They're just choosing different filters and one is trying to be liked and seen as normal and the other is trying to challenge you and to be arty and strange. Both are succeeding in doing what they chose, and each has been in the other's position at other points in their career. That is, there have been times when Roseanne sought to challenge you and times when Madonna sought admiration for possessing conventional beauty.
I mean: How dare you put these women side by side and compare them as examples of satisfying your template for female beauty? These 2 women are perhaps the 2 most accomplished and brilliant women we have seen in our popular culture in our lifetime. Roseanne is sublime as a female stand-up comedian and creator of a perfect television sitcom. Madonna is the greatest female pop star of all time and she has a special genius for the visual presentation of herself, historically bold and imaginative.
I don't know what's worse — taking pot shots at Madonna because she's not enacting an accessible mature female persona at the present moment or crediting Roseanne for looking like a nice, pretty older lady in one photograph and vaunting her only for fun of stepping on Madonna.
I suspect that both women would say the same thing: Fuck you.
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75 comments:
No woman must be made to feel bad about, or responsible for, anything, ever.
Why are you calling them women? What evidence do you have to support such a hasty conclusion?
Narcissistic indulgence through surgical, perhaps medical, corruption, normalized through practitioners of psychiatric dysphoria.
I am sorry, but Madonna looks like Marilyn Manson now. She should grow up. How embarrassing for her kids.
wow. Again Madonna looks like a cross between Marylin Manson and a sex toy blow up doll.
I think they've both already said FU over whatever the current scandal de jour is from media about them and many, many times in the past. I didn't recognize the Donna Reed filtered version of Roseanne but I was familiar with the recent Heidi pigtails from Madonna...although, as always, there is nothing sweetly innocent about her dance moves.
Madonna doesn’t challenge me. I am revulsed by her. What would challenge me is if Althouse transformed herself a la Madonna. Full plastic surgery and everything. I dare you.
Both women are trying to gain attention and get a reaction from fans/potential fans. As I understand the rules, we are only allowed to have a positive reaction. Negative reactions are sexist. Am I doing this right?
Jeez. Lighten up, will ya? Some things are just meant to be funny. Like Freud supposedly said, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."
Madonna looks ridiculous because she is pumped full of Botulinum.
Art? Creative? NO. Narcissistic mental illness...
Deformity as shock value. Her career is shock. this is just the next level. But it's not accomplished with art or song or dance. now it's Versace plastic surgeon.
In a stretched alien person sort.
We now celebrate metal illness - so I guess it's all cool.
Madonna's life and career are a giant Fuck You.
This is just Madonna jumping the neurotoxin shark.
Mead, given the recent trends in her posting and commenting, I sense your partner has begun experiencing incipient dementia.
The psychology of people who find faded pop stars interesting is probably very interesting.
I don't know what's worse — taking pot shots at Madonna because she's not enacting an accessible mature female persona
Oh good gravy Althouse! Nobody is unhappy that 64 year old Madonna is not looking like an accessible mature female persona. They are all noting, some with more vinegar, that Madonna has gone off the deep end.
I agree this meme is both stupid and sexist. But clicking the Madonna tag also reminded me that you yield to no one in your fandom of Madge...
Both women have spent decades gaining fame and notoriety and making huge amounts of money from performing and being seen in public. They've lead very public lives because it's benefited them to do so. The idea that we are supposed to treat them with reverence and not say anything about how they look is silly.
And the point of the comparison is to say something about conventions and the limits of imagination. Madonna was conventionally pretty back then and Rosanne was, again by conventional standards, not considered attractive as a dumpy fat woman. In both cases it was part of how they established their personas and made money. And now, today, Madonna would be deemed the freak show and Rosanne fits the mainstream mode as a gracefully aging pretty grandma.
And either woman expressing a vulgarity would hardly be a shock since that's always been part of the routine. No civility BS there.
I wish I could reconcile Althouse comments today to those made about Trad Wife's, but not possible.
How dare you!
Channeling Greta is a bad idea.
This is obviously going to happen inside everyone’s head. A better idea would be a rational discussion about tribal associations and body dysmorphia.
Why is Madonna so repulsive looking at a gut level?
Why did she choose to do that to her face?
How is the human race going to separate itself from the need to judge appearance?
What are the dangers in not judging someone’s appearance? Are there signals inherent in signaling you refuse to conform with biological drives and realities that are deeply penetrated into social contracts?
People are going to at a gut level mistrust someone who looks like a lizard person. This is a biological safety mechanism. What are the consequences of ignoring that?
Kylos said..
"Madonna doesn’t challenge me."
right? But I do wonder who looks at Madonna and thinks... HMMM - aging gracefully includes a lot plastic surgery and injected bacterial toxins. I better re-think my retirement strategy to include those.
Leave Britney alone?
"IS a giant fuck you"
Thank you to referring to Madonna as a pop star instead of as a musician. I believe it is fair to comment on how she presents herself her “art” has always been based on the visual. Her music is pretty pedestrian pop music that will be largely forgotten before she is inevitably forgotten. If you were going to list the greatest female singers of the 20th century she would not be in the top 1000.
What I find amusing is that we have gone from Ginger or Mary Ann to Jennifer or Bailey to Giselle or Bridget to Gloria or Claire to Madonna or Rosanne. Nobody in 1990 would have seen that one coming!
FTR I am on team Mary Ann, Bailey, Bridget, and Claire.
A quick glance around the interwebz reveals her fans are saying the same thing.
I think this the more likely example of the profanity usage:
Random person: I find this person more attractive than the other one.
Everyone: Here is a list of all their accomplishments and you should treat them like human beings not sex objects.
Random person: Fuck off. Also, you're ugly.
Both women made a career out of being untamed. Roseanne went against the standard of feminine beauty and Madonna leaned into it. Thirty years on, they've switched. Remarking on that isn't insulting.
However, Madonna has gone full uncanny valley at this point. It's unsettling and sad, so it attracts clicks. Twitter (and Facebook) are devolving into a dark place.
Roseanne just lost weight and hid her gray with bleach.
Madonna looks like she is going the Michael Jackson route. The worst medicine money can buy
Yes, how dare you have an opinion! That's the mantra for our age.
Roseanne I have come to like for her bravery in facing down those that would silence her for her opinions. I thought she was a raunchy slob in her earlier incarnation, but I also thought that it was maybe just part of her shtick. Madonna has just become kind of sad and irrelevant now. I was never a fan of her music, but I do acknowledge that it was in some ways groundbreaking. But looking at her antics on video now, it's just.... sad.
Madonna has adapted a trans-beauty identity. How dare people criticize her! That's transphobic! /sarc
Neither one could hold a candle to my wife of 48 years.
They're both deeply talented, no doubt. Meanwhile one of them looks healthy and normal, and the other one looks like a freak. And has chosen to alter her appearance to look like... that.
Madonna hasn't exactly lived in seclusion, including this version of her. It's not like we broke into her house to finally see what she looks like today and then ahhhhhhhhh!
Either she's done this to get the attention (success!), or it's a failed attempt, somehow, to look young, or something else is going on like dysphoria. I wish her well.
Althouse's reaction is one of those lefty triggers that I can work out on paper, like diagramming a sentence, but will never feel in my gut. Normal people are gonna normal, granted that normal is hate-speech now.
It's unsettling and sad, so it attracts clicks. Twitter (and Facebook) are devolving into a dark place.
They are progressing with mainstream media, government equity programs, and activists' theory of inclusion. #EmbraceDiversity... color judgments, labels, not people. #HateLovesAbortion
Neither one could hold a candle to my wife of 48 years.
"These 2 women are perhaps the 2 most accomplished and brilliant women we have seen in our popular culture in our lifetime."
Please tell me this is sarcasm.
Madonna isn't a great singer, but she did have a certain charisma (not just attractiveness). Look up her Live Aid performances on YouTube, for example. Now, she's a Martian.
Althouse triggered - again!
"How dare you!
Channeling Greta is a bad idea."
Current weird Madonna looks like Greta.
I assume most of the readers/commenters here have seen the meme that features Howard Cosell, O.J. Simpson and Bruce Jenner from a sports broadcast in the late 70s/early 80s, with the caption: "Ladies and gentlemen, I have just returned from the future and you won't believe this shit." The Rosanne/Madonna meme is a variation on the same theme. As Elvis Costello memorably put it, "I used to be disgusted, now I try to be amused."
Big difference in making fun of how some naturally looks and pointing out that plastic surgery has made them look like a space alien. As the motivational poster used to say - sometimes your purpose in life is to be a warning to others.
When Michael Jackson went down the road of extensive plastic surgery, it was widely considered to be an exercise in self-hatred. Maybe you're right that when Madonna does it, it's genius, but it sure doesn't feel healthy or empowering.
Roseanne, on the other hand, is coming off a long period where she has seemed publicly out of control, and her new appearance fits with a suggestion that maybe she's finally settling down.
"Greatest female pop star of all time": I'd give that award to Doris Day. She certainly had a better movie career than Madonna. At least two of her songs, "Sentimental Journey" and "Que Sera Sera" have a "White Christmas" durability. She recorded a Billboard hit in her nineties. There was something reassuring about Doris Day. Unlike Judy Garland or Edith Piaf, she didn't have to transform the misery of existence into the beauty of art...Madonna strove to achieve the effortless cool of Debbie Harry and mostly failed......There's something fraudulent about Roseanne's appearance. She now looks like a woman who had been very pretty during her youth, but pretty girls--with the possible exception of Julia Dreyfus--don't develop Roseanne's sense of humor. Well, anyway good for her. Apparently she got the kind of face that can be improved with plastic surgery. Not so much with Madonna.
Both women have had extensive plastic surgery. Rosanne talks about it openly. While you can do you, I always have a pang of hesitancy when women who are so accomplished feel the need to change their appearance as dramatically as these two have.
They both are great innovators and it is OK to age, it is ok not be a perfect beauty, it is ok to have sagging things, even when you are a public figure.
Barbara Bush (W's mom) said she was a more realistic version of an older woman, in comparison to Nancy Reagan. Maybe that isn't a bad thing.
It almost sounds as if this post is creating an argument about which mentally off-balance woman is the most heroic. Neither, is the correct answer.
I've never liked either of their works, even in their 'prime', though I do appreciate that they were both talented. I never thought Barr was funny. She had some bits, but I found her routine tedious and her voice obnoxious. That’s just me. I know millions love her. And I didn't watch her TV show because not too many sitcoms are actually funny to me. There’s some classics. And the rest are all pretty much “My Mother, the Car” to me.
As for Madonna- I never got her, never got the popularity of her music. Her songs were bubblegum music to me and it made me cringe to watch grown men get into her music. And you knew it was because of how she dressed and acted out. Again, that’s fine, but it wasn’t a turn on to me. We all have different taste.
Both of them 'made it', and both of them lost it mentally, having periods in their lives when it seemed they were a minute away from being put away. Roseanne seemed to find her way back to some calmer place. Madonna still clings to wanting to thrust her hips at teenagers. She can do that. I don't have to watch, or care. She's always been repulsive to me. That hasn't changed.
Anyway...where were we?
"... taking pot shots at Madonna because she's not enacting an accessible mature female persona."
Madonna is a smart lady who has always made very deliberate choices. If she is "not enacting an accessible mature female persona," I have to assume that's on purpose. IOW, this is the image she WANTS to project to the world at this moment. Presumably she expects her current look to provoke a reaction. And presumably this is the reaction she intends it to provoke. So why is Ann's response to that reaction, "fuck you"?
Now, if Madonna looked this way because of some kind of disfiguring accident, illness, or medical malpractice, I'd agree that it'd be rude to harsh on her looks. But not when it's her own intentional choice to look this way.
As an aside, I reject the idea that people aren't entitled to their own aesthetic judgments.
"...Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues
You can tell by the way she smiles"
Madonna isn't being 'arty and strange,' other than her choice of clothing.
It's bad fillers and bad plastic surgery.
Both are geniuses in their own way.
But you left out Mary Tyler Moore and Carol Burnett as two other spectacularly accomplished show biz women in our lifetime (mine and yours anyway).
The tie-breaker goes to Rosanne for NOT simulating oral sex on national TV recently.
What must Madonna's kids think?
Hey look, mom's on TV pretending to suck a cock...
These 2 women are perhaps the 2 most accomplished and brilliant women we have seen in our popular culture in our lifetime.
Women, Ann? Really? Not people?
On behalf of my daughter and granddaughters I really have to object to this.
It seems like a tendency especially among women who identify as feminists to deny that women can compete with anyone. Not just other women. Sometimes they will come up short. So what? Sometimes they won't.
Saying that women must be compared to other women means they will always come up short. It is accepting and amplifying the idea that women cannot ever be equal. That they are and will ever be inferior.
It is bad enough when men do this. It is doubly disgusting when women do it.
John Henry
Michael Jackson was an incredible - unbelievably so - musical genius.
Why are we allowed to point out that *his* plastic surgery went way too far, but not Madonna?
Madonna really does look like the material girl now. It is just unknown what that material is.
Madonna has spent 40 years or so visibly promoting her considerable talents. That promotion, purposely outrageous at times, has led to considerable financial success and fame.
Pretty much the same thing Donald Trump spent his life doing with comparable levels of success. Perhaps less fame but more wealth.
Yet every day someone here in the comments calls trump a narcissist. It seems a widely held view. Might even be true.
I don't think I've ever heard anyone call Madonna a narcissist for the same behavior.
John Henry
To be clear my comments above were not intended to take anything away from Roseanne or Madonna.
I was complaining about the general attitude that "they are really good. For women"
John Henry
If only Facebook had just one Tirien Steinbach on staff, this sort of thing would be straightened out right away. Just ONE!
They're just choosing different filters and one is trying to be liked and seen as normal and the other is trying to challenge you and to be arty and strange.
So they don't actually look like this? Did they choose the filters and post the pictures themselves?
I mean: How dare you put these women side by side and compare them as examples of satisfying your template for female beauty?
If they posted pictures of themselves somewhere and used filters to change their appearance, doesn't their appearance become a topic for discussion? Isn't each of them inviting comment, and therefore, judgment?
There's a lot of talk about "the male gaze" and "objectification" that oversimplifies real world interactions. What if we all sometimes (and some people often) try to attract the attention of others to our appearance? Sometimes that attention isn't something we seek, but when it's something we do want, can we get indignant about it being offered? Madonna and Roseanne are not only two of the very accomplished women of the last 40 years, they are also two of the most attention-seeking women of our era. Isn't it too late to complain about their receiving the attention they sought?
When we talk about appearances, we are of necessity talking about beauty, but -- if the pictures aren't entirely a product of filters or photoshop -- then couldn't the real lesson here be something about how people (or women if you want to be specific) take care of themselves and their appearance as they grow older?
I suspect that both women would say the same thing: Fuck you.
They'd each say that to a lot of people, and do. Would they say it together in female solidarity? I doubt that. They'd each probably find much to criticize in the other's photo.
I would trade the two of them for one Joan Rivers.
Madonna reminds me of the time I watched a young woman in a bus stop apply eyeliner........with a black Sharpie pen!!
Don't do that!!
Madonna looks unnatural, but I think my feelings on seeing her natural age would still hurt. I prefer to remember her like she was here- young and beautiful, just a little older than I was at the time. None of us really age well.
I could never tolerate Roseanne or Madonna -- even in their primes -- so this post leaves me baffled. Madonna popularized Barbie Doll dress-up pop with a new look for every album. That's a girly thing to appeals to girls, so ladies have at it. But she didn't speak to me. Roseanne is mainly known for bringing rudeness to female comedy, and continued a rising trend of rude male comedians. Not funny, just rude and self-consciously outrageous. Pass.
But still, Roseanne's appearance follows convention while Madonna's doesn't. Beauty is universal because it reflects an approximation of average physical appearance, so it's not so much bias is exposure and training about how a human naturally looks. It emphasizes youth, symmetry, clear skin, common proportions, etc.. Freaks violate averages by accident or design, and thereby are not 'beautiful' to the masses. That would be oxymoronic. See the irony of the Eels "Beautiful Freak" album.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/beauty
https://www.allmusic.com/album/beautiful-freak-mw0000186246
Apparently country music isn't part of our pop culture because Emmylou Harris has had a much longer and higher quality musical career than Madonna. At least in my opinion.
As an off topic aside, have long thought "Lady Madonna" was the best Madonna song yet.
(did Madonna ever do a cover of that one?)
Fuck me? Back that rig up over here, missy!
Roseanne looks happy Madonna looks miserable. Smiling women are always prettier.
who-knew said...
Apparently country music isn't part of our pop culture because Emmylou Harris has had a much longer and higher quality musical career than Madonna. At least in my opinion.
Bonnie Raitt too.
"the other is trying to challenge you"
Whatev. She tried in vain. Unless she challenged me to shrug.
"each has been in the other's position at other points in their career"
Actually, no. Madonna has never been canceled like Roseanne. One is a good prog, or at least perceived as such, the other not.
Madonna's primary source of income is/are the royalties from her prior work.
Every time her name appears in major media her income gets a boost.
Like the man said, just spell it right.
Singing talent or not she's a Hell of a businessperson. See Gaga, Lady.
Although, her current approach might not work for someone dependent on judgement of her current work.
Also, "Ray Of Light" on headphones at volume is awesome. Didn't know till I tried it.
People are judged on their appearance, to the extent they control it, because it indicates something about their underlying character, much like the clothes they choose to wear. And the imagined "Fuck you" response, which I suspect might come from Madonna but not Roseanne, is part of that. If she wants to make herself look hideous as a means of saying "Fuck you," that's her right, but we can respond accordingly.
No woman must be made to feel bad about, or responsible for, anything, ever.
I see you've been reading Reddit.
Just returned from Trader Joes, where they played Papa Don't Preach, and I thought how excellent Madonna was. Lets give her credit for it. Also, she didn't die from a drug overdose in her prime, like Hendrix, Prince, Janis Joplin, etc.
Roseanne looks like Roseanne.
Madonna looks like a demonic Greta Thuneberg.
What interests me is the fact that these women, along with a number of others in the entertainment business, have tons of money yet wound up with crappy plastic surgery. Roseanne, who I do not like, looks normal but Madonna looks like the "pre" image in one of those TV programs about how to fix botched plastic surgery. There are other examples, like Kim Bassinger and Meg Ryan.
re Pete said...
"...Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues
You can tell by the way she smiles"
“ And Madonna, she still has not showed
We see this empty cage now corrode
Where her cape of the stage once had flowed”
No woman must be made to feel bad about, or responsible for, anything, ever.
I see you've been reading Reddit.
I've been posting that comment here for well over a decade.
“These 2 women are perhaps the 2 most accomplished and brilliant women we have seen in our popular culture in our lifetime.“
Whaaa . . .
Joni Mitchell, J K Rowling, Agatha Christie, Elaine May, Agnes De Mille, Georgia O’Keefe, Annie Liebowitz, Meryl Streep, Barbara Streisand, P D James, Sophia Coppola and on and on. Nothing against Madonna or Roseanne - but they’re not the 2 most accomplished and brilliant women in my lifetime.
And Madonna looks very bad. My personal observation is this: with Botox, peels, surgery, women can hold onto that 28-35 look until their mid 50s. At that point they need to choose: 1) keep pursuing that 30+ look and start looking like freaks or 2) gently glide into looking “really good for their age.” That’s a much more difficult decision then it seems. As long as they can buy that 30+ look they are perused by 25 to 35 year olds. As soon as they give that up, the young crowd vanishes and their potential mates are usually in the 70+ range. That’s a tough transition. That young crowd is what Madonna is aiming for, chasing that eternally 30 look (in my opinion). By the way the young crowd stays with the eternally young freaks. Why? For the money. A woman who pays a fortune to look eternally young will spend another fortune on increasingly mercenary hanger-oners.
Geeze, can’t a guy channel a little Rudy Ray Moore now and then!?!?
That’s white supremacy!
No woman must be made to feel bad about, or responsible for, anything, ever.
I see you've been reading Reddit.
I've been posting that comment here for well over a decade.
That must be where Reddit got it from!
Madonna is the picture of Dorian Grey, where her sins are seen in her face.
and I would feel less sorry for her if she hadn't taken a Malawian kid from his father's family to adopt (because the fad was adopting African orphans back then) and is now showing him off prancing around in a dress (because the fad now is having a trans kid).
By the way: I worked in AFrica and the cultural background of the son is ignored.
That son lost his mom, and would have died in the village, because of lack of milk (formula is very expensive) so like many kids was placed in an orphange. Usually the family would pick the kid up when they were weaned and able to exist on local foods.
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