Madonna and Me (4 page)

I turned toward the mirror and cocked my head. I felt as crestfallen as the double-D bra that hung from my little-girl frame.

“It doesn’t fit!” I whined, scowling at my reflection. I cast a pouty glance through the mirror at my mother, who was standing behind me, struggling to remain straight-faced as she took in her four-year-old drowning in a Carol Doda bra. I doubted Madonna could even fill it out.

Of course, I looked nothing like her. As much as I wanted to see a slightly younger version of the MTV queen staring back at me, I only saw a precocious girl wearing some very odd-looking undies. After pausing for a moment to decide whether I was too proud to acknowledge such an obvious mismatch, I realized that Mom would still love and support me regardless of how fashionable I was. I also realized that I had absolutely no idea how to get this thing off.

“I’m sorry, honey. Maybe it will fit when you’re older.” She patted my back and held out my bubblegum-pink sweater. I reluctantly wiggled out of the lacy, va-va-voom black lingerie and sighed. “But I wanna be like Madonna!”

Leaving the store, my mind was already racing as it dreamed up ideas for my next inspired style statement (fishnet tights were vetoed, but that didn’t stop me from asking for them every day for the next month). Not all of my attempts to emulate Madonna fell flat, though:
inspired by the dancing in the “Vogue” video, I took my first ballet, tap, and jazz classes the following fall and continued dancing for fourteen more years.

In retrospect, I’m still not convinced that my little cone bra phase was necessarily spurred by my desire to look and act more adult. Rather, it was Madonna’s fresh, edgy style and complete confidence in executing it that drew me to her. And as I grew up and bore witness to each new iteration of the Divine Miss M—from leather-clad dominatrix and mysterious Kabbalah goddess to electro-dance queen and everything in between—I too was reinventing my identity, becoming a strong, ambitious woman, with Madonna’s unwavering empowerment to guide me along the way. Though I may still lack the incredible measurements to fill out that cone bra, I’m proud to say that Madonna has enhanced my life in far more ways than any sexy lingerie could.

Lesley Arfin

 

 

 

 

 

I WAS A bossy kid. There were bossier, older kids who came before me, and when they graduated to the maturity that came with being a sixth-grader, I took the reins. I was happy to. Why not? No one else had the balls to make a decision. Would we play freeze tag or red rover? Would we go to the pool or eat ice cream on the stoop? Some days it was all of the above and some days it was none of those things.

During my tenure as Queen of the Neighborhood, I made sure there was always one particular activity on the table: dance routines. I had the pink cassette player, and I had the cassettes. Jamie Middleton’s dad had a camcorder. Jen Pike took dance lessons at Jan Martin’s School of Dance, so she had the moves. Her younger twin brothers came in handy as audience members, or when we wanted to include a boy in the routine. Sure, we had Debbie Gibson and Tiffany phases (and one embarrassing “Jonny B. Good” incident after seeing
Back to the Future
), but there was one album that changed all the rules.

The year was 1986. The album was Madonna’s
True Blue
. After this album came out, there was simply no substitute. When we got sick of listening to it, when every song had an accompanying dance routine to go along with it, when our lips were maxed out from all the syncing, that’s when I handed over my crown and retreated indoors. It was summer in my heart and summer in my eardrums.

The album’s title track, “True Blue,” was an easy routine—too easy. We had all seen the video. Put on a blue outfit and whisper fake secrets in my ear while I lip-sync,
duh
.

Next!

“White Heat” was the obvious choice. And though Jamie and Jen didn’t know this song as well (I was a big fan of the lesser-known songs, or B-sides, on her albums), they soon would. Instead of blue we wore all-white. “Get up/stand tall/put your back up against the wall/my love is dangerous/this is a bust.” I don’t think I need to spell out the dance routine; it’s all in the lyrics, as literal as they come. Still, I made them practice until we had it perfect. When we were ready to showcase our moves, we’d put lawn chairs on the grass for our mothers to sit in and watch us. They would arrive slowly, in groups of two or three, sauntering into my backyard casually, as if they were just shopping for tennis skirts. They’d pretend to notice our moves, but really they would just stand around and gossip over cups of coffee or tea. In between songs I’d yell “Mom! You’re not watching!” And she’d say “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” but she still wouldn’t look, she’d just keep talking to Linda Lowell, the arty suburban mom who wore black ballet flats and black leggings. After the “Papa Don’t Preach” video came out, I noticed she shifted to a black-and-white striped shirt tucked into Levis with a big black belt.

One of my favorite routines was to “Open Your Heart,” if for nothing else than the perfect staging. My backyard patio had a big air conditioner that was built underneath a wooden platform. It was
bi-level, so two girls fit perfectly on either side of the lowest platform, and one girl fit perfectly on top, like a single candle on top of a birthday cake. That girl was usually me, unless I was feeling diplomatic.

When
Like a Prayer
came out, I got a bit more selfish. Rather than waste my time teaching endless dance routines to girls who could never quite seem to remember the lyrics anyway, I took to my bedroom and listened to
Like a Prayer
on my own. It was a darker album for darker times. I knew the burning cross in the video represented something awful because my dad complained about it and dismissed it as garbage. I thought he’d misunderstood the video entirely. I assumed Madonna wanted to burn the cross so it would stand out in the video as a cool decoration, something jazzier than your typical light bulb. Something to catch your eye. I remember thinking how sad it was that my arrogant father was wrong. It was art, dad!
Hello?

“Spanish Eyes” was the song where I finally found my voice. The days of lip-syncing were over. I was ready to sing, and sing I did. I belted the shit out of that song. “
And if I find nothing left to show/but tears on my pillow
. . .” Those lyrics resonated with me. I was old enough to know she wasn’t literally singing to me, but young enough to pretend that she kind of was. It was a gift from her that I would reopen every single night after dinner. Or after school. Or on a Sunday when there was nothing to do. It was too cold to play outside and too boring to hang out with my old neighborhood minions who, let’s face it, just didn’t “get it.” And frankly, I didn’t want them to. When I lay on my back, sinking into my soft bedroom carpet listening to “Dear Jessie,” I saw those pink elephants! I saw the lemonade, candy kisses, and sunny days. I often wondered who “Jessie” was. Was she a girl Madonna babysat for? Probably. How badly did I wish that girl could be me?

All the women in my family loved Madonna. My sister was into the
Vogue
/
Bedtime Stories
/
Erotica
Madonna, while my mom still claims that her favorite movie, to this day, is
Desperately Seeking Susan.
But my Madonna will always be the B-side Madonna, the
lesser-known-hits Madonna, so that when people boast of their undying love for her, we’re clearly not talking about the same woman.

When I told people I was writing an essay about Madonna, everyone had something to say. I heard a lot of “Oh my God,
I
should be writing that!” and “Didn’t you know? I’m
obsessed
with Madonna.” Yes, yes, I thought, of course you are. Everyone loves the Material Girl. Everyone thinks her Gaultier cone bras were “sick,” and everyone’s favorite movie is
Truth or Dare
. I get it. You love her. But one thing I want to make clear is that
my
Madonna is different from yours. No one knows my Madonna. I might not be her biggest fan, but I’m definitely her most special because I appreciate all the songs you people gloss over. Ha! If she knew me, she’d definitely like me for that reason. She’d wink and kiss me on the cheek with her fire-engine-red lips and then we’d go shopping for polka-dot crinolines together (did I mention that my Madonna only exists in the movie
Who’s That Girl?
).

I’ll still make up dance routines to Madonna songs, but only if I get to choose them. And everyone has to draw a mole above their lips and wear black-lace gloves. I know that the Madonna of my Halloween-costume dreams has been gone for many years, but that’s the only kind of Madonna I’m interested in talking about. The grown-up Madonna, she’s for grown-ups. We can talk about
that
Madonna when I get there.

Erin Trahan

 

 

 

 

 

BALTIMORE HAS JOHN Waters. New Haven has George W. Bush. And Bay City, Michigan, has Madonna. And me. I’m easy to trace back to that crook of the mitten, where the thumb meets the palm, because the Trahans are known for running a funeral home there since 1934. But don’t try to fact-check Madonna’s roots with her people—she’ll probably deny them altogether. She doesn’t seem too keen to claim a connection to her home state.

That we were both born in Bay City—in the same hospital, no less—was enough for me to form a Madonna liberation mythology; something to cinch around my waist like a spelunker would use a rope to tug when she wanted out of the cavernous darkness. Not that Bay City was so bad, though Madonna calling it a “stinky little town” in 1987 is now part of its Wiki-lore. Granted, it did occasionally reek of sugar beets, but like many Midwestern municipalities it had a heyday: One could buy diamonds and fine leather gloves downtown, eat lunch with the Rotarians on Tuesdays, borrow
books from a Carnegie library, and aspire to be the St. Patrick’s Day Queen.

It’s where my father and his father were born, where together they ran a pharmacy, and where my mother thinks the best tomatoes grow. A safe place with earnest neighbors. But before Madonna, it had no claim to fame to satiate the would-be dreams of a precocious kid like me. The Bay City Rollers had supposedly thrown a dart at a map to name themselves after my town; the Bay City on the now defunct soap opera
Another World
was somewhere in Illinois.

Even saying I’m from Bay City is a bit of a stretch. I actually lived in a neighboring farm town on a dead-end street in the middle of a cornfield. In the early 1980s, Hampton Township was a haze of tractor rows, Little League diamonds, and the undersides of bleachers, where I’d scheme while my older siblings played ball. So I was left with Madonna as my elementary school beacon of hope. Hope that a girl—me—who spent hours doing back flips on abandoned track mats could one day be a bona fide material girl.

But early Madonna was all wrong for early me. Sure, I was sassy and outspoken—but not when it came to sex or anything near it. This was especially true at home, where I refused to gender my stuffed animals, avoided discussing boys (whether friend or boyfriend), and waited years to tell my mom I’d gotten my period. Years! You could point to any number of explanations. I was the headstrong youngest child of four. I harbored both a dogged sense of equity and an ingrained mistrust of my own body: Why did I think like an adult but look like a kid? And why did I have to physically mature beyond a childhood I’d never mentally inhabited?

Unlike me, preteen Madonna thought like an adult and aspired to look like one, too. “Don’t tell me I can’t be sexual and intelligent at the same time,” she once told
People
magazine when discussing her adolescence. According to biographer Andrew Morton, in junior high she wrapped herself in a trench coat and danced onstage to the music of the TV show
Secret Agent
. A finale with the sound of
gunshots was planned; her flashing the audience to reveal her black leotard was not. Madonna’s father grounded her for two weeks.

Despite her precociousness, one of Madonna’s musical narratives is of childhood lost. After her mother died of breast cancer when she was five, Madonna, as the oldest girl in the family, assumed childcare and housekeeping duties that she later admitted resenting. She struggled when her father remarried, and her adult recollections of growing up sound like the fable of Cinderella and her evil stepmother. It’s one of many flash points where Madonna and her media coverage enmesh so seamlessly that one wonders, where lies the truth? Fortunately, I had no such burdens beyond a cunning imagination and strong will.

So it came as a shock when my mom came home from fourth-grade parent/teacher conferences with the report that I was “boy crazy.” Okay, I had sharpened my already-sharp pencil near Von Schafer to pass him notes about roller skating at Metro on Thursday afternoon—this was how kids communicated in 1985. I knew I wasn’t bad in the rosary-and-ripped-tights kind of way; Madonna’s lacy undergarments and virginal corruption frightened me to no end. But take one step from Mary toward Madonna, from Jackie O toward Marilyn, from white to black swan, and you’re sentenced: bad.