Madonna's Controversial Breasts

Oh, Madonna, Madonna, you've done it again.  You've got everyone's panties and briefs in a bundle.  Do you ever tire of it?

If you haven't heard, earlier this month Madonna flashed her breast while performing in Istanbul.  It didn't cause too much of a stir among the Turks.  While Turkey is a predominantly Muslim country, it is also home to a robust, progressive and educated youth culture.  They've seen breasts before.  They're not wringing their hands over this one.  All the hand-wringing is happening here in the U.S.

The flashed breast in and of itself is not what caused the upset.  It was the fact that the owner of the breast is a fifty-three year-old woman.  Fifty-three.  Her detractors keep reminding us of that.

Madonna in the 80's (cropped)
We were all scandalized not
by the nudity but by the
hairy armpits.

I'm fascinated by the puritanical streak that runs through current pop culture when it comes to nudity. For those of you who are under forty, I assure you, it wasn't always this way.  If you're middle-aged, you know what I'm talking about.  You and I and Madonna all came of age in that 15-year sweet spot between the sexual revolution and the onset of heterosexual AIDS.  You yourself may not  have been promiscuous; you may not have partaken in orgies or had sex in cars outside of night clubs with people whose names you never did catch.  As a culture, though, we were doing all those things.  It was a different time.  It was Madonna's time.  She was young and sexually active, as most of us were, but she was also a raging exhibitionist.  We saw a lot of her breasts back then.

Madonna on the runway with
Jean Paul Gaultier in 1992.

Today, pop culture is upset about Madonna's Istanbul breast for two reasons.  First, modern youth has grown up in a "sex is dangerous/sex is bad" culture.  This makes women who flaunt their sexuality very bad indeed.  In fact, in the eyes of young men, they are sluts.  Second, we're more ageist than we used to be.  I know, I know; we've always been repelled by aging women, but it seems we're more repelled now than ever before.  We'll accept the baring of a middle-aged woman's body on two conditions: one, if her body doesn't look middle-aged, and two, if she's not deliberately showy or overt.   

Madonna is a middle-aged woman who is habitually overt when it comes to her body.  She always has been.  The problem is, she's fifty-three now and we don't know what to do about this.  It brings out the mean streak in our collective conscience.  I recently saw a photo of her wearing a leotard type of thing, seated, legs spread, crotch front and center.  It was a pose that was pretty standard in the eighties.  One woman commented, "Cover up that dried-up old c__t!"  Another said, "I bet that thing is as big as the Grand Canyon!"  The entire comment section was filled with more of the same.  I'm sure I don't have to go on.

Madonna in the 2000's.

This is the type of punishment we dole out to overtly sexual middle-aged women.  Joy Baher and Wendy Williams, both older women themselves, commented on the Istanbul incident.  They both used the words "old" and "desperate" in their remarks.  Call me crazy, but I don't think Madonna feels old or desperate.  I don't know her, but I suspect she does this type of thing because she enjoys it.  In Istanbul, I think she was just experiencing the euphoria that all narcissists feel when they're getting a good response from an audience.  The boob was there and she took it out.  I doubt there was much more thought involved.


She's been through this a hundred times before. Throughout her career, she's been called talentless; an enemy of the church; a corruptor of tweenies; and of course, a slut. Those types of bullets bounce right off of her.  Of course, the composition of those bullets has changed over the years.  Where she used to be a slut and a ho, she's now a "desperate old hag."   Not a big deal.  It's all the same to her. No matter how vicious the comments, they're still just silly bullets fired at someone who was born bullet-proof.

I have to admit I admire her.   This is an odd thing for me to say because I'm not a fan.   Her music has never appealed to me.   I never cared for her look, either.  I didn't care for the vintage pin-up look of her youth, nor the veiny, sinewy, yoga look of today.   I didn't care for the fake British accent.  I didn't care for the stern mother and wife persona she had going for a while there with Guy Ritchie.  All in all, there's not much about Madonna I do like.  There's only this: I like that she doesn't allow all the puritanical finger-shaking and name-calling to break her stride.  She just keeps on being Madonna, whatever that means to her on any given day.  Of course, this means that at some point along the way, the breasts are going to come out again.  When that happens, the press, the soccer Moms and the twenty-somethings will get upset again.  The "old," "desperate," and "slut" bullets will be fired once again.  It will be business as usual.

Next time it happens, though, why don't we try something new?   This is a tiny bit shocking, but I think we can do this.   When Madonna decides it's time to take them out again, let's try reacting like grown-ups.  This means that we can look the other way if that is how our sensibilities guide us--or we can have a look at them and appreciate the simple joy of a woman's breasts.  No insults required.  It would be kind of like the old days.  It would be so retro, so eighties.  I'm game.