented contributors, who cheerfully endured countless revisions and tweaks to their essays. Thanks, too, to all the writers who submitted but didn’t reach the finish line—there were so many great pieces! It was extremely hard to narrow it down to the thirty-nine essays that ended up in this book.

And finally, I must tip my hat to Madonna, the inspiration of this book, for being strong and controversial and always unfailingly herself. Obviously, this book wouldn’t be here if she weren’t.

Madonna and Me © Laura Barcella 2012
Foreword © Jessica Valenti 2012

 

“Justify My Love” by Emily Nussbaum
was reprinted with permission from
New York
magazine.

“Touched for the Very First Time” by Rebecca Traister
was reprinted with permission from
Salon.com
.

A version of
“Madonna and Me” by Susan Shapiro
was originally published in
The Jewish Forward
.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American
Copyright Conventions.

 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

 

eISBN : 978-1-593-76475-3

SOFT SKULL PRESS
An Imprint of COUNTERPOINT
1919 Fifth Street
Berkeley, CA 94710
www.softskull.com

 

Distributed by Publishers Group West