We can’t handle Madonna’s muscles | Jane Czyzselska

Poor old Madonna – she can’t do right for doing wrong. If she doesn’t keep up her two-hour-a-day fitness regime, her body may thicken or – gasp – droop, and she may risk being charged with the celebrity crime of “going to seed”. Yet her honed biceps and protruding veins have this week been compared to the preserved bodies exhibited by the controversial German anatomist Gunther “Dr Death” von Hagens. The gossip website TMZ said it best when they dared to blog what many people were apparently already thinking adding a picture caption that read “After dinner with her 22-year-old toyboy, Madonna flashed her grotesquely sexy 50-year-old appendages. Nothing says ageing gracefully like an overly worked-out pair of monstrously sculpted and bloodcurdling veiny corpse arms.”

Pap-snapped as she left a London restaurant on Sunday night, the images are now the subject of another scandal. A spokesperson for the 50-year-old pop star insists the photographs can’t be real, because the singer “does not look like that in real life.” Whether or not the pictures have been doctored, there are a number of interesting issues here.

As TMZ clearly articulates, women past a certain age are supposed to grow old gracefully. In other words we are not supposed to look like we work up a sweat – either in the gym or with our significantly younger lovers – nor develop bodies that fall short of conventional notions of femininity.

What’s particularly fascinating about this “news story” is that whereas heterosexual men are increasingly permitted a wider palette of gendered physical and behavioural expression – think Russell Brand, Michael McIntyre, Eddie Izzard – women who stray beyond the limits of socially acceptable femininity are still pilloried for it.

Mick Jagger and Iggy Pop, both older pop stars with strong media profiles, have similarly rigorous exercise routines and sinewy bodies and yet they manage to escape harsh scrutiny. Let’s not forget that Madonna – like Britney – is a pop singer with a dance background whose physically demanding shows require fitness and stamina well beyond that of the desk-bound media plankton who critique her physique.

Despite the sea change in our attitude to some kinds of previously reviled female body types – think Beth Ditto, who has revolutionised the way we see women over size 16 – men in the public eye are still permitted a wider range of physiques and are not judged so reductively on their beauty.

I agree with my learned friend and psychology lecturer at London Metropolitan University, Jo Semlyen, who says, “I don’t think we should criticise other women’s bodies ever, whatever they do to them, even if we think we can unpick the reasons behind why women do what they do. We should instead critique the pressures behind why women do what they do to their bodies and why it’s policed”.

When friends have asked me whether I find Madonna’s lucky charms attractive my response is this: my view is irrelevant. Madonna’s body is none of our business. What’s the payoff for the negative comments about other women’s bodies? And why do intelligent women engage in this competitive badinage? Perhaps it’s easier to point fingers at women who upset the restrictive social contract to be conventionally pretty than to address our own shortcomings.

Here’s another thought. Envy. Much of what underscores the pot shots at Madonna is the fact that she’s a woman who seems to have it all and we’re jealous. The truth is we can’t possibly know if she’s happy or fulfilled but we’re encouraged to buy into the lie that we need money and things to make us feel good. If we lack these we feel resentment towards those who don’t.

I’ll end with the observation that film-maker CampbellX makes about the inimitable star. “Every time I see Madonna, I see an example of how hard work, determination, focus, and surrounding yourself with right people can triumph over having innate musical talent. I admire her for THAT. She can’t sing, though.”

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