Truth rating: 10
Madonna
3:07 pm, October 4th, 2013
(Terry Richardson for Harper’s BAZAAR)
Madonna writes an essay about “daring” for the November issue of Harper’s Bazaar, opening up about her rebellious beginnings and early struggles.
“If I can’t be daring in my work or the way I live my life, then I don’t really see the point of being on this planet,” says the performer.
She adds, “Being a rebel and not conforming doesn’t make you very popular. In fact, it does the opposite. You are viewed as a suspicious character. A troublemaker. Someone dangerous.”
Madonna reflects on her high school rebellion, which she describes as doing “the opposite of what all the other girls were doing,” which turned her into a “real man repeller.”
“That didn’t go very well. Most people thought I was strange. I didn’t have many friends; I might not have had any friends,” admits the music icon. “But it all turned out good in the end, because when you aren’t popular and you don’t have a social life, it gives you more time to focus on your future. And for me, that was going to New York to become a REAL artist.”
Not that things got easier in New York.
Madonna says the city “did not welcome me with open arms. The first year, I was held up at gunpoint. Raped on the roof of a building I was dragged up to with a knife in my back, and had my apartment broken into three times.”
“I was defiant. Hell-bent on surviving. On making it. But it was hard and it was lonely, and I had to dare myself every day to keep going,” remembers the singer.
She explains that she is “not a big fan of rules,” even though she’s a “big believer in ritualistic behavior.”
“Rules people follow without question. Order is what happens when words and actions bring people together, not tear them apart,” explains Madonna. “Yes, I like to provoke; it’s in my DNA. But nine times out of 10, there’s a reason for it.”
The star says that her study of Kabbalah “made people nervous. It made people mad. Was I doing something dangerous? It forced me to ask myself, Is trying to have a relationship with God daring? Maybe it is.”
She then opens up about her decision to adopt son David.
“I decided that I had an embarrassment of riches and that there were too many children in the world without parents or families to love them. I applied to an international adoption agency and went through all the bureaucracy, testing, and waiting that everyone else goes through when they adopt. As fate would have it, in the middle of this process a woman reached out to me from a small country in Africa called Malawi, and told me about the millions of children orphaned by AIDS,” recalls Madonna.
She continues, “Before you could say ‘Zikomo Kwambiri,’ I was in the airport in Lilongwe heading to an orphanage in Mchinji, where I met my son David. And that was the beginning of another daring chapter of my life.”
“I didn’t know that trying to adopt a child was going to land me in another sh*t storm. But it did. I was accused of kidnapping, child trafficking, using my celebrity muscle to jump ahead in the line, bribing government officials, witchcraft, you name it. Certainly I had done something illegal!” adds Madonna.
She says, “This was an eye-opening experience. A real low point in my life. I could get my head around people giving me a hard time for simulating masturbation onstage or publishing my Sex book, even kissing Britney Spears at an awards show, but trying to save a child’s life was not something I thought I would be punished for.”
Madonna writes, “I have been blessed with four amazing children. I try to teach them to think outside the box. To be daring. To choose to do things because they are the right thing to do, not because everybody else is doing them.”
What do you think about Madonna’s revelations?
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