Now, I need to be perfectly clear about something before I go any further: I don’t condone mocking people for their looks. As a general rule, I think it’s a really rotten thing to do and it’s just a really low route to take when you’re criticizing somebody. Making fun of fashion choices is one thing, but their body is another story.
All that said, it doesn’t necessarily seem unfair just to remark on how different Madonna looks from how she looked for decades without taking nasty swipes.
And it doesn’t seem unfair to wonder what novelist Jennifer Weiner was thinking with this opinion piece in the New York Times:
“Every new version of Madonna was both a look and a commentary on looking, a statement about the artifice of beauty, and about her own right to set the terms by which she was seen.”
Some thoughts about Madonna’s face: https://t.co/jlNffHgsCX— Jennifer Weiner (@jenniferweiner) February 8, 2023
Beyond the question of what she’d had done, however, lay the more interesting question of why she had done it. Did Madonna get sucked so deep into the vortex of beauty culture that she came out the other side? Had the pressure to appear younger somehow made her think she ought to look like some kind of excessively contoured baby?
Perhaps so, but I’d like to think that our era’s greatest chameleon, a woman who has always been intentional about her reinvention, was doing something slyer, more subversive, by serving us both a new — if not necessarily improved — face and a side of critique about the work of beauty, the inevitability of aging, and the impossible bind in which older female celebrities find themselves.
…
Is it possible that Madonna has been so blinkered by her fame and wealth that she’s lost the ability to see herself objectively, like Michael Jackson pursuing an ever-thinner nose or Jocelyn Wildenstein doing … whatever it was she was doing? Yes, but whatever her intentions, the superstar has gotten us talking about how good looks are subjective and how ageism is pervasive.
In the end, whether she meant to make a statement or just to look younger, better, “refreshed,” almost doesn’t matter. If beauty is a construct, Madonna’s the one who put its scaffolding on display.
Good effort, Jen. But no.
The left is a coalition of decay pic.twitter.com/3NekLomaj1
— Auron MacIntyre (@AuronMacintyre) February 8, 2023
That’s maybe a little harsh, but there’s really no denying that the “brilliant provocation” take is a really weird one.
Plastic surgery options:
• 5 years younger
• 10 years younger
• Brilliant provocation pic.twitter.com/a7zDFVeSrl— Jon Gabriel (@exjon) February 8, 2023
I can’t claim to read Madonna’s mind, but usually when someone undergoes dramatic plastic surgery, it’s not because they’re striking a blow against traditional standards of age and beauty, but rather because they want desperately to live up to those standards.
https://twitter.com/baronitaigas/status/1623405801929904129
Madonna's "new look" is not a strike against ageism – it seems more like giving in to ageism. How people present themselves is ultimately up to them and I don't comment on attributes they have no control over. But that degree of plastic surgery is just unpleasant to witness.
— Cooterdwayne Enos (@cooterdwayne) February 8, 2023
I’m not going to tell Madonna how to live her life, and if the surgery makes her feel good about herself, more power to her. But I also can’t pretend that the attitude that would lead her to do this is a healthy one.
