There’s a moment in the Celebration tour when Madonna participates in a simulated orgy. Wearing a red-and-black teddy and high leather boots, she sits with her legs spread wide as half-naked dancers of different genders attend to her in a writhing huddle, to the strains of Justify My Love.
Watching this, it was interesting to think about how, 40 years ago, when Madonna was just starting her career, having something like this in a pop concert would have been considered incredibly shocking, offensive or downright illegal. In fact, in 1990, during Madonna’s Blond Ambition world tour, the same sort of moves almost got her arrested, and Pope John Paul II denounced the show as “one of the most satanic shows in the history of humanity”.
Now, after four decades of Madonna being Madonna, nobody seems outraged by this sultry scene, or at all surprised. At a performance last week at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, the crowd went wild for it – cheering not only for the free expression of sex they were seeing on stage, but for Madonna at 65 enjoying sex.
Madonna’s overt sexuality has never been just for the sake of shock. Sex has always been a way for her to assert her right to unapologetically be herself, and to push against limits on anyone’s personal freedom. The inspirational aspect of this is part of what’s made her the bestselling female recording artist of all time – her fans know that she’s putting herself out there for them. And by being sexual at 65, Madonna is once again doing something that, traditionally, a woman isn’t “supposed” to do. But why not? she asks.
A different sort of a sexagenarian might have become more demure with age, or at least toned down the simulated masturbation, but not Madonna. The most radical message of her new show, the one that has yet to be truly accepted by our culture, is that a woman of a certain age can still be a powerfully sexual being – and that that is natural. Not tasteless or improper or any of the other things that ageism dictates, but just hot.
“She looked fantastic,” said a review of the Celebration tour. The media has been marveling at Madonna’s glowing looks. It was just a year ago that the media engaged in a feeding frenzy over Madonna’s “unrecognizable” appearance, after she showed up a bit puffy-faced, post-plastic surgery, at an awards show. The nasty comments about her face, which went on for weeks on social media, opened a window into how vicious ageism can be.
Unbowed, Madonna clapped back on Instagram: “I look forward to many more years of subversive behavior – pushing boundaries – Standing up to the patriarchy – and Most of all enjoying my life. Bow down bitches!”
Then Madonna fell ill from a bacterial infection, last June, and had to postpone her tour, and the media was reportedly preparing obituaries. There was speculation she was done. She said she wasn’t sure about this herself. “I didn’t think I was going to make it this summer,” she told the fans at Barclays. “But here I am.” (The tour finally kicked off in October, with 27 shows in Europe before it came to Brooklyn; it will travel the US until next April.)
Coming back strong in her Celebration tour – which has received some great reviews – Madonna is again serving as a kind of radical inspiration, especially for older women who have lived their lives alongside her. Many see in her a woman who’s surviving and succeeding at a time in life when society wants to make women invisible.
“The most controversial thing I have ever done is to stick around,” Madonna said in a 2016 speech in which she talked about her ongoing battles with ageism and sexism. She wasn’t being subtle when she chose, for her Celebration tour playlist, Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive, which she sings defiantly, playing an acoustic guitar, while dressed in a lace corset and a miniskirt.
“She’s so powerful,” whispered the woman sitting next to me.
For many older women, Madonna is a fellow traveler they see as triumphing professionally against all odds – and succeeding personally, as well, by becoming the mother she always wanted to be. One of the themes of the Celebration tour is motherhood; three of Madonna’s talented children (David, 18, Mercy, 17, and Estere, 11) perform with her on stage (guitar, piano, and dancing, respectively), and they all seem to adore her.
Simply by being herself, Madonna is again challenging stereotypes – showing the world that an older woman, and a single mom, can be both a sexual being and a good mother whose children love her. In other words, a full human being.
I was listening to Madonna’s album Ray of Light (1998) a lot around the time I got pregnant with my daughter. I was unmarried, 35, and didn’t know if I could handle raising a child on my own; there was also still quite a stigma. But Madonna had put out this incredible album about her love for her daughter, Lourdes, whom she’d had in 1996 as a single mother; she was singing songs about how becoming a mom had changed her life and brought her happiness, which was already shifting stereotypes about single motherhood. It was inspiring.
“I think Madonna might be the coolest person on earth,” said my daughter, now 23, as we exited Barclays the night of the show. It may come as a surprise to some to find out that the coolest person on earth is, quite possibly, a 65-year-old woman, without whom life might be very different right now and definitely not as much fun.
Nancy Jo Sales is the author, most recently, of Nothing Personal: My Secret Life in the Dating App Inferno
