14 DAY TRIAL // Madonna never really had much success as an actress and she believes part of the reason why that happened was because people wanted her to fail, she says in the December 2011 issue of Harper's Bazaar, whose cover she graces.
Set to make her directorial debut this year with “W.E.,” Madonna sat down with the mag to talk about how people (and showbiz, in particular) tend to limit women in everything they do.
Just because she was a singer, Madonna was always told she couldn't be an actress. Then, when she turned to directing, she was told she couldn't do that either, she says in somewhat vague terms.
She believes this comes from some sort of conditioning, one that applies only to women and of which she is the good example.
“I think it’s just that as a creative person, in all the different things that I’ve done or ways that I’ve found to express myself, I’ve consistently come up against resistance in certain areas,” she tells the magazine, speaking from experience.
“I think that the world is not comfortable with female sexuality. It’s always coming from a male point of view, and a woman is being objectified by a man – and even women are comfortable with that. But when a woman does it, ironically, women are uncomfortable with it,” the star adds.
It's conditioning that's to blame, she states.
Then again, obeying norms has never been Madonna's strong suit, which is why she's more than happy to prove people wrong again and, at the same time, have them question the standards they wrongfully set.
“The fact that I didn’t have a mother helped me in some respect, and that I didn’t have a female role model,” Madonna says of breaking free from said conditioning.
“I was always very aware of gender politics, growing up in a Catholic-Italian family in the Midwest, seeing that my brothers could do what they wanted but the girls were always told that they needed to dress a certain way, act a certain way,” she adds.
“We were told to wear our skirts to our knees, turtlenecks, cover ourselves and not wear makeup, and not do anything that would draw attention,” Madonna recalls.
In the same interview, Madonna also speaks about Lourdes and her desire to become involved with fashion, her much younger boyfriends and which are the priorities she sets for her children. See here for more.