Oh, Honey.....,

The world is threatened by my power and my stamina. My intelligence and my will to survive.
But they will never break me
this is all the test. pic.twitter.com/XvcaaG0Rrs

— Madonna (@Madonna) February 7, 2023

WaPo  | We are interested in what happened to Madonna’s face because the real discussion is about work, maintenance, effort, illusion, and how much we want to know about women’s relationships with their own bodies.

There’s an obscure passage in “Pride and Prejudice” — hang on, this is going somewhere — that I’ve never been able to get out of my head. The Bennet sisters are taking turns playing piano at a social gathering. Middle sister Mary “worked hard for knowledge and accomplishments” and was the best player of the group, but Elizabeth, “easy and unaffected, had been listened to with much more pleasure, though not playing half so well.”

The problem with Mary, Jane Austen makes clear, is that she showed her work. She showed the struggle. Her piano-playing didn’t look fun, which made her audience uncomfortable. Guests much preferred the sister who made it seem easy instead of revealing it was hard.

That passage encapsulates so much about the female experience. How we love a celebrity who claims to have horfed a burrito before walking a red carpet; how we pity one who admits she spent a week living on six almonds and electrolyte water to fit into the dress. How “lucky genes” are a more acceptable answer than “blepharoplasty and a Brazilian butt lift.”

Madonna’s societal infraction at the Grammy Awards, if you believe there was an infraction at all, is that she showed her work. She showed it literally and figuratively. She did not show up looking casually “relaxed” or “rested,” or as if she’d just come fresh off a week at the Ranch Malibu. There was nothing subtle or easy about what had happened to Madonna’s face. There was nothing that could be politely ignored. The woman showed up as if she’d tucked two plump potatoes in her cheeks, not so much a return to her youth as a departure from any coherent age.

Madonna’s face forced her uneasy audience to think about the factors and decisions behind it: ageism, sexism, self-doubt, beauty myths, cultural relevance, hopeful reinvention, work, work, work, work.

This is what I think is expected of me, her face said. This is what I feel I have to do.

The more plastic Madonna looks, the more human she becomes. That’s what I kept thinking when I looked at her face. One of the most famous women on the planet and still the anti-aging industrial complex got under her skin.