AofA's Hot To Trot Talking Points

Every Friday

Join our discussions on everything from Madonna to the changing trends in obituaries.

1. We agreed with Susan Hyatt who created this post - Madonna didn’t embarrass herself at Coachella. She exposed you.

   ‘On Friday night at Coachella, Sabrina Carpenter had a surprise guest during her performance... Madonna walked out wearing the same lace bodysuit she wore in the dance tent in 2006 with the same boots and the same skin showing. She told the crowd it was a full circle moment, twenty years later, and then she and Sabrina did “Vogue” together, and then “Like a Prayer,” and somewhere in the middle they debuted a new song from Madonna’s upcoming album, Confessions II, out July 3.

   Madonna is 67. Sabrina is 26. My 13 year old self’s favorite with my latest favorite? It was, quite honestly, an electric and empowering moment.

   I’m a Gen X kid who built her whole aesthetic imagination around this woman. I made up dance routines to “Like a Virgin” in my best friend’s living room. I wore lace fingerless gloves to the mall. I watched Desperately Seeking Susan and thought, when I’m grown, I want to be cool like her . Madonna wasn’t just a pop star to girls like me. She was a permission slip. She told us our bodies belonged to us. That we could be sexual and smart and ambitious and weird and loud and none of it had to be apologized for. We could write the rules ourselves.

   So when I watched her walk hand in hand with Sabrina on Friday night, and then I watched the internet do what the internet does, I wasn’t surprised, but I was furious.

   “Somebody put grandma in a nursing home.” “Why is 67-year-old Madonna acting like a 17-year-old?” “Cringe.” “Dress your age.”

   Let me tell you what those comments actually are. They are not aesthetic opinions or fashion critiques. They are social enforcement.

   Here’s the rule women are supposed to follow.

   -Be beautiful, but only during a specific window.

   -Be desirable, but only for men, and only until you’re inconvenient.

   -Then vanish.

   Madonna has never once, in forty years, agreed to any of that. That is why they’re screaming.

   It’s worth saying what the plastic surgery conversation is really about, because women get reamed on both sides of it. Madonna has had work done. Demi Moore has had work done. Nicole Kidman has had work done. The comment sections have opinions on every millimeter of every face. Meanwhile, the same culture demanding these women age invisibly will crucify them the minute a single line appears. There is no winning. The game is rigged so the only acceptable outcome is disappearance. Work done? Vain. No work done? Letting yourself go. The punishment is the point.

   A lot of the loudest voices tearing Madonna apart online are other women. I’ve been thinking about this as a “lobsters in a pot” situation. If you’ve followed every rule, if you’ve shrunk on schedule, if you’ve gone quiet, if you’ve dressed appropriately, if you’ve turned down the heat on your own life because culture at large told you to, and then a 67 year old woman in a lace corset struts out under the Coachella lights and does “Vogue” with the biggest pop star of the year?

   Some women are going to feel rage. Not because Madonna did anything to them. Because she refused the deal they accepted. That refusal is unbearable to look at when you’re still trapped inside the contract.

   Now let’s talk about Sabrina Carpenter as she is one of the most interesting pop culture figures we have had in years.

   Sabrina is objectively, undeniably the whole package. Singer, actress, songwriter, comedian. Her music videos are tiny films with plot and insane wardrobe and violence and jokes. Watch “Taste.” Watch “Please Please Please.” Watch “Manchild.” And “Hour Tour.: Men get tied up. Men get buried. Men in her videos get exactly what they deserve. They are being told a specific, pointed, hilarious story by a woman who is in full creative control of the camera.

   There is a comment I saw recently from some guy online saying “no normal straight man likes Sabrina Carpenter’s music.” Sir, that is the entire point. Sabrina’s whole body of work is sexy, funny, clever, horny, winking pop written from inside a woman’s head for other women to enjoy. It’s the female gaze with a spotlight on it. It’s not for him. It was never supposed to be for him.

   His confusion is why he is camped out in the comments. There is a particular kind of male rage aimed at pop stars like Sabrina and Madonna.

   It is the rage that shows up when a woman is clearly, unmistakably, verifiably exceptional. Beautiful, and talented, and smart, and funny, and accomplished. And she is not delivering any of that exceptionality to him. Male entitlement tells him a woman this gifted owes him her attention. When she spends it on herself and on other women instead, he does not experience that as a preference. He experiences it as a theft.

   That is the rage you are seeing in the comments. It is not critique. It is grievance. A woman who should, by the rules of the system, belong to him, has opted out of the system, and he cannot tolerate it.

   On one side, men furious that these women are exceptional in a direction that excludes them. On the other side, women with unprocessed internalized misogyny furious that these women get away with breaking the rules. Two different angers, pointed at the same target, enforcing the same contract.

   Sabrina and Madonna are living proof you can survive that contract. You can refuse it at 26 and you can still be refusing it at 67, and the refusal compounds. The longer you do it, the bigger the stage gets.

   Sabrina is the inheritor. Madonna knows exactly what she is doing by showing up at her show. She has done this her whole career. She made a moment with Britney. She made a moment with Christina. Now she is making one with Sabrina. This is pop lineage. This is a queen saying, here, take the crown, wear it your way, I’ll be watching proudly.

   Twenty years ago at Coachella, Madonna was 47 and performing in the dance tent in a lace bodysuit the culture at the time tried to tell her she was too old to wear. On Friday, she put that same bodysuit back on at 67 and did it again. The outfit did not age out. The woman did not age out. The only thing that has changed is that now there are two generations of women standing behind her saying, yes, louder, do it again.

   Here is what I want women my age, and women younger, and women older, to take from this moment.

   You are allowed to still be here. You are allowed to still want things. You are allowed to be loud, and sexual, and ambitious, and fabulous, and ridiculous, and alive at 47 and 57 and 67 and 87. You are allowed to wear the bodysuit. You are allowed to headline your own life past the expiration date that was never real in the first place.

   They’re not mad about Madonna’s age. They’re mad she won’t shrink or go away.

   Be ungovernable. Age offensively. Put the lace gloves back on.’

   

   2. This was a post about a changing trend in obituaries - apparently, and we like this trend, they are getting closer to the bone. Not so many euphemisms and outright lies about them being a lovely person but more the nitty gritty as well as the glory. After all, that’s how it is.

3. We said - go Harry go. In that Harry Newton was the oldest London marathon runner at 88. Brilliant to hear.

4. There’s a new exhibition at the Welcome Trust and it’s called The Coming of Age. Which, of course, is right up our street. We haven’t made it yet but we intend to.

   ‘An exhibition that gives you hope about getting old. ★★★★

   The Times

   ‘The Coming of Age’ explores experiences and perceptions of ageing, from adolescence to later life, and asks how societies can adapt for us all to age better.

   Across the globe, people are living longer. One in ten children in the UK are expected to live beyond the age of 100. But who gets to live longer and ‘age well’? This exhibition explores how experiences of age are shaped by our environment, culture and society.

   ‘The Coming of Age’ features 150 artworks and objects, from historical artefacts to works by contemporary artists including John Coplans, Serena Korda, Suzanne Lacy, Anna Maria Maiolino, Rory Pilgrim, Paula Rego and more.

   Bringing together different perspectives from art, science and popular culture, this exhibition challenges assumptions about life stages and asks what greater longevity means for all of us.’

5. Artist, Joan Semmel busts the myth that you do all your good work in the earlier years. At 93, she says she’s doing her best work now. We agree.

She told Hyperallergic - ‘Joan Semmel’s boldly colorful, intimate paintings have radically shifted perspective from the male gaze toward a woman’s view.

At age 93, after more than 60 years as an artist, she believes her most recent paintings are among the best she has ever made.

“You say, ‘Fuck you. I’m good and you’re wrong,’” she told Hyperallergic. “This is who I am, this is what I do, and this is what I care about.”’

6. ‘Matthew Bannister is marking twenty years of Radio 4’s Last Word by looking at how our attitudes to death, dying and the way we memorialise our dead have changed. In this episode Matthew reflects on how the audience reaction to the announcement of his mother’s death set him thinking about how our attitudes towards death and dying have changed over the last twenty years. Matthew visits a death café in Sussex where the conversation covered subjects such as direct cremation, funeral costs and end of life plans. And Jimmy Caulty of The KLF speaks to Matthew about his plans to create a ‘peoples pyramid’ made of bricks containing the ashes of those who have died.’

   There are five programmes of 15 mins each. I’ll be listening.