LONDON, July 20, 2005, (LifeSiteNews.com) When Madonna starts sporting Cashmere, elegant but modest Grace Kelly inspired dresses and publicly gushing about her desire to just be a good old fashioned, stay-at-home mother, you can be sure that times are changing.
Even as Britney Spears, who infamously exchanged an onstage French kiss with Madonna the “Material Girl”, prepares to further stir the tabloid pot by releasing a new ‘reality’ series in which she reportedly expresses her obsession with sex, curious eyes are turning towards Madonna’s newest makeover.
In the upcoming August edition of Vogue, Madonna admits regret about her more tumultuous years: “I was a very selfish person,” she said. “You go through periods of your life where the world does revolve around you, but you can’t live your whole life that way.” The issue focuses on her life with director husband Guy Ritchie (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels) at their English country-side estate.
“To me, Ashcombe [their estate] is a reflection of me and my husband in many ways, because it reflects our willingness to make a commitment,” she said.“Not necessarily to each other but to the idea of having a home somewhere, instead of living like gypsies.” According to Madonna she has developed a new love for the peace and quiet of the English countryside, admitting her and her children don’t even watch television or read magazines.
If Madonna has proven anything throughout her often-times scandalous and lengthy career it is that she is remarkably, even eerily, attuned to cultural changes. Although in the past the aging but ever popular pop-star rode with, and largely defined the cultural movement towards the scantily clad, sex-selling bubble-gum pop-star, her most recent makeover, to all appearances, is shockingly wholesome.
Many have speculated recently that the sexy pop-star trend is reaching the end of its tether as various stars shamelessly attempt to outdo each other in scandal to grab tabloid headlines. More modestly dressed and conservative stars such as Christian singer Rebecca St. James have been increasingly featured as counter-cultural alternatives. Even the widely popular pop-rock star Avril Lavigne demonstrates this new cultural trend in action with her relatively modest jeans and t-shirt fashion.
It is ironic that just as Madonna’s new-found respectability is receiving the public eye, Sarah Hampson of the Globe and Mail, in a full-length article, described Rebecca St. James as “an alternate pop-icon—the Other Madonna.” St. James, who has racked up nine No. 1 Christian-music singles has proven that sex is hardly necessary to success: “I don’t show cleavage, and if I wear a skirt, I generally wear pants underneath,” said the music star in an interview with the Globe and Mail. She has long made it known that she will wait until marriage to have sex, and that attitude has gained a lot of attention and respect with the popular “True Love Waits” movement. Since 1993 that chastity-friendly movement has seen over two and a half million youth sign a pledge to remain chaste until marriage.
But, even more importantly, St. James has made chastity cool. “Her image is not prudish or sexually repressive, like that a Victorian high-collared, buttoned-up schoolmarm. She is more like a vision of a beautiful, unplowed field, hair wafting in the wind. She is the America that the pioneers first glimpsed, full of hope and promise,” Hampson continues somewhat melodramatically. But the point remains, that St. James’ beauty (and she is very beautiful) in many ways arises from the very purity of her sexual restraint.
Skeptics will probably point out that Madonna’s new makeover is little more than a publicity stunt, and considering Madonna’s past, that seems most likely; but that hardly makes a difference. What many find encouraging is that Madonna is clearly tapping into a growing cultural movement that is distancing itself from the raunchy publicity stunts of the mainstream pop-icons, and moving towards a more wholesome image that recognizes that there is more to life than sex and money. And women like Rebecca St. James, who truly and earnestly embody that philosophy, are giving today’s teens, who need an alternative to Britney Spears and her cohorts, a model worthy of emulation.