SHE SAID, SHE SAID | Madonna

November 17, 2011 by Charlotte Richardson Andrews in Blog

“As a creative person, in all the different things that I’ve done or ways that I’ve found to express myself, I’ve consistently come up against resistance in certain areas. I think that the world is not comfortable with female sexuality. It’s always coming from a male point of view, and a woman is being objectified by a man — and even women are comfortable with that. But when a woman does it, ironically, women are uncomfortable with it. I think a lot of that has to do with conditioning.”

Madonna, chatting to Harper’s Bazaar on how her early years inspired her groundbreaking, raunchy career. The singer, who was upset at the recent leak of her new demo ‘Give Me All Your Love’, spoke to the magazine about her family life and how it went on to shape her as an artist, saying “The fact that I didn’t have a mother helped me in some respect, and that I didn’t have a female role model. I was always very aware of sexual politics, growing up in a Catholic–Italian family in the Midwest, seeing that my brothers could do what they wanted but the girls were always told that they needed to dress a certain way, act a certain way.

“We were told to wear our skirts to our knees, turtlenecks, cover ourselves and not wear makeup, and not do anything that would draw attention. I refused to wear makeup, to have a hairstyle. I refused to shave. I had hairy armpits. I think my behaviour and my lifestyle threaten a lot of social norms.”

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About Charlotte Richardson Andrews

Charlotte is a London-based writer and journalist. She writes about music, politics and pop/queer culture for The Guardian, DIVA magazine and Q, amongst others, and has been Deputy Editor for Wears The Trousers since 2008. She digs punkademia, comix and smashing patriarchy. She's also the founder of Queer Zine Fest London.

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