Here are 4 things I know about Madonna.

1. She is one of the most successful and influential recording artists of all time holding multiple Guinness World Records.
2. Throughout her 40+ year career, she has reinvented herself over and over again from club kid to material girl to blonde goddess to dominatrix to enlightened earth mama.
3. I used half a can of mousse, a metal teasing comb, and a black satin ribbon to replicate her Lucky Star hair in 1984 and it was a complete fail.
4. Her face has been transformed; It’s full, bulbous, over-plumped, and line-free with lips molded like wax, and brows bleached a light ocher, and peeps are out of their minds posting, writing, and tweeting about it.

Madonna blew up in the media after her appearance at the 2023 Grammy awards where non-followers were “introduced” to her altered face. Before the show I had been thinking a lot about beauty in midlife, and why some beauty procedures are normalized and acceptable and others are not, even though every one of them contribute to the systems that uphold ageist beauty ideals.

Here’s why the uproar about Madonna made the reasons clear.

The support for, and backlash against Madonna generally fall into these camps:

1. Shock– WTF has she done?
2. Support– Shut your face, Queen M can do whatever she wants.
3. Pitting Women against Women– by comparing Madonna to Susanna Hoffs, Martha Stewart, wives, grannies, and this mom who went viral. 
4. Misogyny– the underlying issue is toxic beauty standards- a system of narrow and unattainable beauty ideals built to make women feel less than, broken, and worthless so we’ll buy into the impossible pursuit of anti-aging.

Women are heavily recruited into beauty culture starting in childhood. Search “makeup for kids” on Amazon and you’ll find pages of cheap pink plastic cosmetic sets for kids ages 3 and up. A Dove Self Esteem Report survey of over 1,000 girls aged 10-17 revealed that 52% of girls say toxic beauty advice on social media causes low self-esteem.

We’re bombarded with messages, encouragement, and expectations to cover, smooth, lift, de-puff, brighten, tighten, and repair our faces, and bodies our entire lives so how can we not be participants to some degree, however small or extreme, in the system.

We’re bombarded with messages, encouragement, and expectations to cover, smooth, lift, de-puff, brighten, tighten, and repair our faces, and bodies our entire lives so how can we not be participants to some degree, however small or extreme, in the system.

If Madonna had done nothing to her face, she would have been shamed and criticized for aging naturally. (Hello Sarah Jessica Parker.)

Madonna critics advise her to age gracefully which is a red herring. I’ve written about aging gracefully and why it’s a head-scratcher for me because it implies that as we age, we shouldn’t appear to have any difficulty.

Jessica DeFino, a beauty critic, writer and founder of The Unpublishable wrote in her piece “Madonna’s Face Is Not Subversive” that “What makes ‘aging gracefully’ a particularly nefarious euphemism for anti-aging is that it implies that anti-aging should appear to be effortless. ‘Aging gracefully’ is not effortless, though – it demands an incredible amount of effort and then demands even more effort to disappear the evidence of said effort.”

There’s a Swedish philosophy for living a balanced life called “Lagom” which translates to “not too much, and not too little- just right”.

Aging gracefully is like Lagom- not too much (excessive injectables, plastic surgery), and not too little (aging “naturally”) – just right* (skincare, makeup, hair color).

*Obvi it depends on your environment. I live in LA where botox and filler are as common as matcha oat milk lattés.😂

I live in LA where botox and filler are as common as matcha oat milk lattés.😂

But is one procedure any different from another in terms of toxic beauty standards? Not really. We’re participants in the system to some degree whether we wear Spanx, use whitening toothpaste, microblade eyebrows, get lash lifts, wear concealer, or use skin-brightening serums.

“Not too much, and not too little – just right”…where do you fall? How do you feel about your aging face and body?

Moi? I’m an active participant in the system slightly right of middle, and don’t care if it’s too much or too little, or too anything.🙋🏻‍♀️

I buy my fave sunscreen and vitamin C serum in bulk when they’re on sale (if you want to know the brands let me know in the comments), and I had brown spots the size of nickels at the top of my cheeks removed with Intense Pulse Light (IPL). Does it make me look younger? Probably, but I did it because I didn’t want brown spots the size of nickels at the top of my cheeks.

Yeah I know the beauty industry is taking my money, but I also know that I’m not broken and don’t need fixing. I don’t have a tight grip on how I used to look and I’m not trying to look like I was born after 1990. I’m skeptical of promises made via slick BS marketing, and I only buy what works. I’m anti-anti-aging, yet this is where I am, and what I like to do. Sorry, not sorry.😂

Clearly I put effort into my looks (including using a red light therapy helmet that makes me look like a pee wee football player to halt hair thinning), but condemning women, or telling them what to do, even if Madonna’s face elicits strong reactions, does nothing but distract from the actual issue; that in an ageist society, older women are culturally devalued.

On the Lagom spectrum of beauty, Madonna is too much, but she’s always been too much for the critics, the media, and the haters. That’s what makes Madonna, Madonna. It’s why she was told to calm down grandma when she was 35, and it’s why she sold out several major cities for her upcoming tour in minutes.

So much for the belief that older women are irrelevant.