What do we love Madonna for

Great!

On August 16, 60 years old Madonna - singer, dancer, actress, director, producer, activist and even writer. "Medusa" tells what we love the American performer most of all.

Madonna-Queen of pop music (if someone doubted)

Without Madonna, it is impossible to imagine the 1980s, the 1990s, or zero. For 35 years on stage, she released 13 studio albums, which were sold a total of 300 million copies. “Holid”, “Material Girl”, “Like a Virgin”, “True Blue”, “La Isla Bonita”, in the end, “Frozen” and “American Pie”-let the one who never danced to these songs in the midst of Utyube Vozda raises his hand, with surprise, with surprise, with surprise Finding that he remembers all the words.

Madonna always knew who to be friends with (or at least work): on her account of collaboration with Bjork, Kanye West and one of the most interesting figures of the current electronic scene - the producer of Sophie . Not to mention the duets with Britney Spears and Nicky Minaj or performances with Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift.

It is constantly changing - and always remains in fashion

According to the transformations of Madonna, you can study the history of not only pop music, but also fashion. She made her debut with a impudent girl from New York streets-with a bandage on her head, in a shirt-piece, leggings and dozens of bracelets in her arms. I tried on the images of Chirlerin, Marilyn Monroe and Dominatrix, introduced the bustier of Jean Paul Gauthier with the cones in the story and went on stage in the so -called Power Suits - trouser costumes with massive shoulders borrowed from men's wardrobe.

To the indignation of many, Madonna infinitely flirts with Catholicism, starting from a ligament of crosses on his chest in the 1980s before a performance at the Met Gala Institute of Costume in 2018, the theme of which was precisely declared Catholicism. As the Racked website joked , Madonna came to the ball, dressed up with herself, and in addition sang from the 1989 hit “Like a Prayer” from the stage. “The transformations of her style and image were sometimes radical, but they showed that identity is a construct and it can be changed at will,” wrote Douglas Kellner theorist of culture about Madonna.

I liberated more than one generation

Madonna grew up in a strict Italian Catholic family. In an interview with People magazine in 1985, she said that since childhood, her grandmother begged her to be a good girl , to love Jesus and not meet men. “I grew up with two images of a woman in my head: a virgin and a whore. It was rather scary, ” said the singer. Contrary to upbringing, Madonna showed her whole career that sexuality - at any age - is normal. It is enough to look at the names (and covers!) Some of her albums: “Like a Virgin”, “Bedtime Stories” or “Erotica”.

In 1992, Madonna released the SEX photo book, for which photographer Stephen Meisel shot not only the singer herself, but also actress Isabella Rossellini, Naomi Campbell, rapper Vanilla Ice and actor Udo Kira. Madonna wrote an essay for the book of Mistress Dita - a free -thinking woman who loves her body and is ready for experiments.

Supports LGBT community

Madonna is not in vain called a gay icon, which did a lot for the LGBT community. In her book “SEX” there were pictures of not only heterosexual, but also homosexual couples, but in the documentary “Blond Ambition”, the Madonna dancers in bed with Madonna, in bed with Madonna, became the same full-fledged heroes of the story as she herself. In the column on the Huffington Post, journalist Daril Dano recalled how he first watched the picture in the cinema: ““ In bed with Madonna ”was the first mainstream gay film to see many-gays and heterosexuals. This has prepared the ground for many films and television shows on this subject. ”

Madonna's video “Vogue” brought to the mainstream the Voging subculture (dance style, popular in the 1980s in the black gays of New York); In each copy of its record “Like a Prayer”, “AIDS FACTS” was invested ; Madonna even helped the TV presenter Ellen Dedeners to make a camming out. In an interview with the show, the Madonna told how lonely she felt in childhood-and how her dance teacher, and later the gay community helped her understand what to be yourself, even if you are not like everyone else.

Changes the ideas about age

The singer is regularly criticized for the appearance that does not fit into standard ideas about how a woman should look and behave after 40 or 50 years old. Most of all she gets for “inappropriate in age” outfits and a sports body. In 2012, the British TV presenter Pierce Morgan called her muscular hands grotesque. "Why on earth is a woman to look like a cave?" He was perplexed. “Nothing speaks of a noble aging like a pumped pair of monstrously folded and terrifying sinewy lifeless hands,” TMZ tabloid ironized .

In 2016, accepting the Billboard “Woman of the Year”, Madonna made a talk of sexism and Aijism in the musical industry: “If you are a woman, do not get old. Because to age is a sin. They will criticize you for this, pour mud on, and your songs will definitely not twist on the radio. ” True, no criticism actually stops the singer: she continues to star for the magazines half -naked and shows her breasts and buttocks on the red carpet. “Long live our mistress, who does not stop fighting, changing the world and pave the way for all of us,” summarizes The Guardian.

And knows how to laugh at himself

In 2015, the singer admitted at the Jimmy Fallon show that she always dreamed of trying her strength in a stand -up - and the presenter gave her such an opportunity. “It is always worth talking about what you know,” Madonna began her performance. “Therefore, I want to talk about what I know well: how to meet young men.” The singer joked that she had not gone on dates for a couple of weeks and the other day, without hesitation, asked her son Rocco (then he was 15 years old): “Do you have no friends with whom you could introduce me to?” This was not the only sample of the Madonna in the stand. After a couple of years, she came to the performance of her friend, comedian Amy Schumer, to the New York Club Comedy Central-and suddenly went to the microphone, “warming up” the hall with a couple of jokes.

On her 60th birthday, Madonna posted a photo on Twitter, in which she holds a piece of paper with the inscription “Korolev”, and signed a picture “Just in case, if someone forgot”. But we have not forgotten!

Olga Strachovskaya