Confusing Times
In 1966, three years after the death of Madonna’s mother, Tony Ciccone became romantically involved with Joan Gustafson, one of the Ciccone’s many housekeepers. Much to Madonna’s resentment, the two were soon married. It was, perhaps, at this time that Madonna began to express unresolved feelings of anger toward her father that would last for decades.
Repeatedly, biographies about Madonna have proffered the notion that, because of her mother’s death, Madonna has always yearned for her father’s approval, and that his apparent lack of approval had been the source of ongoing tension between father and daughter. It’s true that Tony Ciccone’s lack of understanding of Madonna’s artistic vision has certainly not enhanced their relationship over the years, and she has definitely sought his approval. However, a close study of Madonna’s life clearly shows that another factor in the instability of her emotional relationship with her father has to do with anger. Tony’s courage in moving on with his life after his wife died did nothing to elevate him in the eyes of a daughter who felt strongly that her mother could — and should — never be replaced. Or, as one close relative put it, “It was as if, as a young girl, she was so filled with rage because of her mother’s death and the way her father handled it, she had to direct it somewhere . . . and so she directed it at the one person she loved the most, her father.”
Is it possible to be angry with a person and also to seek that person’s approval? Most mental health professionals would agree that major characteristics of the human experience are ambivalence and contradictory feelings. Whereas in logic a thing can’t be a chair and a table, it has to be one or the other, it’s not an either/ or situation in human nature. It’s entirely possible that Madonna was angry at her father for going on with his life after the death of his wife, but underneath that rage she still longed for his approval and acceptance. It was as if she put him to a test she knew he would fail: would Tony accept his daughter on her own terms, even if she acted outrageously? If not, she could continue to be angry at him. If so, she would find another reason to be resentful of him. Certainly, anger just continues to recycle itself until it’s finally dealt with, once and for all.
In comparison with Madonna’s gentle, olive-skinned mother, the stern, blonde Gustafson was quite the contrast. Whereas Madonna’s mother was easygoing and loving, Joan was a disciplinarian — or at least she tried to be one. None of the children ever listened to a thing she had to say. The young Madonna also seemed to have a difficult time adjusting to no longer being the female head of the household. She refused, for example, to refer to the new Mrs. Ciccone as “Mother,” which her father had requested.
When Madonna’s career was just beginning to gain momentum in the early 1980s, she talked a great deal about how her life had changed when her father remarried. She didn’t hate her stepmother, she explained, she simply could never accept her in the place of her real mother. True to her sensational nature, Madonna would later embellish any tension between stepmother and stepchild for the press by saying she always felt unwanted and unneeded, “always like Cinderella.”
Madonna would also tell how the new Mrs. Ciccone once bloodied her nose in a physical altercation — although Madonna professed to be delighted by this turn of events since it enabled her to miss Sunday church for a change. (“I most certainly do not remember that,” Joan Gustafson Ciccone says today. “It never happened. Do you think her father would have allowed such a thing?”) Another indignity often recounted by Madonna is that her stepmother supposedly refused to let her wear a tampon when she started menstruating (which, according to Madonna, occurred at the age of ten) because, in Joan’s opinion, tampons were the equivalent of sexual intercourse and should not be used until after marriage. (“Oh my God! That never happened,” an incredulous Joan says today. “How awful! Did she say that? No, she did not say that. Did she?”)
According to Madonna, it seems that another major “wicked stepmother” indignity perpetrated on her by Joan was that she insisted Madonna and her sisters dress in matching outfits, thereby stripping Madonna of the individuality she so valued. Wearing school uniforms was bad enough for Madonna, she said, but dressing exactly like her sisters was pure torture. (“What are you talking about?” Joan asked when told of Madonna’s claim. “I never did that. Why would I do that? Are we talking about the same Madonna here?”)
Even at this young age, Madonna learned to be innovative with her wardrobe while attempting to assert her own personality — whether it meant wearing her clothes in an unconventional manner by ripping them or turning them inside out once Joan wasn’t around. Madonna would also wear old rags in her messy hair — anything that would enable her to stand out from her younger sisters. (This quest for fashion individuality would carry itself into later years when Madonna found herself struggling in New York, trying to be a dancer. She would often dress flamboyantly, cutting up her leotard and holding it together with only safety pins. Then, as now, she remained fascinated with the idea of individuality.)
No matter how much Madonna might have resented the situation, it seemed that the new Mrs. Ciccone was in her life to stay. Joan and Tony went on to have two children together, Jennifer and Mario.
Tony Ciccone did his best to make sure his growing family stayed on the right track in life. A hardworking man, he tried to teach his children to follow in his footsteps and focus on their school lessons. There were rules to follow, he would tell them, and they were expected to live within those rules. It was especially important to him that his children attend church regularly. “I wouldn’t call it strict, I’d call it conservative,” Madonna said. “My father was a stern believer in excelling toward leadership. Maintaining a competitive edge. And be proud of yourself and do good in school and you will reap the rewards of your investment.” Years later, Madonna recalled that her father would tape a “chore chart” to the wall, assigning each child a task. She never forgot which chores appeared under her name: “Washing out the diaper pail. Defrosting the freezer. Raking the leaves. Washing the dishes. Babysitting. Vacuuming. Everything.”
Perhaps recognizing the obvious correlation between her ability to achieve success, keep a competitive edge and observe her father’s own work ethic, Madonna would often speak of Tony Ciccone with admiration: “One thing my father was with us was very solid,” she has said. “Very dependable that way; he didn’t confuse me. He didn’t preach one thing and live his life another way. He always stuck to his word. He had a lot of integrity. And that consistency, especially not having a mother, was extremely important.”
Always, Madonna enjoyed reaping the rewards of hard work; she liked to win. Tony had a practice of awarding each of his children fifty cents for every A grade they received on their report card; Madonna always got the most As. She was naturally intelligent, a good student who always seemed to have an eye on the importance of preparing for her future. “That bitch never had to study,” her brother Martin laughs. “Never. She got straight As. I used to get up there and study all the time but my mind wasn’t on it. I did it because I was supposed to, but I didn’t like it. She did it because she knew it would take her to the next phase.” Madonna also remembered the rewards she received for her A grades and laughingly added, “I was really competitive and my brothers and sisters hated me for it. I made the most money every report card.”
As well as their academic studies and household chores, all of the Ciccone children were encouraged to play a classical instrument. Madonna was designated the piano, though she genuinely hated it. The neighborhood in which she was raised was racially mixed and, with that cultural influence at work, she was more interested in the local Motown sound than she was in classical piano. Her idols were Diana Ross and the Supremes, Ronnie Spector and Stevie Wonder.
“When I was a little girl, I wished I was black,” she said. “I was living in Pontiac, Michigan, some twenty-five miles northwest of Detroit. All of my friends were black and all the music I listened to was black. I was incredibly jealous of all my black girlfriends because they could have braids in their hair that stuck up everywhere. So I would go though this incredible ordeal of putting wire in my hair and braiding it so that I could make my hair stick up.”
Madonna soon convinced her father to allow her to give up her boring piano lessons and, instead, take on more exciting (for her) activities, such as dance — tap and jazz — as well as baton twirling.
“She was a smart girl, always motivated,” remembers her stepmother, Joan. “Brilliant. Manipulative, I guess so. Yes. But you knew she would survive. You knew she would never be weak. And you were glad about that.”
*
It isn’t surprising, especially given the religious convictions Tony Ciccone shared with his late wife, that all the Ciccone children were educated at Catholic schools. In the sixties, the strict rules and regulations of these parochial schools were stringently observed by the nuns in charge, many of whom used tactics that today would be considered child abuse.
“They’d smack you around, for sure,” Madonna has said. “It was an environment of fear, mixed with these contrasting images of the holy.”
In 1966, she had her First Communion and, when confirmed a year later, she added the name Veronica to her birth name. “I took the name of Veronica,” she explains, “because she wiped the face of Jesus. You weren’t supposed to help Jesus Christ while he was on his way to the Crucifixion. She was not afraid to step out and wipe the sweat off him and help him. So I liked her for doing that, and took her name. There was also Mary Magdalene,” she says, when speaking of biblical women who had influenced her. “She was considered a fallen woman because she slept with men. But Jesus said it was okay. I think they probably got it on, Jesus and Mary Magdalene.”
Catholicism gave her a foundation of faith upon which, she has said, she was always able to fall back, even as an adult. However, the religion’s strong emphasis on the notions of guilt and forgiveness has, she’s said, “screwed up many a Catholic person. How many Catholics are in therapy, just trying to get over the idea of Original Sin. Do you know what it’s like to be told from the day you walk into school for the first time that you are a sinner, that you were born that way, and that that’s just the way it is? You’d have to be Catholic to understand it.”
Early in her career Madonna would playfully make use of religious icons as part of her sexy wardrobe and then distribute juicy comments to journalists, such as the oft-quoted “crucifixes are sexy because there’s a naked man on them.” As an adult, Madonna would employ one of her most frequently used and successful “shock” formulas: taking a respected, sacred image and imbuing it with completely inappropriate sexual connotations, thereby making even the mere thought of the total package completely taboo. She quickly found that making startling statements — such as “crucifixes are sensual because Jesus was so sexy, like a movie star, almost” — raised eyebrows, got her noticed and made people talk about her as a sexual revolutionary. Combining these elements of religion and sex was a successful recipe for controversy. While easy to prepare, after the second or third time, it was also a relatively transparent gimmick. Yet, since the public continued to act shocked, and even to express delight and amusement at her observations, Madonna repeated the formula often — on talk shows, in music videos and in some of her songs. (It wouldn’t be until nearly ten years into her career, when she published her steamy book Sex, that most people would catch on to what she was up to . . . and then begin to reject it.)
One story in her arsenal may or may not be true: “When I was a little girl, I was at church by myself on a Saturday afternoon going to confession. No one was there, and instead of going out the main entrance, I went through this vestibule off to the side with a swinging door. I opened the door a little bit, and there was this couple standing up, fucking in the church. I thought, ‘Oh my God!’ and shut the door really fast. That’s the only sex I’ve seen in a church. Seems like a neat thing to do, though.”
In fact, many of Madonna’s tongue-in-cheek takes on Catholicism (which have been considered blasphemous by some more devout observers) have to do with an intense bitterness toward the church. Perhaps she had such a strong feeling that the orthodoxy that surrounded her had let her down, she acted provocatively as a way of thumbing her nose at it. It appeared to some that she had rejected God because He had done a terrible thing to her — taking away her mother. Through the years, she seemed to continually dare Him to retaliate against her as she continued to act out in ways that could be considered, at least to a religious person, sacrilegious.
As an adult, Madonna would also blame the church’s stringent, puritanical, suffering-based teachings for many of the problems the Ciccone children experienced in life. “My older brothers were incredibly rebellious,” she said. “They got into drugs and into trouble with the police. One of my brothers ran off and became a Moonie. Me? I became an overachiever. I had it programmed in my mind — ‘I don’t care if I have to live on the street, and I don’t care if I have to eat garbage. I’ll do it.’”
Adding to Madonna’s ambivalence about religion must have been the way she was influenced by the somewhat fanatical — and confusing — devotion she witnessed in her mother. “Catholicism is a very masochistic religion,” the adult Madonna would declare. “And I saw my mother doing things that really affected me. She would kneel on uncooked rice and pray during Lent. She would sleep on wire hangers. She was passionately religious. Swooning with it, even. If my aunt came over to my house and had jeans that zipped up front, my mother covered all the statues so that they couldn’t see such a display. She then turned the holy pictures toward the wall.”
When Madonna was about ten, the family moved to 2036 Oklahoma Street in Rochester Hills, Michigan, an affluent community not far from the exclusive Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills. It was then that she began to think she might one day like to become a nun. “I wanted a pious way of life,” she told the author in 1983. “But I was at odds with the whole thing. The more it repelled me, the more I wanted it, as if I was trying to conquer something. I think the church really screwed me up. It made me competitive. It made me afraid to fail. It caused all kinds of problems, some I probably don’t even know about. I’m actually afraid to go into hypnotherapy for fear of what I will learn about my Catholic upbringing!”
Indeed, her rebellious nature being what it was, she couldn’t help but turn against the moralistic and conservative school system. In the playground, for instance, the young Madonna would hang upside down from the monkey bars, acting oblivious to her “performance” but quite intentionally making sure her underpants were exposed for the enjoyment of all the boys. Constantly, she was being chastised by the nuns for flashing her underwear.
Those nuns at St. Andrew’s Elementary School were always a source of great fascination for Madonna. She would try to sneak glances at them through the convent windows to catch them in their informal, “natural” setting. She wondered what they looked like sans habits and if, indeed, they even had hair. Childhood friend Carol Belager recalls peering through convent windows with Madonna.
“Oh my God, they do have hair,” Madonna whispered to Carol as the two girls spied on the unsuspecting Sister Mary Christina.
“Let’s go now,” Carol said, nervously.
“No, she’s getting ready to strip,” Madonna said, excitedly. “I want to see what she looks like naked.”
Carol pulled Madonna away before she had the opportunity to see her first nude nun.
These strange, humorless and immensely powerful nuns were, to the young Madonna, beautiful and mysterious. As an adult she would remember, “I saw them as really pure, disciplined, sort of above-average people. They never wore any makeup and they had these really serene faces.” Then, in typical Madonna fashion, she added for good measure, “Plus, they were very sexy.”
The ambivalence Madonna still feels for the teachings of the Catholic Church is especially ironic given that it would seem that Catholicism did empower her with the ability to transcend her own insecurities. The philosophy encouraged her to confront moments of great self-weakness, those times when she suspected that she really wasn’t good enough, or talented enough, or pretty enough . . . those times when she most needed to fall back on a foundation of faith in order to conquer feelings of inadequacy. It also imbued her with the strict sense of self-discipline so necessary to challenge the many difficulties she would, no doubt, encounter on the road to stardom.
“I don’t talk about it much,” she said in another interview with the author in 1985, “but, yes, I pray. I pray when things are going wrong, like most people, I guess. The key, I think, is to pray when things aren’t all screwed up. That’s when you know you have a relationship with God. Coming from a Catholic school, though, it’s so ingrained in me to pray, that now I do it without even thinking about it. To me, when I say, when I’m pissed off, ‘Oh my God,’ well, that’s a prayer, in a sense. Even if people don’t agree with me that it’s a prayer, I don’t care. When you’re angry and you call out for God’s intercession, that’s a prayer. And, also, I tend to pray when there’s so much bullshit going on that I just need to stop and remind myself of the things I have to be grateful for. So, yes, I pray.”
