Confessions of a Trend Whore: How The World Fell Out of Love with Madonna

The Donny Darko incident was the straw/camel moment. Last week, Madonna, the teetering Queen of Pop, turned up to the Met Ball in New York in a horrendous Louis Vuitton ensemble resembling a steroid-addled cyber bunny. Her outfit was met with something that Madonna, the Anna Wintour of pop music – in terms of both fierceness and infallibility – rarely encounters: explosions of laughter. She looked like Donny Darko, Perez Hilton (a self-professed massive fan) barked. Michael K of D Listed (a blog on which Madonna is referred to as ‘Vadge’) almost lost his mind in fits ridicule. “She’s lost it!” magazines cried. “She looks ridiculous!” commuters tittered on trains to work flicking through free sheets the next morning. The world was laughing at Madonna. Could it be the most concrete sign yet that the reign of Madonna is finally over?

There have been many pretenders to her throne; Britney, Christina, Gaga, and so on, but none have had the cultural impact that Madonna has had. Every other pop starlet, we liked, danced to, went to see in concert, requested on the radio. But Madonna, we were told to BE. Her image and attitude inspired a cult of followers. Women dressed like her, borrowed her attitude, bought her book, investigated her religion, had kids when she did, grew up with her and in her likeness. Madonna was a church. What would Madonna do? A generation of many women (and many gay men) asked themselves.

We all know the story of the Detroit girl rocking up to New York with a pair of dance shoes and a few dollars in her pocket hoping to make it, before becoming immersed in the night life culture, and finally breaking out and becoming a massive popstar, a global phenomenon, a trend setter of music, fashion, post-feminism, a woman who popularised bondage and S&M imagery in music videos (which is now omnipresent), a woman who managed to make that golden word ‘reinvention’ key to survival.

Personally, I never knew why such ‘reinvention’ should be praised. Madonna was never really doing her own thing, just latching on to emerging trends and capitalising on making them mainstream. She saw things that were working early on and copied them. When she had exhausted one genre, she would leap into another, sometimes successfully, sometimes disastrously. In marketing terms, she became the archetypal ‘sneezer’ – an early adopter of a trend or a product who then spread it to more mainstream consumers. But, it’s important to note, she was never the origin of a trend.

For a long time, throughout her many guises, she was seen as a touchstone for behaviour. Apart from things like make-up, clothes and that gum-snapping attitude she showcased in her early career which millions aped, other less material behavioural indicators were also adopted by her fans, and subconsciously by those ingesting her actions merely as a result of her colossal presence in popular culture. When she published a book about sex, it was seen as a landmark event in sexual liberation. When she said yoga and pilates were the key to maintaining a healthy body, endless women grabbed yoga mats from the shelves. When she became more refined, posh, moved to England, started larking about on horses, it was like a quiet signal to those who grew up with Madonna that it was time for them too, to settle down. But recently, her behaviour has ceased to be forward-thinking or realistically easy to access or imitate. Whereas previously people followed in her footsteps, her path now appears so wayward that continuing to mimic her actions in some crazy worshipping conga line that has stretched from the 80s, seems ridiculous. Buying babies, hooking up with a male model many years her junior, working out so hard that she now resembles a centaur, obsessing over her image, airbrushing any publicity shots excessively with ridiculous results, and diving head, lips, cheeks, forehead and whatever else first into plastic surgery is just not realistic. What would Madonna do? Probably stuff that you wouldn’t.

Madonna’s infallibility in popular culture and women’s magazines reached ridiculous levels throughout her career, but the democratisation of popular culture media through the internet has allowed cynical voices to laugh at her efforts at remaining relevant. Also, those working in women’s magazines are no longer those who grew up with Madonna and worshiped her every reinvention. They are women in their 20s and 30s whose cultural reference points don’t stretch as far back as ‘Desperately Seeking Susan.’ Yet, this is not about ageism. Tina Turner and Dolly Parton are still rocking hard and have a warm place in people’s hearts. But in contrast to Madge, their motivations seem to be about joy (and making a nice nest egg), not a steely determination to remain relevant.

Much of her downfall lies with Madonna’s inability to grasp that pop music is now beyond postmodern, beyond irony, completely post-sarcastic. Lady Gaga sends up superficiality (modelling herself as a one woman living, breathing, dancing and bemusing fake art project) while Madonna just is superficial. Britney Spears struggles to gain control of her life but sings “I’m like the ring leader, I call the shots” in ‘Circus’ while Madonna is a control freak, dictating every move or her career with the severe meticulousness of Ernst Rohm. Christina Aguilera broke barriers of taste, decency and normalised dressing like a porn star in the video for ‘Dirrrty’, yet acted like it was completely normal, while Madonna’s motivations in provocative fashion have always been blatantly for controversy’s sake.

What will her legacy be? A bullet in the boring sky when she broke through and a pop star who managed to keep on that crazy fashionable treadmill of the charts? Or crap actress, a dodgy singer, a poster girl for gym addiction, and the jolting current image of her as a terrorist in a hostage situation of ageing gracefully. She must realise, that no matter how hard you try, you can’t be in vogue forever. Yet if you stop trying, you might find your rightful, more relaxed place in the galaxy of pop stars.