Show Business: Now: Madonna on Madonna

"If People Don't Get the Humor in Me Or My Act, Then They Don't Want To"

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It all has to do with an attitude and loving yourself the way you are. Think of all the anorexics and suicides. Young people seem to be obsessed with not liking themselves. I don't think that what I'm trying to say is hard to understand. I don't go overboard really in any direction. I don't shave the side of my head. My hair is not pink. I don't feel that I'm putting on a costume. It's part of my personality and the mood that I'm in. Also I think that for the last ten or 20 years, that part of a woman has been suppressed. There has been the feeling that it's not right to want to dress up and be feminine, because women think that if they indulge in that, men won't respect them or take them seriously. Maybe kids now see someone in the public eye doing what I do. Maybe that's the phenomenon and why young girls are dressing up like me -- because finally someone else is showing that it's O.K.

FEMINISTS. To call me an antifeminist is ludicrous. Some people have said that I'm setting women back 30 years. Well, I think in the '50s, women weren't ashamed of their bodies. I think they luxuriated in their sexuality and being strong in their femininity. I think that is better than hiding it and saying, "I'm strong, I'm just like a man." Women aren't like men. They can do things that men can't do. If people don't get the humor in me or my act, then they don't want to get it. If ten-year-olds can get it and laugh, then an adult surely can.

FAME. I love being onstage and I love reaching out to people and I love the expressions in people's eyes and just the ecstasy and the thrill. But I have to have a bodyguard around me for security reasons. When I finish a show I can't stop on the street and sign a few autographs because I would be there three years. Sometimes when I go back to my hotel room there are people hiding in the ice closet, waiting. That is scary.

I feel caged in hotel rooms wherever I go. In New Orleans, after the show we took a cab to Bourbon Street. I put a hat on and pulled it down low, but I stepped onto the curb and one person said, "There's Madonna," and then everybody said, "There's Madonna." We started walking down the street looking in windows and watching some jazz groups, and the more we walked, the more people started to follow us. The people don't want to hurt me. They just want to be near me. Actually it hasn't gotten to the point where I never go out. I still go running on the street and shopping. I don't send people out to do everything for me. I want to try to do as many things as I can in that regard, because I think if you really separate yourself from people, you start to have a scary opinion of the world. I don't want to feel that way.

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