CELEBS | Madonna: “I’ll stop doing everything that I do when I don’t want to do it anymore”

Are you still daring to ‘get into the groove’? Madonna, 62 today, has never stopped to surprise us. In a career spanning four decades, she made a real cultural change and her legion of fans, surpassing generations, is the proof she has never gone out of fashion.

Perpetual transformation is the key to her never-ending success: she has reinvented herself several times for albums, videos, photoshoots, tours and movies and there has never been a pop star writing and performing at her level, demanding a seat at the table, at her age. Why wouldn’t Madonna demand it? 

People have always been trying to silence me for one reason or another, whether it’s that I’m not pretty enough, I don’t sing well enough, I’m not talented enough, I’m not married enough, and now it’s that I’m not young enough – she said-. So they just keep trying to find a hook to hang their beef about me being alive on. Now I’m fighting ageism, now I’m being punished for being in my 60s.

For Madonna youth is a state of mind and she is determined to continue provoking by simply daring to be a mature woman who exhibits desire and a need to be desired.

People say I’m controversial but I think the most controversial thing I have ever done is to stick around – the Material Girl explained-. What I am going through now is ageism, with people putting me down or giving me a hard time because I date younger men or do things that are considered to be only the domain of younger women. I mean, who made those rules? I’m going to keep fighting it. 

For Madonna keep pushing ourselves into uncomfortable positions as well as taking risks and keep putting ourselves in new adventurous situations are the best ways to keep us alive and youthful. Her advice?

Stop thinking about age, just live your life and don’t be influenced by society trying to make you feel some type of way about your age or what it is you’re supposed to be doing.

The Queen of pop, mother of six children, is a natural-born fighter and that’s probably why she keeps being such an inspiring artist. Although she dug deep into depression, childhood trauma, the AIDS epidemic, and even the physical abuse she sustained at the hands of her ex-husband, she has always found a way to strike back.  Flirting with controversy many times – from kissing Britney Spears at the 2003 VMAs to dangling from a disco ball crucifix during her 2006 ‘Confessions Tour‘ -even today Madonna is pushing the boundaries of what the ageist music industry and society, in general, expect of older women.

I’ll stop doing everything that I do when I don’t want to do it anymore – she said-. I’ll stop when I run out of ideas. I’ll stop when you kill me. How about that?

Pioneer of the art of ageing playfully, just ahead of her 62nd birthday, Madonna released a banger collaboration with Dua Lipa and Missy Elliot called the ‘Levitating‘ remix, which came out on August 14 – yet again proving that age is just a number after all.

It’s an outdated, patriarchal idea that a woman has to stop being fun, curious, adventurous, beautiful, or sexy past the age of 40. It’s ridiculous. Why should only men be allowed to be adventurous, sexual, curious and get to have all the fun until the day they leave this earth? Why should that only be the domain of men? How do we fight this? By standing up to men and by standing up to social mores or standards that say we cannot– she explained-. The more women that do it, it will just be a matter of time.

Whether we love her or hate her, we can’t deny with her way of living boldly and passionately she inspired all of us – once younger women dreaming of that custom made cropped tuxedo jacquard jacket worn by her and Rosanna Arquette in Desperately Seeking Susan(Orion Pictures, 1985) as a superpower accessory-. to step out of our comfort zone. 

Thank you, Madonna, you made us think reinventing ourselves is always possible.