Tuesday 11 March 2008

Madonna!

Dearest Darlings, Madonna has been ordained into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. That’s lovely for her and perhaps she deserves the accolade, she has aspired to inhabit glamour and I wholeheartedly applaud her fetish for reinvention. Madonna is a totally bona fide fashion icon who has created some magnificent pop moments over the years she has cleverly bolstered her limited vocabulary by surrounding herself with fabulous producers who develop her pop ditties into catchy dance floor fillers, for that alone she should be commended.

Remarkably Madonna turns fifty this year but the cultural response to her unwillingness to hang up her dancing shoes is utterly nauseating. Physically anonymous journalists reprimand Madonna on the youthfulness of her hands whilst concealing their own decrepit digits behind their desks. Madonna appears to be in the midst of a battle with the aging process and it is clear that she works hard to maintain a particularly high standard. She is the pinnacle of resistance and a paradigm of control. For her efforts she should be celebrated as she harks back to the golden age of stars who wished to uphold glamour, as it is glamour that proffers hope to you in the humdrum daily routine.

Above Marlene Dietrich on stage in her seventies

Though I have to reveal a fundamental truth to you dear reader, as all is not as it seems, Madonna and the ever youthful stars like her are magicians. They are careful to make public appearances with the best light diffusing make up; they make the most of the flash-bulbs ability to bleach out fine lines. They have mastered the ability to hold their heads in such a way as to defy gravities effects. Their publicity photographs are air brushed and photo-shopped until the original snap is barely recognisable. And of course there is the inevitable surgical assistance that is still beyond most mere mortals, though surgery and the ever increasing botox treatments work wonders. One of the key arsenals in a glamorous stars artillery and secret to the appearance of eternal youth is lighting.

Those of you that can be bothered to work for a living are sat day after day in offices, shops, call-centres, factory floors or some other despicable location where florescent strip lighting erases any residual ‘beauty’, after the weeks and months if not years of alcohol and sustenance abuse. The few pleasant looking twenty somethings amongst you could easily be mistaken for pensioners under such cruel unforgiving scrutiny.

This expertise in illusion is understood by the show business elite, though the cruel and parasitic photographers, journalists and publishers at some point decide not to play along, they decide to reveal the truth about the beautiful’s appearance in a dastardly way. The malicious press pull back the curtain and show the cogs in action when it suits them. When a paparazzi shot emerges of Madonna un-augmented and without air -brushing it is a shock to your bemused disposition. You are blissfully unaware of the deception and the harrying tabloids are only too happy to destroy your dreams and crush the joy the glamorous bestow on your pedestrian existence.

Madonna has always used these enchantments and I suspect that if she were sat next to you she would seem quite ordinary. It is the magic of make-up and lighting that transforms this average looking woman into a legendary style diva. Though my Dearest Darlings retain your state of disbelief as these theatrical devices are here to protect you from the reality of the everyday, you desperately need the world of the glamorous as without it’s delights all is dour and bleak. I beg you to turn away from the procurers that persistently rain on your parade.

As an empress of allure I only offer clues to the secrets of glamour; the covert and unspoken sisterhood prohibits me from revealing too much and this is how happily how it will stay. Though I will tell you this, if at all possible dim your lights and master deportment as it will aid the assumption that you are defying the age process. Most crucially of all, only allow photographs of yourself to be distributed after they have been digitally augmented to best flatter the mediocrity that is splattered over your puffy faces.

Congratulations to Madonna and long may she reign as a queen of deception, illusion and glamour!

Much Love the staggering Ms Coco LaVerne x