Madonna and other Wacky Chicks, with Simon Doonan

Everybody wants to rule the world, but only Madonna gets to do it.

The day after a gin and oyster extravaganza, I’ve decided to lay low and have an evening of reading. It’s not the first time I’ve chosen to stay home and read on a Saturday night, and it won’t be the last. There’s much to be said for lounging around without a bra, draped on each side by a content feline friend, listening to Madonna’s brilliant retropop, Sky Fits Heaven.

I’m super-stoked tonight because I’ve stocked up on the Madonna cover stories popping up everywhere as the world anticipates Hard Candy, her zillionth studio album. Also, I’m researching for a future project in my ‘fun feminism’ files and Simon Doonan’s Wacky Chicks has finally arrived from the library. Picking up the May 2008 Elle, ready to learn more about My Madgesty’s pending 50th, I notice that the interview is by the same author as Wacky Chicks. You all know the big ol’ fuss I make over every little coincidence. Groovy.

Now, everything in me appreciates the candy-coated pop propagation, but my interest in Madonna’s longstanding supremacy acknowledges the considerable depth of her mission. I’m curious to see how this all plays out- I’ve got my theories in that wacky goddess’s heart of mine that match rather nicely with some of the weird Kabala stuff going on. Methinks Our Lady of Mission Malawi just might be the Messenger/Messiah/Angel, call it what you will. Her public transformation from pop tart to saint to superpower is stunning.

Madonna’s messages can’t be underestimated- forget the presidency- Madonna’s influence is unparalleled. I can’t imagine being an outspoken woman artist without her paving the way. I can’t imagine what state gay rights would be in, or women’s rights for that matter, without her enormous influence changing our culture’s- and the world’s- paradigms. Every controversy has culled more money, more thoughts, more work toward or forward on more issues. Though many may find her mannerisms and her path to be outrageous, that’s also what was said about another teacher in his day. And I for one don’t think it’s that farfetched that a lady named after his mother might just be his messenger. Uptight Puritans who still equate a hot, sexy woman with the fall of man and can’t conceive of human sexuality as holy might think I’m off my rocker, but honey, that is just so five millenniums ago.

I digress, as usual…now Doonan’s awesome book Wacky Chicks celebrates other pink pluckies who won’t necessarily end up in Gautier with disco-ball pasties as the costume to their truth telling. But they might…Doonan gushes over a bunch of oddball chicks we’ve never heard of, and he does it with that particular type of observant candor and incisive wit that makes me damn jealous. Subtitled “Life Lessons From Fearlessly Inappropriate and Fabulously Eccentric Women,” this stupendously entertaining collection is vivid, to say the least.

“Life’s a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death,” is how the book begins, quoting Auntie Mame. It’s great thinking on Doonan’s part to highlight some of less-known bright and brilliant broads. The 2003 collection is true, pure camp, yet treads new territory so stylishly that one day he’s going to get to interview Madonna. And in that interview he willingly refers to himself as a screaming queen, praying for nerves of steel as he’s about to come face to face with wonder woman. Or God herself.

Everyone should read his piece in Elle because maybe they didn’t know what Madonna has been doing in the world. She’s not in the papers every day naked anymore. Sometimes there’s a half-hearted divorce rumour, then the chitchat reverts to Lindsay’s vodka relapse- or was that just water in that water bottle? Madonna has managed to live a surprisingly private life for the most famous woman in the world. (So much can be done, folks, see, when you aren’t on drugs.) Madonna’s spiritual evolution is the stuff of history books, and to the naysayers who say ‘say it ain’t so’ sure, love, I’ll say it, but it IS so. Madonna is already a curriculum in university and has been for over a decade. I have umpteen academic discourse collections. The future classroom won’t mention you or me, darling.

All this means, of course, that Madonna’s fate has been mythically meant into existence. It’s possible that no one believes in fate more than I do, despite the backlash on ‘voodoo science.’ Voodoo is the ONLY science, for crying out loud. Alchemy, magic, madness, creativity, chemistry, dendrites and axons, hello. It is indeed magic to have 3000 songs- unique acts of art, of creation by a variety of artists- in a small box on my desk. That I can talk to Japan tonight. That milk thistle herbs heal your liver. Get it? It’s no war between irrational beliefs and science. The phenomenal world is science uncovering.

And yay, we have a ways to go. So yes, I am proudly a fate-alist and I’m out loud and proud and do have half a brain. Not the same half as yours. My childish, insecure, ridiculous ideas that I should be/have been Madonna instead of Madonna were simply insane. But just as I felt lame for even thinking it, I can only be myself. My fate is there, and I’m in it, and part of it was dreaming crazy shit like that. Not that uncommon, huh, ladies?

The fabulous thing is though, that we are each unique, with our own fate alchemizing before our eyes. And my particular role as a bit over the top, a bit messy, a worrywart, a writer, is oh, so perfect. Oh, it really fits!

So if you’re a wacky chick, so lucky to live in this free to be you and me era that Madonna helped usher in, do yourself a favour and read about these other superdames. Bask in the afterglow of Doonan’s meeting with Madonna by laughing through these tales of mad money makers, strippers, fashionistas and other wackettes.

Donna Karan says Simon is a male Lucille Ball. I’m too young to really recall or appreciate this spitfire heroine- but I can nearly agree with Liz Smith, who called him “the most brash and brilliant thing in type.” Imaginative and fearlessly working it, Doonan captivates. You laugh, you cry. You fix your powder.

Wacky Chicks: Life Lessons from Fearlessly Inappropriate and Fabulously Eccentric Women
Simon Doonan
Simon and Schuster, 2003

If you like my columns, you’ll love my poetry collection, The Astronaut’s Wife. You can order it through amazon or indigo online. Or visit me at www.thegirlcanwrite.net and add me to your facebook!

xoxox Lorette C. Luzajic