Stripping = NOT a Tribute to Girl Power

Madonna. Madonna. Madonna. Please, please stop trying to help. Some of your music belongs on my list of best songs EVAH, and I love your performance in Desperately Seeking Susan. Plus, you were robbed of an Academy Award nomination for Evita. Damn, you were extraordinary in that role. But when it comes to “role model for girls,” you have managed to be the antithesis for thirty freaking years. Before you, parents who let their five-year-olds out of the house in sexy lingerie would have been jailed. Middle-schoolers in revealing outfits with cross-necklace accents would’ve been sent home to change. Cone bras would not have made a comeback. And it would most definitely not be okay for a woman of any age to flash a nipple in a public arena or to charge $745 for a fourth-row ticket to see her strip.

Last week in a stop in L.A. on the MDNA Tour, Madonna told her audience that she’d been moved to tears by the story of Malala Yousafzai, a young Pakastani blogger who had been shot by Taliban asshats after she wrote in support of education for girls. I can understand Madonna’s anguish. Only asshats still hold the mistaken belief that females don’t deserve schooling and opportunities for a better life and freedom from burqas.

So, logically, to show her support for Malala, Madonna did what allllllllll of us want to do. She mowed down those Taliban mother fuckers with an Uzi. What? She what? Oh. That’s right.

Never heralded for her logic, Madonna did not, in fact, remove the scourge of the earth with weaponry after all. She stripped. In public. In front of thousands and thousands of people. Because showing your tits is the absolute best way to say, “No more objectifying and oppressing women, you dickless Taliban freaks!” Madonna thought performing a strip tease that revealed “Malala” painted on her bare back…ah, hell. I have no freaking idea what Madonna was thinking.

How is parading your nakedness going to affect any change, Ms. Ciccone, especially in the minds of Taliban followers?  We’re all happy for you that you still look amazing at your age. You can stop rubbing that in now. I’m sure Guy Ritchie feels like a putz that he no longer gets to tap that sculpted ass of yours and feel your veiny arms around his neck and stick his tongue in that gap between your front teeth through which a semi could easily pass.

Look, Madonna. If you protest burqas by going over to the Middle East, stripping bare, and flipping twin birds in a bustling open-air market, maybe I can get behind that. Generations would worship your bravery and bullet-ridden corpse. But stripping in L.A. to support the idea of education for oppressed women smacks of exhibitionism and narcissism and desperation. Thanks for setting back the progress yet again.