MT Comment & HumourCommentMadonna hits 50 - but what does that say about the rest of us? Madonna hits 50 - but what does that say about the rest of us?
12/08/2008
Madonna is 50 this month and about to embark on the European leg of her “Sticky and Sweet” tour. She’s still scantily clad, shows her crotch, does the splits and energetically moves across the stage.
What is our response to the “one and only queen of re-invention” who can just about get away with anything? Do we shake our heads and tut tut about her age or have we sneaking admiration for someone who seemingly defies ageing joints, wrinkles and the downward drag of body weight?
Madge is now, without doubt, the middle-aged Madonna – still the ultimate showy baby boomer but also, and she may not realise this, an excellent example of what happens at “mid-life”. A few years ago Madonna embraced the Kaballah faith calling herself Esther, evidence of her exploration of the meaning of life perhaps? The psychologist Carl Jung might have called this her “mid-life transition,” a term describing the process of change from determining who we are (where the focus is external with high visibility and show), to a more internal focus, exploring and developing who we want to be.
If we look at Madonna more deeply, her reinvention into Esther could be a very high profile example of this process where her inner reflections are moving her from the material girl to the meaningful woman (in theory anyway). Are the rest of us around this middle age also reaching the peak of our self fulfilment? There are a number of reasons why we should be.
We are likely to have more money than ever before. Our kids (if we have any) may be leaving home for good, the mortgage will be nearing its end and we may still be hoping to inherit something worthwhile from our parents, notwithstanding the cost of care. If employed, we’re likely to be at the peak of our earnings potential. If we’re retired we’ll be better off than other generations of pensioners as we benefited from generous occupational pension schemes.
We’re likely to have better health in our older age reflecting the effects of medical progress and the “compression of morbidly” which compresses any serious health problems into the last months or years of life.
We’ve grown up in the post-war world rejecting the values of our parents encapsulated in the Dunkirk spirit. Easy access to the pill, credit and the rise of consumerism replaced “make do and mend” with “want now so spend” demonstrating our fundamental shift in values.
So this combination of improving wealth, health and changing values provides the nourishment and growth of self. Being able to determine what is important in our lives, proving to ourselves, and not others, what we can do, what we can look like and what we can experience.
Even the impact of the credit crunch may just be the catalyst to accelerate our reflections and inward pondering, curbing our spending and external focus, helping us to concentrate on the really significant.
The problem is, that unlike Madonna who attracts publicity whatever she does, our inward focus and lack of show in later life plunges us into the stagnant pool of ageism with the rest of the older generations. Under the surface, our current and potential economic value in all parts of society, as employees, carers and consumers, will continue to be disregarded even though we have the potential and experience to be the true life savers of the current economic storm.
If we were all like Madonna, we could make more of our mid-life transformations through taxing tours of the world drumming up supporters from Government and Business so that our value would be recognised. But it would be much easier for the movers and shakers themselves to take a tour of the streets to find out more about us.
There are millions of us visible everyday if you only care to look.
In these tough economic times, a closer focus on these generations might just provide the “hard candy” (the name of Madonna’s album) to sweeten the current unpalatable misfortunes of government and business. There may not be a concert with a cavorting middle-aged Madonna near you, but there is definitely an underserviced baby boomer waiting for your better performance and applause.
Image by David Shankbone.
Judith Cork is an independent strategy consultant based in Yorkshire who specialises in the baby boomer market and is a baby boomer herself (one month and one day older than Madonna!).