Madonna at 50: The Queen of Pop keeps us watching
By KATHRYN WEXLER
kwexler@MiamiHerald.com
She's donned rubber bangles, conical bustiers, shiny leotards -- and now, Chanel suits.
Ever an icon, Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone turns 50 on Saturday.
The Queen of Pop heads to Miami, her old stomping ground, on Nov. 26 during her upcoming Sticky and Sweet tour, baring a new, heart-shaped face and arms of steel. Word has it she'll be wearing Givenchy when she performs.
Will we recognize the middle age-defying Madonna?
For sure we can expect the same sexuality, fearlessness and spunk that first made Madonna famous, the very traits that were lurking in the shadows of our collective consciousness when she knocked us out with Holiday, back in 1983.
Cel-e-brate!
In the past decade, she threw us over for a country estate in Wiltshire and an English accent. But first, she was our American dream.
Her second-generation Italian heritage ran through her veins as much as through her wardrobe, with those lace camisoles, gigantic crucifixes and over-moussed hair. We loved her for it. She was saucy and brave, a woman making her mark, any immigrant's daughter.
Papa don't preach. . .
Feminists embraced her for her empowered sexuality. Gays toasted her for vogue-ing on national TV. Guys wanted her as their Boy Toy. Girls piled on necklaces and lace wristbands on Halloween, sensing Madonna was the ultimate end game of their slumbering pubescence. Their mothers saw in her stunning self-actualization at a time when the Orange County housewives were too young to be desperate.
Only the moralists reviled her. But to teenagers feeling their way to their own morality, didn't that make her even hipper?
Madonna always added a dollop of cheeky artifice to her glamour. Her pop-tart music never seemed quite as relevant as her coifs and couture. In style, Madonna was a tour de force.
Like a Virgin?
In 1985, she was writhing through the canals of Venice trying to convince us that virgins forgo T-shirts for net corsets. By the Who's That Girl era, she donned fishnet stockings and fake grapes across her bosom -- part cancan, part fruit salad.
But in short order, she turned hard-edged femme fatale, thrusting herself against a fat column in Herb Ritts' famous photo and belting out her hits in a Jean-Paul Gaultier bustier.
Suddenly, she was an all-too dirty blond with a Sex book. Purity followed, as Madonna transformed into a Ray of Light. Next came the open stare and needle-straight hair. On her past couple tours, she had a disco flashback, shiny leotards and all.
Beat Goes On . . .
Off stage, she has been showing up lately as a tousle-tressed grown-up -- in button-down European suits.
Lately, she's hit the spotlight again, with rumored infidelity, a memoir by her brother Christopher, a new CD and her tour.
We're awaiting her next brilliant reinvention. Nothing less would do her justice.
Happy Birthday, Madge.
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