TRACK 1

“Kids were quite mean if you were different. I was one of those people that people were mean to. When that happened, instead of being a doormat, I decided to emphasize my differences. I didn’t shave my legs. I had hair growing under my arms. I refused to wear makeup, or fit the ideal of what a conventionally pretty girl would look like. So of course I was tortured even more, and that further validated my superiority, and helped me to survive.”

—MADONNA

“Children always understand. They have open minds. They have built-in shit detectors.”

—MADONNA

Before Beyoncé, Tween Thongs, and Baby Tiaras

Courtney E. Martin

MY MOM HAS an endearing habit of saving “television programs,” as she calls them, on her DVR for me to watch when I come home for holidays. Sometimes it’s a Tom Brokaw special or a segment from CBS Sunday Morning. Usually it’s a particularly touching moment on Oprah—a family reunited, John Travolta crying, free refrigerators for everyone. My mom, weathered by my impatience, very conscientiously cues the program to just the moment that she’s decided I’ll be interested in.

Last Christmas, I sat down on the leather couch with a glass of Trader Joe’s Two-Buck Chuck to await my mom’s customized montage. She was armed with her remote (the only piece of technology she seems truly comfortable with these days) and a mischievous smile. When she hit “play,” it wasn’t Oprah’s mantras or Charles Osgood’s stately voice that greeted me, but a grainy image of my eight-year-old self standing remarkably still while the unmistakable lead-in to Madonna’s “Vogue” began to play. My late-’80s habit of choreographing underwhelming dances to Madonna songs had come back to haunt me.

Oh, the jazz squares! Oh, the midriffs! Oh, the bossiness! I had clearly strong-armed my less assertive friends, Emily and Katie, into being my backup dancers. As they hopped backward, I strode forth, dressed in a sports bra and puffy mini-skirt, mouthing the words with sassy aplomb. Sometimes, and I am embarrassed to admit this, I scolded them when they missed their cues.

Poor, gangly Emily, who’d come from a strange faraway land called New Jersey and whose parents were very Christian and probably didn’t allow Madonna songs to be played in their home—so pure it had wall-to-wall white carpeting. Poor Katie, whose mother had thought it a good idea to cut Katie’s hair very short and then perm it until she resembled a mousy brown Orphan Annie without the endearing freckles. They each had enough to deal with. They didn’t deserve me. More specifically, they didn’t deserve Madonna and me.

What was it with Madonna and me? I wonder this as I watch the damning footage of my own personal homage to her. What sort of appeal did the Material Girl have for a second-grader growing up in Colorado Springs, Colorado—the motherland of the Evangelical Christian movement, home of the Air Force Academy, test city for Fast Food Nation?

The too-easy answer is, well, sex. Even at that young age, a neighbor boy and I had discovered my dad’s stack of Playboy magazines in the attic. On Barbie breaks, we’d flip through them, marveling at the bushy vaginas and big breasts in soft focus. I wasn’t turned on by them so much as curious about their power. They were hidden, after all. My parents—old hippies—were the kind of people that considered very few things off limits.

Madonna was undeniably sexy. She had that flirtatious beauty mark, that two-toned hair, that lacy glove. She let men hold her up and carry her around. She wore bras as outerwear. But as I watch myself—scantily clad and comically skinny, prancing around and striking poses—I don’t remember Madonna’s sexiness being what inspired my performance.

I was undeniably a child trying on a sort of adult persona, but it wasn’t the sexuality that I was compelled by. In the same way that I sometimes tried on ambition as a pretend “career woman”—purse thrown over my shoulder, always in a rush, heading to very important meetings with very important people—I sometimes tried on confidence, as Madonna. Ambition, as I’d come to understand as an adult who paid rent and pitched stories, is much more complex than the purse and the rushing, just as confidence is much more layered than a midriff and bold lyrics. But at the time, it was all just one big game of pretend.

Since then, lamenting the era of “too sexy, too soon” has become a big business. My sports-bra-wearing and hip-shaking (sans actual hips) of yesteryear actually has a name these days: early sexualization. Miley Cyrus—that sweet country daughter—posed seductively in Vanity Fair and suddenly radical feminists and Evangelical preachers stood on common ground, both lamenting the end of young girls’ innocence. Viral videos of little divas, dressed to the nines, rocking out to Beyoncé’s hit “Single Ladies” caused furious typing from both the nation’s progressive “mommy bloggers” as well as from church deacons. Suddenly little Lolitas were turning up everywhere—exploited, objectified, and eliciting the fury of the strangest bedfellows.

And even though Madonna, unlike Miley, was well into her twenties by the time she inspired little girls like me to vamp in their living rooms, perhaps she can be marked as the first pop figure to usher in an era of early sexualization.

I can’t help but wonder—would I be seen as another tragic casualty of our highly sexualized culture were my little video to go viral today? I think there’s a good possibility that I would be pitied and protected, that my gyrations might be interpreted as evidence of inappropriately early maturation. Though I might wonder why the hell my mom let me wear that sports bra, I can’t help but think the embarrassing scene would be wildly misunderstood if it were characterized as something salacious.

No matter what was in that video, at school on Monday I would mostly be known as the teacher’s pet—attentive, obedient, and smart. Ms. Johnson loved me, even when she sent me to the principal’s office for stomping to my cubbyhole that once. I literally wrote love letters to Ms. Mulholland, the teacher’s aide. She had the most beautiful smile and pretty pink sweaters. I adored these women. I wanted to emulate them, too. In addition to choreographing ridiculous dances to Madonna songs, I spent countless hours reading to a mangy pile of stuffed animals. I held the book out, just like Ms. Johnson did, so they could all see the pictures after I finished reading each page.

My models of womanhood were multitudinous. Madonna signaled brazen creativity, a flexible kind of beauty; and Ms. Johnson and Ms. Mulholland signaled intellect and kindness. She was untamable; they were fair. She was talented; they were sweet. I wanted it all, even at eight years old.

Despite my bossiness when it came to creating dance routines, as a child I was preternaturally meek, known for clinging to my mom’s side at backyard parties and whispering to my brother on the playground. But these women all represented different versions of a confident femininity. I had a hunch that one day I’d be able to own this kind of confidence myself, but at first, I just needed to dress up in it and dance around a little.

In high school, I felt like my sexuality was a ticking time bomb. This was in no small part because I was surrounded by Christian leaders who preached that young women’s desires were dangerous and must be tamped down, just as young men must learn to control their inevitably animalistic urges. None of us were really represented in that righteous picture of adolescent sexuality. My sweet boyfriends weren’t untamable hulks, just as I wasn’t a virgin or vixen. We were all just kids trying to feel good—guys and girls exploring sex and power with the brave aid of Captain Morgan rum poured in 7-Eleven Coca-Cola Slurpees.

At thirty-one, I still want it all, even as I’ve grown more sober about how difficult it is to contain all these parts of myself in one little life. I spend all day staring at a screen, trying to write a convincing op-ed, and then hit the bar, hoping for a really good set by a DJ who appreciates everything from ’90s hip-hop to Annie Lennox to, of course, Madonna. I pay my mortgage on time and in full, but I haven’t lost the taste for reckless euphoria now and again—the 4:00 AM taxi ride home, leaning on the window as I coast over the Manhattan Bridge and stare at the twinkling lights of the most mad and beautiful city on Earth. I think about having children of my own, as I also realize that I finally own my unique sexuality. I know my body. I know what I like. I understand the complexity of Madonna’s plea to “Express Yourself ” as only a grown woman could.

I’m not claiming that girls today aren’t damaged by some of the cartoonish images of sexuality they see around them. Surely it’s not good for young women to view their sexuality as defined by others’ probing eyes rather than by their own instincts and senses. And of course, a culture that objectifies women at younger and younger ages is also one that trains men to objectify women at younger and younger ages.

But Madonna didn’t teach me to be a heathen or a bitch or a slut, as some fear-mongers would claim. She taught me to be brazen, unapologetic, and multidimensional. She taught me to be the star of my own fantasy, not to acquiesce to others’ ideas of what was appropriate or beautiful. She gave me the confidence to request that my dad get his mammoth video camera out and tape the dance moves I’d painstakingly choreographed to go with each line and beat of Madonna’s best anthem of all, “Vogue.” It wasn’t about the miniskirt; it was about the imagination. Madonna taught me that there’s nothing wrong with confusing people—to drape one’s self in pearls one day and rosaries the next, clad in a pink evening gown with a leather coat, a little sweet and a little dangerous.

Articles of Faith

Shawna Kenney

AS A PUNK-ROCK girl growing up in Podunk, Maryland, Madonna was my dirty little secret. The few girlfriends I had in high school did not share my interests in slam-dancing and skateboarding, so more often than not, I found myself at shows with a steady group of guy friends. For all of our proclaimed rebelliousness, we dressed pretty much the same: baggy shorts, slip-on Vans, big T-shirts worn thin and stretched out from skating. We shaved, cut, and bleached our hair as much as our parents would allow. Old photos reveal my hairstyle as a hybrid of Tony Hawk’s ’80s-era signature bangs-in-the-face and the short new-wave look of the Go-Go’s. I wore earrings and a bra but was otherwise as androgynous as Boy George.

Maximum RocknRoll was my bible, and I didn’t kiss a boy until after graduation; if any of my peers were attracted to me, I was clueless about it. It’s not that I hated my body—I just never thought about it much. Part of punk’s ethos was to question authority and reject mainstream models, and in my mind, this automatically extended to what I’d seen of femininity. There were very few women in the punk scene of the ’80s, and definitely none in my town. This was pre-Internet and pre–mall-punk stores—a time before bands made fitted tees or sexy tanks for girls, and a time when new wave, pop, and punk never mixed. Shirts I bought at hardcore shows came in no smaller size than a men’s large, which, on my five-foot-two-inch frame, hung unflatteringly down to my knees.

Witnessing Madonna’s “Holiday” video on MTV at age sixteen was a confusing revelation to me. Here was a woman strutting around confidently in a mesh half-shirt, black bra showing through, with big bleachy hair, lots of jewelry, sultry eye makeup, and a graffitied jean jacket! She looked kind of punk. She acted kind of punk, giving that cheesy photographer the brush-off and going back to her “street friends” by the end of the video. But she sounded like Minnie Mouse—so I kept my fascination with the pop sensation buried beneath the Dead Kennedys and Minor Threat throughout most of high school. Still, when a friend’s five-year-old sister later pointed to the picture on the cover of Madonna’s “True Blue” album and said “Shawna,” I couldn’t have been more (secretly) flattered.

Suddenly, I became aware of my female body, and in Madonna saw something familiar and accessible. I, too, grew up in a working-class home. I was short and muscular, shaped more like her and Paula Abdul than Whitney Houston. Like me, Madonna was also raised Catholic. Punk rock had become my church and I knew at a young age that I wanted no part of organized religion, but this was not an option in my strict Catholic home. My sister and I begrudgingly participated in church activities until we were old enough to leave home.

Our church youth group hosted a Halloween party while I was in high school and I finally decided to publicly display my adoration of Madonna. I painstakingly put together a Material Girl costume. My dad had always said her black bracelets looked like “vacuum cleaner O-rings,” so I knew where to get those. I wore cropped white painter’s pants splattered in pastel pink paint, which I topped with a white, navel-grazing mesh shirt over a black sports bra (the closest thing I could get to her sexy lace one). I tied a black stocking around my head as a headband, teased my blonde skater-bangs up into a bunch with my sister’s Aqua Net, and threw on three sets of rosary beads as necklaces. My black-and-white checkered slip-on Vans worked well, though they weren’t quite the black boots she wore in the video. The fake mole I drew above my upper lip completed my look—the cherry on an ice cream sundae.

The Halloween party was packed by the time I arrived. Loverboy blasted as I entered the little wooden community center and searched for my friends. “Nice outfit,” said one girl in passing. “Sexy!” noted one of the guys. Things were looking better by the minute. I found my friends; we grabbed cups of Coke to chug while watching other people do their awful ’80s dances dressed as bloody monsters, black cats, Martians, robots, and superheroes. Halfway through a fistful of chips, our youth group leader pulled me aside, saying she had to speak with me in private.

“Your belly button is showing,” she whispered.

“Yeah?” I said.

“It’s bothering some people. Father Duncan, in particular.”

“Wh-wh . . . he doesn’t like my costume?”

“I’m sorry,” she sighed. “I think you look adorable, but he’s asked me to ask you to go home and change, or put on a coat.”

I was shocked. All night I’d felt so pretty, glammed-up in a way I’d never been before—not wearing the army shorts my mom hated so much, not wearing a shirt three sizes too big. My belly button was just too powerful, apparently, and even my rosaries couldn’t save me. I drove myself home, confused and ashamed. Was I really dressed inappropriately? Would I be labeled a slut? Did God care about what I looked like? Was “sexy” never to be a word in my vocabulary? I asked myself: What would Madonna do? I did not have the words or guts to stand up for myself yet. I went home and changed into an oversized sweatshirt.

For a long time after the party, I just sulked. Eventually, I started mixing baggy with fitted, playing with clothing until I found my own style. I’ve learned that I don’t need to (or want to) look like a boy to fit in. Punk wasn’t just a style of music or fashion for me, but a philosophy of questioning authority and doing things as an individual. I might not rock the heavily hair-sprayed bleached hair or ride a skateboard anymore, but I still carry these beliefs with me. I’ve also learned that one of the most revolutionary things a woman can do is to be confident with her body. Women who are physically unabashed, especially those with body types outside of what’s celebrated in the media, always get backlash. But fuck the status quo: We can make our own rules. Madonna helped me to see this as much as punk rock did.

A few years after my teenage youth-dance debacle, Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” video aired to much controversy. I had grown my hair long and allowed my natural dark curls to take over. I wore a black slip-dress out to a club one night, and someone said to me, “You look like Madonna in that new video.” I smiled sweetly and just said thank you.

Strike a Pose

Kim Windyka

WHEN THE 1990 music video for “Vogue” came out, I was fresh out of preschool. As a big, bad almost-kindergartener, it appealed strongly to my more mature sensibilities. From the retro black-and-white shots to the sharp dance steps, it took all the self-control I could muster not to jump through the screen every time it appeared on my living room television. I just couldn’t wait until I was old enough to strike a pose and rap about Ginger Rogers—though I hadn’t the faintest idea who she was, I did know that she could “dance on air.”

But what really captured my attention and curiosity was the Material Girl’s wacky, pointy-coned bra. I clearly had a long way to go until I developed anything close to resembling breasts, but I had a sneaking suspicion that even the majestic Madonna herself couldn’t naturally possess such alert ta-tas. Was it MTV magic, or did these amazing boob-enhancers exist in real life? I wasn’t content to sit idly by and ponder such important grown-up mysteries; I needed to find out for myself. Fortunately, it just so happened that Mom had to run some errands at the mall the following week. This was my big chance, and I was not going to mess it up.

Even though I was less than five years old, I did have some sense of how absurd it was to hunt for the elusive cone bra. Still, when you’re that young, you don’t really question your obsessions much. You are simply driven. I hadn’t even thought about what I’d do if I did locate one; my Madonna fervor was so intense that I couldn’t see past the pure, gleeful satisfaction of coming face-to-face with this fashion revelation. I’d worry about logistics later.

As we strolled through Sears, past the matronly pajama sets and slippers, I could see the promised land of lace and underwire beckoning in the distance. Acting as casually as any child on a mission might, I made a beeline for the bras and haphazardly grabbed the first black one I saw. It was massive. Upon further inspection, I also discovered that it looked nothing like Madge’s avant-garde underwear. Not even a little bit. There were no real “cones” to be found, just two very big, very round cups. Yet time was certainly of the essence, and I could work with this!

Skipping past the charm and jumping right to desperate pleading, I did my best puppy-dog eyes and hugged the bra to my nearly concave chest. “Mommy, can I pleeeeeease try this on? Madonna wears this. In the ‘Vogue’ video. Pleeease?!” At this point in my life, my mother was both acutely aware of my Madonna obsession as well as experienced in dealing with my frequent flights of fancy. She barely batted an eyelash at my request; she knew instinctively that this was not a battle worth fighting. Calmly, with purpose, my mother strode over to the middle-aged saleswoman, and as cool and collected as could be, she asked the woman a question that I’m sure she’d never heard before—in reference to a double-D bra: “Excuse me, may my daughter try this on?” The woman glanced quizzically at her, then at me . . . then back at her again. My mom acted quickly, taking it as a yes. “Thank you so much,” my mom emphasized, smiling through gritted teeth at the clearly confused woman. Bouncing with barely contained glee, I followed the two into the fitting room, preparing myself for the truly magical transformation that was about to occur. Once I removed this juvenile, constricting sweater and tried on the sultry, sexy underwear, I’d be well on my way to becoming my childhood idol. Right?

My mom held the gigantic bra in front of me, and I slipped my tiny, pasty arms through the straps. “Don’t just stand there, let’s get to it,” I quietly sang to myself in eager impatience. I purposefully had my back to the mirror, wanting to milk the moment, yet as my mom hooked the back and then tried unsuccessfully to shorten the straps, I knew it was all wrong.

I turned toward the mirror and cocked my head. I felt as crestfallen as the double-D bra that hung from my little-girl frame.

“It doesn’t fit!” I whined, scowling at my reflection. I cast a pouty glance through the mirror at my mother, who was standing behind me, struggling to remain straight-faced as she took in her four-year-old drowning in a Carol Doda bra. I doubted Madonna could even fill it out.

Of course, I looked nothing like her. As much as I wanted to see a slightly younger version of the MTV queen staring back at me, I only saw a precocious girl wearing some very odd-looking undies. After pausing for a moment to decide whether I was too proud to acknowledge such an obvious mismatch, I realized that Mom would still love and support me regardless of how fashionable I was. I also realized that I had absolutely no idea how to get this thing off.

“I’m sorry, honey. Maybe it will fit when you’re older.” She patted my back and held out my bubblegum-pink sweater. I reluctantly wiggled out of the lacy, va-va-voom black lingerie and sighed. “But I wanna be like Madonna!”

Leaving the store, my mind was already racing as it dreamed up ideas for my next inspired style statement (fishnet tights were vetoed, but that didn’t stop me from asking for them every day for the next month). Not all of my attempts to emulate Madonna fell flat, though: inspired by the dancing in the “Vogue” video, I took my first ballet, tap, and jazz classes the following fall and continued dancing for fourteen more years.

In retrospect, I’m still not convinced that my little cone bra phase was necessarily spurred by my desire to look and act more adult. Rather, it was Madonna’s fresh, edgy style and complete confidence in executing it that drew me to her. And as I grew up and bore witness to each new iteration of the Divine Miss M—from leather-clad dominatrix and mysterious Kabbalah goddess to electro-dance queen and everything in between—I too was reinventing my identity, becoming a strong, ambitious woman, with Madonna’s unwavering empowerment to guide me along the way. Though I may still lack the incredible measurements to fill out that cone bra, I’m proud to say that Madonna has enhanced my life in far more ways than any sexy lingerie could.

B-Sides

Lesley Arfin

I WAS A bossy kid. There were bossier, older kids who came before me, and when they graduated to the maturity that came with being a sixth-grader, I took the reins. I was happy to. Why not? No one else had the balls to make a decision. Would we play freeze tag or red rover? Would we go to the pool or eat ice cream on the stoop? Some days it was all of the above and some days it was none of those things.

During my tenure as Queen of the Neighborhood, I made sure there was always one particular activity on the table: dance routines. I had the pink cassette player, and I had the cassettes. Jamie Middleton’s dad had a camcorder. Jen Pike took dance lessons at Jan Martin’s School of Dance, so she had the moves. Her younger twin brothers came in handy as audience members, or when we wanted to include a boy in the routine. Sure, we had Debbie Gibson and Tiffany phases (and one embarrassing “Jonny B. Good” incident after seeing Back to the Future), but there was one album that changed all the rules.

The year was 1986. The album was Madonna’s True Blue. After this album came out, there was simply no substitute. When we got sick of listening to it, when every song had an accompanying dance routine to go along with it, when our lips were maxed out from all the syncing, that’s when I handed over my crown and retreated indoors. It was summer in my heart and summer in my eardrums.

The album’s title track, “True Blue,” was an easy routine—too easy. We had all seen the video. Put on a blue outfit and whisper fake secrets in my ear while I lip-sync, duh.

Next!

“White Heat” was the obvious choice. And though Jamie and Jen didn’t know this song as well (I was a big fan of the lesser-known songs, or B-sides, on her albums), they soon would. Instead of blue we wore all-white. “Get up/stand tall/put your back up against the wall/my love is dangerous/this is a bust.” I don’t think I need to spell out the dance routine; it’s all in the lyrics, as literal as they come. Still, I made them practice until we had it perfect. When we were ready to showcase our moves, we’d put lawn chairs on the grass for our mothers to sit in and watch us. They would arrive slowly, in groups of two or three, sauntering into my backyard casually, as if they were just shopping for tennis skirts. They’d pretend to notice our moves, but really they would just stand around and gossip over cups of coffee or tea. In between songs I’d yell “Mom! You’re not watching!” And she’d say “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” but she still wouldn’t look, she’d just keep talking to Linda Lowell, the arty suburban mom who wore black ballet flats and black leggings. After the “Papa Don’t Preach” video came out, I noticed she shifted to a black-and-white striped shirt tucked into Levis with a big black belt.

One of my favorite routines was to “Open Your Heart,” if for nothing else than the perfect staging. My backyard patio had a big air conditioner that was built underneath a wooden platform. It was bi-level, so two girls fit perfectly on either side of the lowest platform, and one girl fit perfectly on top, like a single candle on top of a birthday cake. That girl was usually me, unless I was feeling diplomatic.

When Like a Prayer came out, I got a bit more selfish. Rather than waste my time teaching endless dance routines to girls who could never quite seem to remember the lyrics anyway, I took to my bedroom and listened to Like a Prayer on my own. It was a darker album for darker times. I knew the burning cross in the video represented something awful because my dad complained about it and dismissed it as garbage. I thought he’d misunderstood the video entirely. I assumed Madonna wanted to burn the cross so it would stand out in the video as a cool decoration, something jazzier than your typical light bulb. Something to catch your eye. I remember thinking how sad it was that my arrogant father was wrong. It was art, dad! Hello?

“Spanish Eyes” was the song where I finally found my voice. The days of lip-syncing were over. I was ready to sing, and sing I did. I belted the shit out of that song. “And if I find nothing left to show/but tears on my pillow . . .” Those lyrics resonated with me. I was old enough to know she wasn’t literally singing to me, but young enough to pretend that she kind of was. It was a gift from her that I would reopen every single night after dinner. Or after school. Or on a Sunday when there was nothing to do. It was too cold to play outside and too boring to hang out with my old neighborhood minions who, let’s face it, just didn’t “get it.” And frankly, I didn’t want them to. When I lay on my back, sinking into my soft bedroom carpet listening to “Dear Jessie,” I saw those pink elephants! I saw the lemonade, candy kisses, and sunny days. I often wondered who “Jessie” was. Was she a girl Madonna babysat for? Probably. How badly did I wish that girl could be me?

All the women in my family loved Madonna. My sister was into the Vogue/Bedtime Stories/Erotica Madonna, while my mom still claims that her favorite movie, to this day, is Desperately Seeking Susan. But my Madonna will always be the B-side Madonna, the lesser-known-hits Madonna, so that when people boast of their undying love for her, we’re clearly not talking about the same woman.

When I told people I was writing an essay about Madonna, everyone had something to say. I heard a lot of “Oh my God, I should be writing that!” and “Didn’t you know? I’m obsessed with Madonna.” Yes, yes, I thought, of course you are. Everyone loves the Material Girl. Everyone thinks her Gaultier cone bras were “sick,” and everyone’s favorite movie is Truth or Dare. I get it. You love her. But one thing I want to make clear is that my Madonna is different from yours. No one knows my Madonna. I might not be her biggest fan, but I’m definitely her most special because I appreciate all the songs you people gloss over. Ha! If she knew me, she’d definitely like me for that reason. She’d wink and kiss me on the cheek with her fire-engine-red lips and then we’d go shopping for polka-dot crinolines together (did I mention that my Madonna only exists in the movie Who’s That Girl?).

I’ll still make up dance routines to Madonna songs, but only if I get to choose them. And everyone has to draw a mole above their lips and wear black-lace gloves. I know that the Madonna of my Halloween-costume dreams has been gone for many years, but that’s the only kind of Madonna I’m interested in talking about. The grown-up Madonna, she’s for grown-ups. We can talk about that Madonna when I get there.

Bad Girls from Bay City

Erin Trahan

BALTIMORE HAS JOHN Waters. New Haven has George W. Bush. And Bay City, Michigan, has Madonna. And me. I’m easy to trace back to that crook of the mitten, where the thumb meets the palm, because the Trahans are known for running a funeral home there since 1934. But don’t try to fact-check Madonna’s roots with her people—she’ll probably deny them altogether. She doesn’t seem too keen to claim a connection to her home state.

That we were both born in Bay City—in the same hospital, no less—was enough for me to form a Madonna liberation mythology; something to cinch around my waist like a spelunker would use a rope to tug when she wanted out of the cavernous darkness. Not that Bay City was so bad, though Madonna calling it a “stinky little town” in 1987 is now part of its Wiki-lore. Granted, it did occasionally reek of sugar beets, but like many Midwestern municipalities it had a heyday: One could buy diamonds and fine leather gloves downtown, eat lunch with the Rotarians on Tuesdays, borrow books from a Carnegie library, and aspire to be the St. Patrick’s Day Queen.

It’s where my father and his father were born, where together they ran a pharmacy, and where my mother thinks the best tomatoes grow. A safe place with earnest neighbors. But before Madonna, it had no claim to fame to satiate the would-be dreams of a precocious kid like me. The Bay City Rollers had supposedly thrown a dart at a map to name themselves after my town; the Bay City on the now defunct soap opera Another World was somewhere in Illinois.

Even saying I’m from Bay City is a bit of a stretch. I actually lived in a neighboring farm town on a dead-end street in the middle of a cornfield. In the early 1980s, Hampton Township was a haze of tractor rows, Little League diamonds, and the undersides of bleachers, where I’d scheme while my older siblings played ball. So I was left with Madonna as my elementary school beacon of hope. Hope that a girl—me—who spent hours doing back flips on abandoned track mats could one day be a bona fide material girl.

But early Madonna was all wrong for early me. Sure, I was sassy and outspoken—but not when it came to sex or anything near it. This was especially true at home, where I refused to gender my stuffed animals, avoided discussing boys (whether friend or boyfriend), and waited years to tell my mom I’d gotten my period. Years! You could point to any number of explanations. I was the headstrong youngest child of four. I harbored both a dogged sense of equity and an ingrained mistrust of my own body: Why did I think like an adult but look like a kid? And why did I have to physically mature beyond a childhood I’d never mentally inhabited?

Unlike me, preteen Madonna thought like an adult and aspired to look like one, too. “Don’t tell me I can’t be sexual and intelligent at the same time,” she once told People magazine when discussing her adolescence. According to biographer Andrew Morton, in junior high she wrapped herself in a trench coat and danced onstage to the music of the TV show Secret Agent. A finale with the sound of gunshots was planned; her flashing the audience to reveal her black leotard was not. Madonna’s father grounded her for two weeks.

Despite her precociousness, one of Madonna’s musical narratives is of childhood lost. After her mother died of breast cancer when she was five, Madonna, as the oldest girl in the family, assumed childcare and housekeeping duties that she later admitted resenting. She struggled when her father remarried, and her adult recollections of growing up sound like the fable of Cinderella and her evil stepmother. It’s one of many flash points where Madonna and her media coverage enmesh so seamlessly that one wonders, where lies the truth? Fortunately, I had no such burdens beyond a cunning imagination and strong will.

So it came as a shock when my mom came home from fourth-grade parent/teacher conferences with the report that I was “boy crazy.” Okay, I had sharpened my already-sharp pencil near Von Schafer to pass him notes about roller skating at Metro on Thursday afternoon—this was how kids communicated in 1985. I knew I wasn’t bad in the rosary-and-ripped-tights kind of way; Madonna’s lacy undergarments and virginal corruption frightened me to no end. But take one step from Mary toward Madonna, from Jackie O toward Marilyn, from white to black swan, and you’re sentenced: bad.

If anything, I rejected Madonna’s antics and camped with the skeptics who tossed her off as a one-hit or—at a stretch—one-album wonder. C’mon, she was from Bay City, Michigan; how high could her lucky star possibly rise?

If only I’d been paying closer attention. In sixth grade I moved to northern Michigan, where, among the rolling hills and pretty beaches, lurked a surprisingly upstart little town. “Like a Virgin” overtook the charts, and I learned the hard way that pinstriped Lee jeans from Meijer Thrifty Acres—a hot commodity in Bay City—wouldn’t suffice for the social order of my new school. Every morning, the class bully, who for a few weeks played the veiled role of being my friend, asked me “What brand is your shirt?” When I hesitated or didn’t say the brand Guess, she grabbed my collar to see for herself. It was 1986, and Madonna and I both wanted new identities. Of course, she was eons ahead of trend, spinning retro-personas for the songs on True Blue. I just wanted to raise my hand in math class and get asked to a school dance. It took years to learn that a girl rarely gets it both ways.

By high school I’d matured enough to bring my boyfriends home (even the bad apples), and to appreciate Madonna for the game-changing entertainer she’d become. One ho-hum Friday night I rented Truth or Dare to rouse the “mixed company” at the unchaperoned party at my house. By Monday, word got round: Truth or Dare had caused a stir. My reputation took a hit. Ridiculous! I’m sure I either shook a fist or rolled my eyes.

At this point, I could see the absurdity of what Madonna knew all along: that most social expectations are suffocating, or desperately old-fashioned. Yet in my years of growing up, I don’t recall her making a point of coming back to Michigan to perform. She wasn’t one to call out to her girls this side of 8 Mile. And though I later figured out she didn’t exactly grow up in Bay City—she was born during a visit to her grandparents’ house, and returned often to visit them—she didn’t grow up in “real” Detroit either, with its industrial grit and stronghold on music legend. No, Madonna grew up in its tony suburb, Rochester Hills. A cheerleader and straight-A student. Full scholarship to the University of Michigan. Teen Madonna, it turns out, may have behaved better than I did; I was a straight-A student who only earned partial scholarships. But that’s like saying cake isn’t cake unless it’s frosted. Because let me be clear: No amount of good behavior would have been enough for either Madonna or me. Generations before and since have faced the same limited mindset about how girls should behave. Madonna’s grasp of this enabled her to embrace the idea of girls having it every way, whether the world was ready or not.

That’s why, even as I left adolescence behind, I still felt connected to her as an adult. If ever asked which famous person I’d most like to meet, she topped my list—I would play the hometown card as an icebreaker, and we’d slap backs in recognition. For a long time she was the only celebrity to whom I could claim a vague personal connection beyond being born in the same town—one of my aunts was a counselor in her younger siblings’ school. Another relative socialized with her father and stepmother, who had moved to northern Michigan and started a winery. For a while, they all sang in the same church choir. Maybe my dreams of meeting Madonna in the flesh weren’t as far-fetched as I’d believed.

So I took note when she moved to England, around 2000, and donned that odd accent, erasing not only her home state but also her home nation. Her abandonment struck a chord. After all, when a gal has high hopes in almost any field, she doesn’t picture a future in the Wolverine State. At least that’s what I decided after high school, when I ventured beyond the state’s borders for college, ultimately landing in Boston. For those who think Michigan is a depressing place to live—a stinky little state—I fashioned Madonna’s ex-pat status into a sign of my own charmed potential.

I still feel like an outsider of sorts in New England, but I am convinced that my most recent iteration as a writer would not have been possible had I not pursued opportunities outside Michigan. Who would I have been if I’d stayed? What about Madonna?

A few summers ago, I visited Madonna’s father’s winery in Sutton’s Bay with my sisters and a few aunts. I’ll admit, we gawked. The tasting room had a wide wooden bar and garish old-world Italian wall decor. The winery had issued a special bottling to commemorate the Confessions on a Dance Floor album release. We sipped samples; the wine labels and marketing posters were far from what I’d expected. They weren’t stylish or slick. I couldn’t imagine Madonna had any part in their design. In fact, the artwork was downright cheesy—images of Madonna, two decades after her debut, retro again, in ’70s dance-floor poses with airbrushed pastels on black. It felt familiar, like it had been done before. The Madonna I knew, even in her fifties, had always been far ahead of cool. I tried to like the wine, but I didn’t.

I could feel my own creeping judgment, as if I, too, had copped an accent I hadn’t earned.

More than once since that afternoon I’ve wondered: at what cost do I remain connected to home, and at what cost do I sever the ties? If I ever found myself at dinner with Madonna, how much would either of us have to say about Michigan, anyway?

It pleased me to read the press clippings my mom saved from the 2008 Traverse City Film Festival. Madonna had arrived by limo and walked the red carpet at the movie house of my adolescence, the State Theater. The Traverse City Record Eagle blazed with a full-color picture of her on the front page. But I most appreciated the story about her in the independent weekly Northern Express. Though the writer had socialized with Madonna before, she did not respond to his requests for an interview, so he’d had to pen it without her. He chronicled their missed meetings with a generous helping of forgiveness and a few thoughtful points about integrity, superstardom, and small-town life.

Forgive her, Father, for she knows not what she leaves, nor what she takes with her. But if anything’s for certain, Madonna’s just the sort to make an about-face at the drop of her cane and top hat. Tomorrow she could move in to the vacant home next to my mom and dad’s house in Michigan—the one they emailed me about last week (and again today). I wouldn’t put it past her.