Madonna still looks fab as she turns 60
STOP all the clocks because she certainly has. Madonna turns 60 in two weeks, but the utterly fabulous queen of pop still looks as magnificent as she did in her distant youth.
How does she do it? It’s one of the mysteries of the universe.
The twice-divorced multimom has celebrated the milestone with an eye-popping photo spread and interview in Italian Vogue.
Sex? Drugs? Rock ‘n’ roll? Sorry to disappoint, but no. Between the glossy pages and the fabulously bonkers pictures, we discover that the woman once blamed for everything from the decline of teenage morality to the rise of the female bicep is now just another “soccer mom”, fretting about domestic timetables and weekend fixtures.
“You have no life, in a way,” she confides in the Vogue interview.
We learn that for the past year, Madonna has been living in Lisbon with four of her six children, David Banda, 12, Mercy James, also 12, and the five-year-old twins Stella and Estere.
All four were adopted from Malawi and all are now in Portugal because, says mom Madonna, David has wanted to “play soccer professionally for years”.
With sporting facilities in the US not up to scratch and the mandatory celebrity disapproval of US President Donald Trump, they’ve decamped to Portugal.
Here, David attends a football academy and Madonna and her brood revel in the history, architecture and horses.
“One of my favourite things to do is to ride,” she says.
Indeed, one of the Vogue photographs captures Madonna showing off her equestrian skills as she stands up to muster the mounts pulling her carriage. However, note the whip in her hand, which shows there is life in the old girl yet.
In another snap, she lies on a lawn swathed in black lace and sheer hold-ups, as though she had collapsed en route to a Goth-themed saga sex party in the dungeon of Dracula’s castle. In another one, she’s skipping through a mini-maze with three of her girls, everyone dressed in ringa-roses white.
If there is a message to be gleaned from this glamorous, but crazy, spread of jumbled images, it is this: Madonna is still in charge, she is still the centre of attention and she is still in possession of a nicely burgeoning God complex.
“Portugal is a very Catholic country, which suits me just fine,” Madonna told Vogue, perhaps forgetting all that Kabbalah stuff or that in 1989 she was condemned by the Vatican for burning crosses and dancing semi-naked with a black Jesus in the video to promote her single, Like A Prayer.
However, Madonna’s ability to reinvent herself, no matter the facts, fantasy and self-delusion, remains an inspiration.
By the age of 40, she had published an X-rated book full of explicit photographs of herself, boasted about her lesbian affairs and performed fellatio on a bottle during Truth or Dare, the 1991 documentary about her Blond Ambition world tour.
At 50, she was the poster girl for the kind of superior, celestial anti-ageing that only fame and money could provide, while her reputation as the envy of the peri-menopausal set was undimmed.
Now, at 60, she remains a glorious, terrifying physical benchmark for women; a reminder never to go gently into that dark night.
Vamp, tramp, diva and unlikely virgin, we have been through the Madonna mill over the decades.
These days, she seems keen to present herself as a cross between an earth mother and a mother superior, complete with sexy stockings.
I don’t mind any of that. After all, she could be just another ageing starlet, selfmedicating in a mansion, mainlining on vodka and compliments as she fades away to nothing.
Here, she is being strong, recording yet another new album while urging her children onwards, like any tiger mom worth her stripes.
She says of David: “I want my son to be a loving human being. If he happens to be the next Cristiano Ronaldo, that’s just the cherry on the cake.”
No pressure. After all her adventures, she seems to have concluded that if you have to exist, you have to excel. That’s not such a terrible message for her children or for anyone else. – Daily Mail