She Never Left You..
Nearly 30 years into her reign as the greatest gay icon, Madonna is back in a big way with her new film, "W.E.", and her first studio album in four years, reminding us why so many adore her.
Madonna spent a lot of time caring about the bad, but she claims to have moved on.
"I don’t really dwell on it anymore. I used to be kind of fixated on it and think 'It’s not fair, it’s not fair, it’s not fair', but it is what it is, and I just have to get on with my life."
But Madonna’s passion for this topic belies that resolute attitude:
"If you are threatened by me as a female, or you think I’m doing too much or saying too much or being too much of a provocateur, then no matter how great of a song I write, or how amazing of a film I make, you’re not going to allow yourself to enjoy it, because you’re going to be too entrenched in being angry with me, or putting me in my place or punishing me."
Meeting Madonna in person can be a little jarring.
For someone so larger-than-life, she’s surprisingly petite.
Sitting down and launching into conversation, she is disarmingly engaged, and she slouches a bit, like any mere mortal.
But she’s not, of course.
A burly man is guarding the door of the suite at New York’s "Waldorf-Astoria" Hotel, where she has settled in for the afternoon.
And she’s dressed eccentrically — black leather fingerless Chanel gloves cover her hands, silver bracelets of varying shapes run up both forearms (and a red Kabbalah string), and a royal blue asymmetrical shift hugs her taut figure.
In the midst of the "AIDS" crisis, when fear was rampant and gay men were dying at a horrifying rate, Madonna was among the first to take a stand, to say, as she did in the tour documentary "Truth or Dare", that it’s OK to be a gay man, who is openly sexual:
"That it’s OK to be gay, period", Madonna says emphatically before launching into an impassioned recounting of her experience of the "AIDS" onslaught.
"I was extremely affected by it. I remember lying on a bed with a friend of mine, who was a musician, and he had been diagnosed with this kind of cancer, but nobody knew what it was. He was this beautiful man, and I watched him kind of waste away, and then another gay friend, and then another gay friend, and then another gay friend. They were all artists and all truly special and dear to me."
In retrospect, Madonna sees that as the moment, when her sense of self became entangled with that of gay men.
"I saw how people treated them differently", she says.
"I saw the prejudices, and I think, probably I got that confused with, intertwined with, you know, maybe things that…ways that people treated me differently."
Perhaps Madonna wasn’t the only one to "confuse" her personal treatment with that of gay men.
The feeling was mutual.
As she exploded in popularity, Madonna became identified with the collective gay male sense of self.
So, when she moved on, devoting less and less time to her gay compatriots, many felt a twinge of abandonment.
That’s when bitching about Madonna became the great gay pastime.
"I never left them", insists Madonna, echoing a lyric from "Evita".
"When you’re single, you certainly have more time to socialize and hang out with your gay friends, but then, you get married, and you have a husband, and you have children, and your husband wants you to spend time with him. I’m not married anymore, but I have four kids, and I don’t have a lot of time for socializing."
She’s been back in New York for two years, after splitting with Ritchie.
"I hope nobody’s taking that personally. It certainly was not a conscious decision. As it stands, most of my friends in England are gay. But I’m back", she says, adding reassuringly
"Never fear".
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Read the rest of this entry at news.advocate.com/post/16914705360/madonna-the-truth-is-she-never-left-you
source: advocate
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