WHY WON’T MADONNA AGE GRACEFULLY? – March 9^th 2006

 

 

here was a time we were all dazzled by Madonna. Girls tied scrappy pieces of lace around their wrists and in their over-teased hair, miming into the mirror with their hairbrushes, wishing they could be her.

 

She carried off her homage to Marilyn Monroe in her Material Girl video with a  panache that invited favourable comparisons to the sex symbol of the twentieth century.

 

Even at her most absurd – the John Galliano conical-bra phase, for example – or most shocking, as when she published her explicit soft-porn book Sex, which saw her frolicking naked with both men and women in a variety of sado-masochistic poses, we still admired her.

 

She was sexy and toned and as bendy as an India-rubber doll. While the rest of us grew older, time for her seemed to stand still. We hung up our cropped tops and pensioned off our micro minis, but her bosoms stayed perky and her bottom as taut as ever. She hit her 40s running, then rubbed it in by doing the splits.

 

No longer. Pictures of her at the Oscars in a dramatic pink gown exposed arms so heavily muscled she looked like an Eastern European shot-putter. She invites not admiration, but pity. There’s nothing remotely sexy about the way she looks now.

 

It’s said she’s such an expert in Ashtanga yoga, the most demanding form of the discipline, that she has the fitness of an Olympic athlete. We may not admire the results, but we have to respect her determination to hold back the sands of time.

 

But Madonna is 47, and the most successful female recording artist of all time. She’s also exceptionally beautiful. Why, then, this obsession with hanging on to her youthful looks? Why can’t she move into the next phase of her life with her usual style?

 

It’s suggested that she’s motivated in part by a need to hold on to her husband, director Guy Ritchie, ten years her junior. Rumours that their marriage is in trouble have circulated for some time.

 

But other beautiful women have found ways to beguile and allure as they enter their fifth, sixth and even seventh decades. Sophia Loren bewitches at 71, as much as ever she did. Likewise Honor Blackman, Meryl Streep, and Isabella Rossallini.

 

If Mrs. Ritchie’s husband is willing to leave her merely for the crime of growing older, she’s better off without him. But one suspects the reverse is the case.

 

Most men find muscly arms and stringy thighs an overwhelming turn-off. The curvaceous and voluptuous Nigella Lawson is the stuff of wet dreams for thousands of men who would step over the skinny likes of Kate Moss. Nor is the narcissistic obsession with exercise and diet the least bit attractive.

 

If Guy Ritchie does leave her, chances are it’ll be for a curvy unknown with a fraction of his earning power who’s never even seen the inside of a gym.

 

Of course, it may be that Madonna just can’t bear to yield the spotlight to the newer, younger girls on the block without a struggle.

 

But does she seriously plan to be cavorting on stage in a skimpy leotard and thigh-high boots when she’s 57? Whether she likes it or not, age will catch up with her, and the harder she fights it, the more it’s going to hurt.

 

Of course, Madonna needs to reinvent her image according to current fashion. This season has seen the rebirth of fashion roadkill such as mohair sweater-dresses and leggings. But leotards are unappealing even on dewy 17-year-old dancers.

 

On a mother-of-two pushing 50, they are deeply unattractive, no matter how well-toned her thighs. The video for her single Hung Up approaches the gynaecological. As my mother would say, put it away, dear, we’ve all got one.

 

 

er daughter, Lourdes, will be ten this year. Let’s hope Madonna doesn’t turn into one of those ghastly women who insists she’s ‘best friends’ with her daughter and boasts of swapping clothes before going ‘out on the pull’ together.

 

Let’s be clear. There’s nothing wrong with singing over the age of 40. Frank Sinatra crooned to the very end, at 82. Jazz queen Nina Simone eventually had to be helped from her wheelchair to stand propped up at the microphone, but that didn’t stop her performing almost up to her death at the age of 70.

 

But both allowed themselves to mature along with their art. It was all about the music, and that remained both timeless and ageless.

 

There’s a generation of women dying for Madonna to show us how to grow old gracefully. We were relying on Princess Diana to demonstrate how to do 40; in her absence, we need all the glamorous older role models we can get.

 

Madonna has always prided herself on breaking convention. Perhaps she could do us all a favour by taking our obsession with youth and smashing it into a thousand pieces with her usual flair and inimitable style.