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Pathetic?

Be respectful, fanatics: Madonna still puts a thousand s**ts

The girl who came to New York with 35 dollars in her account and wanted to conquer the world - succeeded.

But today, when instead of flying over everything she did, everyone is talking about how she is a pathetic old woman, we cheat on her, just as she deserves

Anat Nissani

08/16/2022

08/16/2022

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If you woke up this morning and felt something a little different in the air, it's probably because today, 64 years ago, a legend was born.

She's not the best singer or dancer, certainly not the best actress, but she's one of the women who went the farthest possible: Madonna, the one and only.

In recent years, most of what we hear in the context of Madonna is her age, or the fact that a young man is dating her despite her age, or the fact that she allows herself to upload pictures in underwear and a bra - at her age.

Good souls all over the world call her pathetic, say that she does not behave according to her age and that she is "a poor woman trying to preserve her youth forever".

The last sentence - national pride - is a real reaction from a surfer named "Adir" (there has never been a less appropriate name than that) about her kissing Drake at a concert seven years ago.

I hope I'm wrong, but I'm guessing that people like Adair aren't as shocked by Elon Castiel or a pimp in prison as they are by the thought of a woman over a certain age having sex.

This, by the way, is exactly what Madonna does throughout her career - makes people explode, and continues on her own.

This is how she reached all her achievements, broke almost every glass ceiling that stood in her way and succeeded, as she declared she would do after the release of her first single, to conquer the world.

"People say I'm controversial. I think the most controversial thing I've ever done is stick around," she said in her 2016 Billboard Woman of the Year acceptance speech. Six years later, and she's still around, still in her panties and bra.

Choke, mighty.

So today, when she dares to allow herself to grow up in another year and at the same time continue to be the sexual, provocative and strong woman that she has always been, we will stop talking about her age and simply tell her: about the path she took, about the achievements, difficulties and scandals, and remind everyone who has forgotten - what a woman This is a one-off.

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road start

Madonna Louise Ciccone was born and raised in Michigan, USA, alongside five other brothers and sisters. When she was 5 years old, her mother died of breast cancer, being only 30 years old. Three years later, Madonna's father remarried. She was always an excellent student But also someone who refuses to accept "rules" as truths, always asking questions and not willing to accept unsatisfactory answers. This was also the reason for her complex relationship with religion, even though she grew up in a devout Catholic family.

When she was 19, she decided to move to New York to become a dancer. She She arrived in the big city, as in fairy tales, with no more than $35 in her bank account, but her road to success was far from a fairy tale. During her first year in New York, she was raped at the point of a knife held to her neck, she also experienced gun threats and said that her apartment was broken into So many times she already stopped bothering to lock the door.

At one point she received an offer to act as a dancer and backing singer for a French artist, and at the same time she began to hear that she had a good voice.

She was a member of a band or two where she sang as well as played drums and guitar, but quickly decided she wanted a career as a solo artist.

Her debut single - Everybody, came out in 1982, and started a glorious career of 40 years, and counting.

the achievements

While the great talkbackist feels satisfaction for two sentences he took the trouble to sit down and write, the woman he was referring to did not stop working, shattering glass ceilings and breaking records, some of which she holds to this day.

Her second album - Like A Virgin - sold 5 million copies in the US and made her the first woman to reach such a sales volume. In the third album - True Blue - she already doubled the sales 5 times and reached 25 million copies. In 1992 she entered following This is the Guinness Book of Records with the title of the best-selling album by a woman.

Guinness also crowned her in 2000 as the most successful female artist in history, in 2012 as the best-selling singer in history, as well as the most sampled artist and the artist whose songs have received the most remixes.

In 1987, a performance she held in Paris was crowned as the female concert with the largest amount of audience up to that time - 130 thousand people.

Her 2008 UK tour - Sticky & Sweet - is still the highest-grossing tour by a female artist, and even in being bad she broke records: to this day she is the actress with the most Golden Raspberry Awards.

In total, Madonna released 14 studio albums, participated in 17 films and directed four.

She has won 7 Grammy Awards, eight Golden Globe Awards (one as an actress for her role in "Evita") and 20 VMA Awards.

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In fact, for 25 years (until 2016, when Beyoncé broke the record), she held the record for the most VMAs for a female artist.

In 1986, she also became the first woman to win the MTV Network Lifetime Achievement Award.

Besides all this, she also wrote children's books, founded a chain of gyms, launched a line of skin care products and more.

In 1992, she decided to leave all artistic control in her hands and founded her own entertainment company, which included a record company, film production studios, music and book publishing, and more.

The Warner Media company invested 60 million dollars in this venture of hers and agreed with her on 20% royalties - the highest royalty rate in the industry at the time, which the only person who won besides her was Michael Jackson.

Its value today is estimated at about 850 million dollars.

It is said that she changed the social history of the world, that her influence and career went beyond the field of music and that she paved the way not only for women, but for artists in general.

Throughout her career she also made sure to collaborate with young artists and give them a platform.

"I like working with the oddballs that no one knows, the people who have raw talent and make music like no one else out there," she said, and she did.

The men (and women) in her life

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But with all due respect to her achievements and crazy career, it's time to talk about her private life, and to be specific - about her relationships.

As we would expect from Madonna, she had quite a few relationships, some of the names might even surprise you.

One of Madonna's first relationships (that we know of) was with graffiti artist and painter Jean-Michel Basquiat in the early 1980s, and they even lived together in his apartment in Soho.

When she broke up with him, apparently because she said he "didn't stop doing heroin", he took it very hard, asked her back for all the drawings he had given her and painted them black.

In 1983, Madonna met a DJ and music producer named John Jellibin Benitez and lived with him for almost two years.

None of you probably know him, so this relationship is not really interesting, but he was the one who helped her break through and produced her debut hits, including one of the biggest ones - Holiday.

The next significant relationship in Madonna's life was with the man who, even years later, she admitted was the love of her life - Sean Penn.

The two married in 1985, exactly on Madonna's 27th birthday, and had a tumultuous relationship that included rumors of physical abuse on his part, and ended in divorce in 1989.

Madonna dedicated the album True Blue, released in 1986, to Penn, and wrote that it was "dedicated to my husband, the loudest man in the world."

A few days before her 57th birthday, she uploaded to Instagram a picture of herself and Penn, who celebrates his birthday the day after her, and wrote: "It's almost our birthday! Two lions", which probably means that she was mostly left with good memories.

After the divorce, she had a short but headline-grabbing affair with Warren Beatty, an actor who is 21 years older than her and according to his biography he was with close to 13 thousand women.

I'm not sure that Madonna doesn't give him a fight in this regard.

In any case, after that she also dated a model named Tony Ward and the rapper Vanilla Ace, both of whom also took pictures with her for the "Sex" book she released in 92.

This was also the reason why Vanilla Ace claimed to have broken up with her.

He said he was hurt when he saw the book and realized that while they were supposedly in a relationship, she must have been sleeping with everyone pictured.

Around the publication of the book and in the years that follow, the most interesting names in Madonna's romantic past appear: she dated Dennis Rodman, who claimed that she badly wanted a child from him and did not allow him to use condoms;

She had a fling (or maybe just a kiss) with Michael Jackson;

She dated Lenny Kravitz, was in a relationship with Tupac Shakur (who broke up with her while he was in prison) and also dated John F. Kennedy Jr., whose mother, Jackie Kennedy, didn't really like his relationship with the Marilyn Monroe impersonator , the lover of her late husband.

In those years, rumors were also spread about several affairs with women, including a model named Jenny Shimizu who said she dated Madonna and Angelina Jolie at the same time, and who served as Madonna's sex slave. In addition, it seems that Madonna managed A romantic relationship with the comedian Sandra Bernhard, and with her ex - Ingrid Casares, who owned a club in Miami.

But after the wild period, even Madonna decided she wanted to relax and become a mother.

In 1994 she started dating her fitness trainer, Carlos Leon, and in 1996 their daughter was born - Lourdes Maria Cicona Leon, but they broke up seven months after the birth.

A year later Madonna met the one who would become her second husband in 2000 - the British director Guy Ritchie.

When they got married, they already had a 4-month-old child together (Roku), and during their 8-year marriage, they adopted an orphaned boy from Malawi named David Banda.

According to rumors, although Madonna and Richie tried very hard, their relationship did not do well for either of them.

Richie, they say, felt castrated and became more and more withdrawn, but Madonna also felt bound and that she could not express herself the way she wanted, and that we would not know - even from her husband she began to hear that she should start behaving according to her age.

The path to divorce from here was already clear, but despite the charges between them they tried to close the story as well as possible so as not to endanger the adoption process of David Banda, which was not yet finally closed at the time.

As part of this, and because she did not bother to sign a financial agreement with Richie before they got married, Madonna paid him about 75 million dollars as part of the divorce.

After this relationship, Madonna declared that she would rather be run over by a train than get married again, and since then has had relationships with hot models and dancers and, yes, young people, who have participated in music videos and tours with her.

The last of them was a dancer named Almalik Williams, 35 years younger than her, with whom she had a relationship for about four years.

Last April they broke up.

The scandals

And how can you celebrate Madonna's birthday without mentioning all the scandals she created throughout her career?!

impossible.

Well:

it started with the song Like A Virgin which initially did not go down well with conservative Americans, and picked up when she performed it at the 1984 MTV Awards.

She went on stage wearing a sexy wedding dress and garters and occasionally lay down on the stage and rolled around in a way that was then shockingly perceived as "simulating sex on stage" and today looks as innocent as any photo session for the cover of a fashion magazine.

The next song that made waves in the US was Papa Don't Preach, which came two years later and talked about the pregnancy of a minor out of wedlock. In 1989, Madonna took a step forward in the way she combines sexuality with politics and released the song Like A Prayer, which combines religion with sexuality, and the music video His also adds to the explosive matter the issue of racism. The reactions to the clip were very harsh, they called it an "abomination" and accused Madonna of blasphemy, the Vatican called to boycott it and stop its advertising and there were countries where it was banned from broadcasting. As a result, an advertisement that Madonna made for Pepsi and uploaded was shelved A day before the premiere of the music video, but her response to all the commotion was that art is supposed to cause controversy. So she continued.

On the Blond Ambition tour (the one where she introduced the world to Jean Paul Gaultier's pink bra) she faked masturbation on stage and caused a wave of protests against her, calls for a boycott by the Pope himself and threats from Toronto authorities that she would be arrested by the police immediately after the show ended , if you don't download the section in question.

She of course did it anyway and also teased the police and their threats throughout the show.

Even before that, Justify My Love became the first music video to be blocked from airing by MTV, the provocative photo book "Sex" caused an uproar as did photos of her from her early days, when she modeled naked for a living.

And we can't forget the famous kiss scandal with Britney Spears and then with Christina Aguilera, at the VMA ceremony in 2003.

Adopts children

Yes, it turns out that this is also a scandal - in the face of all the claims about her extroverted sexuality, she always maintained complete peace of mind, never apologized and turned the blame back against those who make sexuality perceived as something embarrassing, shameful and dirty.

The public storms that managed to hurt her were those created by the adoption of her children.

After adopting David Banda together with Guy Ritchie, she decided to adopt another child alone and two more twins, also from Malawi, faced local and international opposition and had to fight for the adoption in the courts.

In a column she wrote in 2013 for Harper's Bazaar magazine, she says: "I could understand people giving me a hard time because I masturbated on stage or published the book 'Sex', even because I kissed Britney on stage. But trying to save a child's life was not something I thought I would be punished for ".

In the end, all the adoptions were completed correctly and according to the law, but the fact that Madonna became a mother of six (!) didn't really make her change.

One of the storms of recent years was another kiss she gave on stage, this time to Drake, when she was a guest at his concert at Coachella in 2015.

What is most remembered from this case is Drake's disgusted face after the kiss, which was especially surprising in light of the rumors of an affair between the two.

He later wrote on his Instagram how wonderful he felt about getting to kiss the Queen and explained that he was disgusted by the taste of her lipgloss. Credibility level: Sharin from Big Brother "Just a friend" of Sheaf. Madonna, on the other hand, was later asked what advice she would give to her younger self, And she replied: "Don't kiss Drake, no matter how many times he begs you to do it.

The aforementioned performance was followed by the famous talkback of our great Adir, and in general those years marked the beginning of more and more global criticism for behavior that was inappropriate for her age. She got drunk at performances, cried on stage and exposed herself to the audience - something for her it was simply to continue the same A line she's always walked. In 2016, she took it a step too far when she brought a 17-year-old girl on stage at a concert in Australia, rolled up her shirt and exposed her breasts to the audience. The girl claimed she was fine with it and that it didn't bother her much, but this case became one of the few times when Madonna apologized for what she did

It was in 2019, just after Neta's win that brought the Eurovision Song Contest to Tel Aviv and with him, in a historic and hysterical performance - Esther, the old Kabbalah friend.

It's true that no one ever claimed that Madonna was some kind of vocal lifter, and she never claimed to be either, but what happened on stage was really hard to watch.

A day later, all the recordings from the show were edited with autotune, and from Madonna's side it was claimed that the fakes themselves were the result of a distorted autotune, which was originally planned to be added to the broadcast but was directed in the wrong way.

I believe that the stunning Madge did not suddenly start faking at such a level and that there was some kind of glitch, but at least we got the wonderful line from all of this: "I hear your voice, it's like an angel dying".

The inspiration

You can love her, you can really not, but you can't help but be inspired by her courage and the way she goes against all the patterns that limit femininity, throughout her career and especially now, at her "age".

Since I promised not to mess with her age, I'll let her talk about it, with another quote from her excellent speech at the 2016 Billboard Woman of the Year Awards:

"My real muse was David Bowie. He made me feel like there are no rules. But I was wrong. There are no rules if you're a boy. There are rules if you're a girl. If you're a girl, you have to play the game. You're allowed to be pretty and cute and sexy. But don't be Too smart. Don't have opinions that don't align with the status quo. You're allowed to be objectified by men and dress like a whore, but don't take ownership of your whoredom. And don't—I repeat—don't share your sexual fantasies with the world. Be what men We want you to be, but more importantly: be what women feel comfortable being around other men. And finally - don't grow up. Growing up is a sin. You will be criticized, you will be slandered, and you will certainly not be heard on the radio anymore."

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