Ethereal Girl

Why, why, why and crashing why is there still Madonna?

Sorry to dive into a rant already and not allow you a tentative shallow comment for you to dip your toe into, but this is something I don't understand. Here's why:

• The 80s were awesome, and Madonna was a musical instituition. Then, she found the big red button labelled "SEX" and pressed it. Ladies and Gentlemen, she has had her finger holding that button down since 1986.
• One word: KABBALAH. Or Baby Kabbalah, and all its derivatives. I know its some kind of religious sect, but the very name makes you stop and go, "What is it?" and then promptly slip into a catatonic state three seconds after they start answering.
• She 'found' a mystical Kabbalah fluid that would apparently cancel out the effects of toxic waste. This was highlighted, I think, on a latest-season episode of Never Mind The Buzzcocks. Naturally, it was knocked on its arse by Simon Amstell.
• The country house thing. She promotes Kabbalah and then goes and shoots a pheasant.
• Kudos to her because she 'appears' to have the body of a 30-year-old at 50, but there's a time and a place for a woman to wear a flesh-coloured corset and have parts of it ripped off by a man twenty five years her junior. Her latest music video is not that time or place.

Don't get me wrong. The Immaculate Collection is, just like Ronseal, exactly what it promises to be. And she was cute and fresh in the 80s. But her transfer from then to the modern world of invasive press and celebrity fanaticism seems to have robbed her of her enchantment. Everyone seems to gloss over her with a "meh, seen it all before" attitude. Either that or she's a horrid person for driving her husband away, or she's the victimised wife struggling to hold on to her family.

But isn't that the thing with celebrity women? Everything hangs in a most confusing balance: if they're with a man, he's cheating or they're about to break up, or if they're not with a man they're miserable anyway. Jennifer Aniston is allegedly 'distraught' when she's not with a man, but then when a certain male film star recently admitted to self-harm the media world collectively gasped. Apparently men are supposed to be stronger than that.

As a last thought. As I put it to my fellow blogger Az: "Would you have sex with Madonna?" His reply; "Perhaps...if she was 80s Madonna."