As a woman gets older she is expected to keep her beauty and physical youth, but the pressure to do anything with her life experience is much lower if not non-existent. When Madonna turned 50 she received a big applause for having preserved her beauty, but I didn’t feel like applauding. I didn’t understand why a music artist that has never written a song on her own and that hardly ever sings live should deserve any applause.
A lot of people found it sexist how the media was focused on her age and her looks. I was more disturbed that nobody seemed to notice that after all these years she didn’t ever try to be more than just the packaging of her songs. I can’t imagine a man would be taken serious as a music artist for over 25 years if he would be more focused on his looks than on his music.
Madonna is the prototype of the female music artist and when they look for a new female music artist, they look for a new Madonna. They will first search for someone with the right looks, good dancing skills and maybe good vocals too. Whether or not she writes her own songs is not even considered. Women are just packaging for songs men wrote and Madonna has perfected the art of being packaging.
But do people that listen to music from a female artist really care more about the packaging than the content? I think you find the answer in MySpace. If you discovered a song you would like on MySpace, it was easy to send it to your friends and they could easily send it to theirs. Nobody would consider how many other people might like it. The people would only consider how much they liked it themselves. It was a democracy far away from business decisions. And who did MySpace discover? Lilly Allen, the type of pretty girl you pass by, but a pretty girl that would just make good music. A pretty girl that gave up, because as soon as she left her space on MySpace it would turn out that the world cared more about her pregnancies and her weight than about the music she put her hart and soul in. And that’s what I thought was truly sexist.
Excellent observations - I never thought about Madonna that way, but you're right. I do think she deserves credit for breaking down boundaries about what is acceptable for female artists, but she didn't do it musically.
ReplyDeleteI don't know. I love artists that write their own songs but I also love Madonna. She is a great showwoman, and even if she didn't write the songs herself, she makes better choices with her songwriters than most people. She looks in control of her career, even if I don't like all of it. I think there is space for both performer type artsits, and writer type artists and I think most people are able to value both simultaneously.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I seem to remember that Lilly Allen mainly became famous for writing these really frank and sometimes bitchy blog posts about being hungover and hating other celebrities, as much as her music. And we do have to remember that in the end, she invited the cameras into her home when she was pregnant, so that she could start a vintage business that people without her contacts would have had to labour away for years to be able to start. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I was never a big fan of her music, but I respect her.
anyway, sorry for long comment, thanks for taking part in FFB!
Thank you for creating FFB :)
ReplyDeleteAMEN! excellent post!
ReplyDeleteReva