The problem with this idea, the question, the projection, Madonna, all of it——is that it’s through a warped lens—-much like race. I was recently watching a group of folk discussing race and colorism and it occurred to me, how I’ve thought this before, but in projecting myself onto the panel—-realized they were trying to make logical sense of an insane system.
Madonna is in an insane system.
So for the past 50 years—-including her teen years and then magnified in her twenties when she became famous, she’s been inundated by these beauty standards and expectations. Say it was at a Level 4, and then she got famous, more and more, as a decade went by so that by the time she was say 30—-it was at a Level 14. The normal woman in America/world society probably hovers at a 5 to 7, in terms of beauty standards, self-regard.
Now yearly, Madonna sits down and talks to lawyers, record executives, etc. and they examine some of the past and project to the future. But in general, numbers start coming up.
- 300 million records sold
- $500 to $700 million in personal fortune.
- Billions earned for Warner Brothers.
I was watching an interview with Oprah and she was walking around her West Hollywood offices and there were all these posters and framed pictures of her and then I saw another interview of her at her former Harpo Studios—and it dawned on me—-an odd question—-what the fuck is that like? BLOWN up pictures of you——everywhere. Then TV images, then print pictures, then magazine pictures and on and on and on and on. And photoshoots. Have you ever noticed how many freaking pictures celebrities take?
I have a Madonna mash up video this guy made sort of tracing her career from beginning to now in about 8 minutes of the song. There are a LOT of pictures. There are so many pictures, that I’ve never seen before, that I wonder how many pictures I haven’t seen.
Now flipside it———-imagine being Madonna and having seen every single one of these approved pictures—-the photoshoots, the videos, the films, the interviews?
When we look back on the psyche/personal effect of the 20th to 21st century—-Fame and the Internet—- will be the biggest psychic bombs. On one level she’s in a business and has turned the business/agreed to it, as a projection of herself. And been successful at it. She’s also made a career or dressed a career by changing her image——her appearance, to the rest of us—-trying out new looks at such. She’s turned herself into sort of a template to try out all of these possibilities, combinations of hair, face, make-up, clothing, ideas——and unlike most women, who age and maintain a similar appearance, she has the resources in money, clothing and people, to be vastly diverse.
Most women only “change” with age and then a few creative changes of hair color, new make up, time, injury. It is unusual for a human being to change through intervention of both design, style and even yes, some science.
But there are only say, a thousand of us on the planet, being offered directly or indirectly, MILLIONS of DOLLARS, to make these constant changes, constantly.
Personalize It
Many of us, male and female, due to family, time and work, gain weight. I would then offer/argue, that the benefits of work make us spend more hours there, at a desk or company, eating unhealthily, rather than exercising for hours on end through the majority of our lifetime.
We kind of get paid to be capable of work yes, but also to be present and therefore, to trade that potentially incredible healthiness, for money. We also trade time to be with family, raise children properly, so we don’t always have time to, again, super duper, exercise.
65% of Americas are obese. Two thirds. Because of time, work, eating habits, choices.
But Madonna is in pretty good shape because she, being Madonna, is more than her job, her work is more than her Life’s Purpose—-she is her Life’s Purpose——and part of the Madonna “brand” is change, diversity, experimentation, pushing margins and boundaries. Most people, one don’t know their life’s purpose, and two, maybe only a few dozen people ARE their Life’s Purpose, in such a monumental way. And I think that monumentalism is from their work projection to the rest of us.
Madonna therefore IMPACTS us differently than Susan down at Target. Beyond like or dislike, she’s part, a large swatch, of our realty fabric so her visage/body is in like this dualistic symbiosis with our own projections of our images of Madonna. And we’re comparing all of that bullshit to our internalized ideas of women, age, what is “appropriate for women”, what’s right, etc..
I personally have never been outraged or particularly shocked or aghast and judgmental of her—-she’s not THAT extreme to me, but I have liberated and libertine sensibilities. The ONLY time that I was like—-oh, ok, Madonna—-was during her Sex book campaign when she was strolling up a Miami Boulevard naked—-bush out. I thought that was audacious—-not for her or a woman—-but for a celebrity. But I’ve seen plenty of bushes before so I wasn’t aghast. lol
So we have Susan from Target or our mom or sister or wife or rando women, in comparison to Madonna, who is unique in that she has resources and control and experimentation with her appearance/identity, and is handsomely rewarded for it.
We do arrive to Madonna with our social issues and mental maladies of racism, sexism and ageism. We try to force something bigger than a normal human’s—-reality identity?—-I don’t even know how to completely contextualize “not Madonna”. She’s in rooms, with teams of people, creative people, thinking differently about Self, about being a woman, about time, about age than your mom or Susan at Target, behind the cash register.
She’s also used to attention in a much different way than most are. She’s at a place where attention for her is not fuel like it is for the majority, it’s more of a malleable medium—-she controls how she is seen to a greater degree than Susan. But she can shift, but not control, the way the lens—-the minds—of those viewing her—- are, what they think about broad things, like women as a space and age as a context.
I think she’s high end, higher space seeing, right there is a projection upon her about what she “should” look like and be based upon how many “Susan’s” we’re normally surrounded by or are.
The above female Target workers are women, some closer to her age range, but they don’t have the resources or lack of physical stressors or ability to eschew that which is unhealthy for them by whim. Perhaps what Madonna is unintentionally showing us—-is one, the future. as people have more time and resources—-the masses reduction of being trans will be Self Design——in more options, colors, diversity etc. and that will mean what it means to be a woman will change dramatically, because of what longer lifespans and more resources will mean to age.
The projection is that those born in the approximate 1960s will be able to live with healthy interventions past 100, and those born past 2000 will live over 125 years.
I personally plan to “retire”, barring illness or injury, in my late 80s——as a Columbia professor did so at 88—-so I’m thinking 90 is when I might go—-”Wow, I’m old!” but I don’t know if other than moving physically slower and not wearing thongs, will I ascribe to minimizing myself mentally due to age. But my Self Reality isn’t based on my physicality, so I can accept that will decline. I’m more my mind than my own attractiveness/beauty/appeal/youngevity as Madonna is, must be, seems to like being, and has certainly profited from.
Madonna, barring some surprising illness or accident, has another 20+ healthy years, particularly from her resources and ability to engage the cutting edge. She’s further along than the majority of women so she probably perceives women as far more advanced and autonomous than most women do of even themselves—-we tend to see people as we see ourselves, or the potentiality of them as ourselves. And yes, that includes like men pop Viagra for hard-ons, she has popped some Botox to tighten something here and there, and there because her industry—-of Madonna—-depends on being Madonna.
This is Bette Davis at the same age.
This is 64.
This is 64.
This is 64.
This is 64.
This is 64 that we’re more accustomed to seeing when the person is not an industry. Madonna’s point about aging within fame and the undertones of her having resources to change what she will, is really what this is about. Age is changing, women have varying resources now and therefore will have various expressions of that physically…….and we’re all perceiving celebrities through multiple, insane, warped lens to begin with. I would argue that Fame is both becoming the epitome and removal, from normal society in a self-consuming way.
It’s kind of good. I was just laying in bed, cuddled with my wealth of pillows and comforters and thinking on what my next moves were going to be. Two books had arrived from the printer (of course there are minor corrections, but that’s to be expected.)
Rewind.
I was on the #5 bus headed up Broadway to the post office to pick up this box of books. And since it was just a short jaunt of a few blocks, I had my phablet and was listening to music but hadn’t brought along a book. So I was thinking.
I was thinking about a past relationship and as I am inclined to do—-getting a little steamed about the thought, person, argument. Replaying it in my head and looking at it from a new angle—-which was spurred by a spontaneous dinner with a colleague a few weeks ago and she’d asked me about my dating life, as we’d talked about hers. I laughingly told her a comment a guy had made, judgmental but complimentary, yet it had taken me a couple of years past the relationship, to realize he meant that he was intimidated by me. It didn’t help that my bus ride, weeks later, was to pick up a book that had included bits and pieces of that relationship, fictionalized.
This is why said gumball was rolling around at the back of my mind. I get to the post office——frightened there will be a long line in the middle of the afternoon—-no line! I wait maybe 30 seconds and hand my slip to the attendant and a minute later have this huge box in my tote bag. I open it in the park across the street and the books are brand new and sexy and pretty and heavy and smell good and when I page flip, the text is crisp and visible.
I start smiling and beaming, overjoyed.
I realized, running mentally through past classmates and friends and folk who wanted to be writers that I’m standing here with more of my books, adding to the passel selling around the world. I’m not just blooming with gratitude and joy, I’m grateful that I’m not living the tortured life of some other folk.
I made a decision over 10 years ago to step out of the matrix known as Corporate America——having done financial work, securities litigation work, a host of things, a strong resume——for education and then used my time to control my schedule and to simply write.
Write, I do.
When I was young, scoring 6,7,8 grades ahead of my own peers on Standardized tests and imagining what I might be interested in, I was writing. I never took my writing “business” seriously so after undergrad I went into companies because they were “serious business”. You get to go up in the elevator and you have a desk—-that one!—-and it’s yours and you decorate it. Eventually I didn’t decorate as much because I was consulting so there were time limits on how long I would be there. I made it a point to not get comfortable. To not make that part of my identity. For about 10 years or so I didn’t know what the alternative to that corporate identity was….because I liked business, liked the intricacy of it, had owned several businesses as a child/teenager.
I even had friends/schoolmates who sailed into CA, never to be heard from again…..until I saw FB pics or them on the street—-fatter, a lot less hair. I realized they had a desk and probably decorated it, perhaps even the Holy Grail——an office—-a room, a little room in a bigger office, that is yours, but not really yours.
But I get to—-write even this blog post—-write a novel most of my working time, my work now taking up about 5 hours of active working. The other 35 is my writing Kyle stuff. I’ve been offered several promotions, could get all ambitious and hungry, and play dirty games……but I can literally feel the days, the hours, when I write less at work. When work takes up too much of my attention away from my Life’s Purpose.
I’m living and creating my Life’s Purpose. Yes, I know when I die, but I often think about what happens if I die this year? To the books? The TV show? I then think in production plans and product plans, I have to make an Exit Strategy plan for me, in case of death.
I used to think my giftedness meant I could do anything, that I could simply focus and learn and master anything—-which I sort of can. Which for awhile provided a whole range of possibilities.
Then I found this one, good thing to do well, very well, and it all clicked.
I’m walking down Amsterdam, swinging my tote bag full of books I’ve written, good books, and I’m beaming like the sun. I start to think of the ex and friends, near and far, and how they’re going to that desk, maybe in an office, inside of a bigger office, and how I’ve made the conscious choice not to.
It’s not what I expected, but I am happier with myself, little ol’ me.
#KylePhoenix
#TheKylePhoenixShow
