You want to know how British Madonna has become? She’s so British that she spent her 47th birthday falling off a horse and having a fight with her husband. It’s enough to bring a proud tear to our eyes.
In the accident, Madonna broke her hand, her collarbone, and cracked three ribs. But it was all her fault, according to author Camille Paglia, because she uses horses as fashion accessories.
Now, we all know how brilliant it would be if horses actually were
fashion accessories. hecklerspray would love to see Mariah Carey on
some godawful awards show with a full-size horse draped around her
neck, or Sienna Miller using a horse as a kind of elaborate tissue dispenser.
But, no. In real life, the nearest thing to a horse fashion accessory is Sarah Jessica Parker.
Camille Paglia (Books) was in fact talking about how Madonna (CDs) poses on horses
even though she doesn’t know how to work one properly. This is what she
had to say:
"We are told she has been throwing herself into country pursuits to
please her macho husband Guy Ritchie. As a professionally trained
dancer, tireless jogger and practitioner of extreme yoga, Madonna is an
accomplished athlete. But riding is not just another routine challenge
she can master through sheer willpower."
Guy Ritchie? Macho? Is this the same podgy pretend gangster Guy Ritchie we’re thinking of? Anyway, sorry Camille. As you were…
"Along with physical
skills, riding requires relaxation and self-subordination, an intuitive
opening to the horse. Knowledge of horses needs to be accumulated by
riders over a lifetime. She will surely persist and may well
triumph as a rider. But until then, let’s hope she avoids the facile,
disrespectful use of horses as props and fashion statements."
Of
course, Camille saw the accident coming as she was flicking her way
through last month’s Vogue magazine, which featured a nice big picture
of Madonna larking about on a horse. Camille’s high-class spidey senses
were alerted to the danger because Madonna was "ostentatiously posing in riding habit and boots on a horse whose reins she is awkwardly and incorrectly holding".
Camille Paglia, of course, famously hates blogs because of all the "Bad prose, endless reams of bad prose!" Yeah, well we hate classicists who champion art both high and low,
with a view that human nature is inherently dangerous, and yet who also
celebrate Dionysian revelry in the wilder, darker sides of human
sexuality.
So there.
Read more:
Madonna accountable for horse-riding accident – Femalefirst
[story by Stuart Heritage]