Madonna and Me (19 page)

Before Anya left, I made a copy of the video. Each day, as soon as I returned from school, I’d switch it on for my daily dose. It was not long before the word “virgin” became routine and Madonna’s undergarments ceased to embarrass. They had metamorphosed into a symbol of conventional morality and tradition turned on its head. Her use of religious jewelry was particularly alluring to me. In wearing her religion, she included God in her sexiness. Either that, or God was sanctioning her himself.

Madonna’s name fascinated me, too. Madonna, Mother Mary: a good, virtuous woman. For Madonna, there seemed to be no schism between religion and sexiness, and I was a student eager to learn the same. To break the schism between my religion and my body and the bizarre moral codes of my parents, I shaved my legs, grew my nails, and applied whatever shade of lipstick a friend would share, once I’d arrived at school.

I finally understood what it meant to be sexy—it was only a four-letter word if you allowed it to be. Sexy was neither good nor bad; it just was. Sexy did not mean sleazy or slutty or of questionable stock. Sexy just meant that people found you sexually desirable. The fact that I was growing more comfortable with this idea, as well as the ability to say “sexy, virgin, crushes, kisses” no longer filled me with dread.

Madonna made my young heart flutter with endless possibility. I would listen to her on my newly acquired Walkman—a reward for earning stellar grades—on our frequent weekend drives to Mecca or Medina, holy cities for Muslims. When we’d arrive there, I would switch off my Walkman, don a hair covering, and
joyously worship Allah; then, on our drive back, I’d remove the hair covering, put my earphones back in, and return peacefully to Madonna. I would happily lip sync to “Papa Don’t Preach,” not at all shocked by the song’s message. Mothers loved their kids, I concluded, whether unwed in the West, or like Hajra/Hagar in Islamic lore, desperately running in the barren desert in search of water for her thirsty infant. Incorporating Madonna into my Muslim self was beginning to feel as effortless as my being bilingual. I could balance revolving around Madonna one minute, and circling the
Kaaba
the next. The two didn’t seem at all contradictory. I had entered a dual universe, one I still live in, and Madonna was instrumental in my learning to create a symbiotic existence.

Ironically it was in Mecca, during ablutions before prayers, that my mother discovered my shaved legs. I had rolled up the long pantleg of my
shalwar
and was merrily pouring water over my feet and ankles, when she yelped, “Are your legs shaved?”

I shrugged.

“Who gave you permission?”

My mother remained silent on our return drive. I figured it was to spare my father news of my fall. But once we arrived home, she cornered me in my bedroom, enraged and even more upset when she learned I’d filched the razor from her own stash.

“You did it to attract boys, didn’t you? You did it to attract
boys.”

I was shocked and angry that she refused to believe I’d shaved my legs only to avoid the girls laughing at my hairy limbs.

The shaving caused enough bad friction between us, but my mother found my expanding style of dress even more abhorrent. As the Jeddah stores began to stock Madonna-like clothing, we girls were fast transforming into mini-Madonnas, eager to rule the world in short skirts, leggings, and black bras.

My mother was lost as to how to discipline me. She kept saying I should pray for forgiveness. And pray I did, but only to complain to
Allah about how my parents were ruining my life. Finally my mother began to blame Madonna for my transgressions, as if it were Madonna’s direct instruction rather than my own choice that had me questioning and discarding my mother’s—and my culture’s—principles.

In the end, it was my father who brought things to a head. One afternoon he arrived home early from work to find me glued to the concert—
of course
he walked in just as Madonna’s two male backup dancers were thrusting their hips at her. He was livid. As I expected, he called Madonna a prostitute. Now I was livid. For the first time, I found myself defending an entertainer from his damning evaluation. Shame colored me red, but I stood my ground.

My father asked me through clenched teeth if my mother was aware of what I was watching.

“Yes,” I said, “and anyway, there’s nothing wrong with this; she’s sexy and that’s not
bad
.”

My father immediately telephoned my mother at work and raged at her. I could hear my mother agree that I was no longer allowed to watch the tape. But I defied them both—I made it a point to keep watching the video, especially when my father was home. This went on until the day they told me we were returning to Pakistan.

I do not know how much of a role the Madonna tape played in our return to Pakistan, but when we got there we learned she had conquered that place, too. Posters of Madonna festooned video and music stores, bedroom walls, and even pencil cases. Her music and videos played everywhere, including at my aunt’s house, where I first saw the video for “Like a Virgin” while my admittedly progressive aunt, much to my mother’s chagrin, teased her for being old-fashioned. Indeed, if my parents brought me to Pakistan to take me away from Madonna, they’d miscalculated.

And so it was that one day my mother barged into my bedroom, found that I’d pierced my ears against her wishes, and asked me if I thought I was Madonna.

“No,” I said quietly. “But apparently you do.”

In the long run, Madonna did not inspire me to do any of the things my parents feared: become a prostitute or birth a child out of wedlock, become a drug addict or even an actress. In fact, to their relief, I ended up respectably married. Yet Madonna’s physical bravado was my spiritual mother. In having to repeatedly defend everything she symbolized, I gradually became a person able to see shades of gray, as well as a person who knew her own mind and spoke it.

Over the years, Madonna’s presence in my daily life has waned. But the fact is—will always remain—that Madonna made my “today” possible. Current musical acts are just that—acts—but Madonna was pure, unadulterated, raw sexual liberation.

What Madonna meant to me back then and even now: a guide through the wilderness, a soul mate, sexy, but beyond being sexy, she was Hope. Hope that sexy girls did not necessarily die bad deaths, hope that sexy girls lived to tell their tales, hope that sexy girls could rule the world. And do.

Jen Hazen

 

 

 

 

 

PINK LEOTARD, PINK tights, ballet slippers. Since the age of five, I had wriggled into spandex after school two days a week to take dance lessons at Meeth Studio in Paw Paw, Michigan. My mother had trained for years when she was growing up, so even after her sudden death a couple of months after my eighth birthday, I chasséd in her footsteps with ballet, tap, and jazz classes.

After my lesson I usually stayed late to watch my teenage dance instructors, Miss Cindy and Miss Lisa, practice their modern dance routines. I recall a day when ten-year-old me leaned against the bar and watched in awe as the girls pirouetted and jetéd across the hardwood floor in black cigarette pants and frayed gray sweatshirts that hung off one shoulder à la
Flashdance.
Their synchronized movements refracted in the mirrored walls as they slid to their knees and fanned their legs into languid poses like
Solid Gold
dancers.

After the rehearsal, I asked Miss Cindy the name of the song they’d been dancing to. “It’s ‘Lucky Star’ by Madonna. She’s from
Detroit.” She handed me the album cover, which had a full headshot of a woman with bleached blond hair and dark eyebrows, like Marilyn Monroe. Her hands touched her face with a heap of chain jewelry on her wrists and neck. I went home that night and mocked Madonna’s cover pose in the bathroom mirror.
We’re both from Michigan,
I thought.

We didn’t have a turntable in my house, but we had MTV. The luxury of cable television magically arrived when my mom died. My dad, who’d worked second shift while my mother cared for me and my older brother, had no idea how to raise kids. I guess he decided that TV would be a good nanny. After the relentless rotation of Night Ranger’s “Sister Christian” and Kurt Loder’s music news, I finally caught what I had been waiting for: Madonna’s “Lucky Star” video. I studied her dance steps: pas de bourrée, dig step, turn, dig step, roll on the floor, show your stomach. I scrutinized her outfit: capri pants, short skirt, lace everywhere, tons of bracelets, and a floppy bow headband.

That year, I asked for a ghetto blaster for my birthday, and when the “Lucky Star” video aired again, I held it up to the TV and recorded the song. I danced to that crappy cassette recording in our family room for a year, mimicking Madonna’s moves in a getup consisting of torn black tights cut off at the knees, one of my dad’s black T-shirts knotted on the side, and about twenty gummy bracelets I’d scored from a gumball machine. I didn’t have a mom to tell me how to be, so Madonna would have to do. Besides, someone told me that she had lost her mom, too, and she turned out okay, right?

My idolization of Madonna ebbed and flowed as I grew up. My early teen years were tinged with the musical influences of my older brother, who had discovered leather pants, pierced ears, and “alternative” music. My dad was horrified and I was hooked. Cassettes of Siouxsie and the Banshees, New Order, The Cramps, and Sonic Youth ejected my homemade Madonna tapes straight into the garbage.

When all of the kids at school fell in love with Madonna thanks to “Like a Virgin,” I snubbed her popularity. Yeah, I was alternative
now. Madonna wasn’t deep like Siouxsie Sioux, who used words like “lament” and “torpor” in her song lyrics. Besides, Madonna seemed tame, rolling around on concert stages faux-humping in a hacked-up bridal gown, while Lux Interior looked like a creature from
Night of the Living Dead
. Sadly, Madonna just wasn’t the outcast that I’d hoped for, so I dismissed her.

Or at least until tenth grade, when I saw the “Like a Prayer” video.

The uproar over this scandalous little number ignited a shit storm in my tiny, homogeneous high school. In the halls, kids were squawking about “Madonna kissing a black guy,” taking sides about whether that was acceptable, and probably regurgitating their parents’ opinions on the matter, whether they realized it or not. The controversy even made the local news—Madonna kissed a black man! In a church! Burning crosses! Pepsi yanked its sponsorship! She’ll burn in hell with the Devil!

My love for Madonna was rekindled with that kiss. It was the best “fuck your status quo” move by a woman that I had seen in my life. And she did it so stylishly—with wavy brunette locks, a strappy corset dress, and no shoes. Brilliant. I remember declaring to my gaggle of girlfriends at the lunch table, “Well,
I
loved it. So she kissed a black guy. Big deal.”

But it
was
a big deal then, which, frankly, pissed me off and made me rebel even more. So much so, that I went out and bought the “Like a Prayer” tape. I remember reading the liner notes. Madonna mentioned her mom.
What would she think of her daughter doing all this?
I wondered. And then I wondered if my mom had been proud of me.

Being raised in a male household often felt like being reared by wolves. Supper consisted of TV dinners, cereal, or popsicles most of the time, and the day I told my dad that I had gotten my period, he nudged a box of tampons through a small crack in my bedroom door. On the other hand, he taught me that I was just as strong and capable
as a boy. But I quickly learned that liberation only existed within the walls of our home.

When I stepped into the real world, I felt an indescribable undercurrent of inferiority and dismissal. I began dressing in baggy clothes for fear that I wouldn’t be taken seriously, much like the girls in my class who prattled nonstop about clothes, boys, and prom. I studied to the point of exhaustion to prove my intelligence, with straight As and a high GPA.