From conical Jean Paul Gaultier bras to Evita tweeds and her own tartan kilts, Madonna has always had a knack for trendsetting fashion statements. But one of the accoutrements she wore on the first leg of her Celebration tour, at London’s O2 arena this week, sent a different message. She took to the stage in a knee brace. On the first night it was black, on the third, electric blue. The semiology of it is of a piece with her decision to slip a Gloria Gaynor classic into the playlist: I Will Survive.
Performers do not usually draw attention to their infirmities, but this has been a particularly testing year for Madonna, who was forced to postpone her tour by a life-threatening bacterial infection. The knee brace may or may not be a reference to that. What it certainly does point up is how impressive it is for a 65-year-old singer to be so energetically and exposingly strutting her stuff. These are the first of 78 shows across 15 countries. Life on the road is tough and, one way or another, she is owning the toll that it takes on her body.
But she is also defying those who love nothing more than informing her that she should act her age. Over the years, age shaming has become a familiar part of the Madonna circus, which she has turned to her advantage both on stage and off. Faced with a barrage of criticism in 2016 for a revealing outfit at New York’s Met Gala, she took to Instagram to point out that it was a political statement, calling out an ageist and sexist society that did not allow women to be sexually adventurous and expressive past a certain age. Five years later she criticised the same social media outlet for taking down a picture she had posted of herself with one nipple exposed.
Though she is clearly bear-baiting, she is also absolutely right to point out that the bear is still at large. “The most controversial thing I’ve done is stick around,” she said in her acceptance speech for Billboard magazine’s 2016 woman of the year award, a clip from which she plays in the show. Nothing but admiration greeted the butt-wiggling of Mick Jagger on the Rolling Stones’ 60th anniversary tour last year. It is shameful that Madonna is denied the same treatment.
The comparison raises another point. While the Stones are a triumph of consistency who look and sound exactly the same, only older, the “Queen of pop” has constantly reinvented herself. She may not top the charts as she once did, but she is still filling stadiums and arenas when many of her 80s pop contemporaries have died or faded from view.
Part of the role of artists of all sorts is to explore and expose the limitations of society by acting them out, whether in paint or other media – or in person. Sometimes the provocations need to be acted out again and again because lessons have not been learned. From her Material Girl of the 1980s, through her Holy Water explorations of Catholic iconography in the mid-2010s, to her current onstage incarnation as the sum of her mighty back catalogue, Madonna’s shapeshifting has enabled her to remake her point without becoming boring or predictable. She deserves to be celebrated as a performance artist as well as a pop diva.
