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Material girl: empowers or minimizes women?


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Something that always caught my attention was the fact that the video made for Material Girl totally contradicted the original lyrics of the song. As we all know in the video, although Madonna is shown obsessed with material things and money, we later realize that all this was only in appearance since in real life she was a woman who valued simple things and romance ( although I can't imagine someone in real life who prefers an insignificant bouquet of roses to an elegant and expensive jewel as seen in the video)

This "happy ending" is not mentioned in the original lyrics of the song, which rather talks about a woman who prefers to relate to men with money, always speaking of them in the plural, implying that she is not looking for a formal relationship (marrying a millionaire ) but relationships as brief and fleeting as possible (hinted further by the final phrase “Experience has made me rich…” where I think “Experience” refers to multiple relationships with several different men.

That is why I see that it goes against the empowerment of women since it contradicts the ideal that women should not depend on men and fend for themselves without the need to use their bodies or their beauty to seduce rich men and get material things or economic stability, thus becoming sexual objects.

On the other hand, I also feel that the song empowers them in a certain way by showing that in the end it is they, the material girls, who have the power to decide whether or not to be with someone despite having a lot of money and these men will have to submit to the final decision of the woman who, thanks to her beauty, has power in her hands. Two opposite thoughts to each other but that are found in an apparently simple song but whose lyrics contain a lot of complexity. Perhaps it was for this reason that Madonna decided to make a video that changed the original and controversial meaning of the song for something more digestible and romantic, although this would not prevent the public from identifying her as a material and ambitious girl, an image that apparently will follow her until the end of her days.

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Interesting topic and I find your views on this very nice.

Just to let you know, the song was intended to be satire, as what Madonna said. This and Like a Virgin was the two songs she called "ironic and provocative" as stated in her 2009 Rolling Stones interview: "I am not a materialistic person, and I certainly wasn’t a virgin, and, by the way, how can you be like a virgin? I liked the play on words, I thought they were clever. They’re so geeky, they’re cool.”

To me, I feel like the song is just a fun, upbeat song that we all come to like and adore since its release. However, if I were to really think about it, it is a form of empowerment.

If we take the song in a literal sense, she chooses whom she wants to date and in this case, it is a man with a well full of money and riches. She wants opulence and she desires for it and it's her choice because no one and no man is doing it for her but her only and it's good. Plus, I wanna talk about this line:

Boys may come and boys may go and that's alright to see.
Experiences made me rich and now they're after me 

My interpretation of this is that she's not only beautiful and rich, she works for herself and she desire things for herself. This makes the boys come after her too but seemingly, she's not too interested on them or perhaps even serious. 

In another angle, it is about her fantasy of being with a man of riches and opulence. Then again, don't we have that fantasy too? XD

But hey, it's nice to discuss on this. Hope things don't get too serious. o.o

 

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I do not really see how this song is about empowerment one way or another. Just because Madonna happens to be enacting a piece of satire as a woman who was heavily inspired by Marilyn Monroe does not mean we should read into this song  that much. Even if the lyrics by themselves lead us to believe the song is about a materialistic and shallow girl, is that a bad thing? So I would say the song neither empowers nor minimizes women as a whole because it is describing one particular girl who you might think was materialistic if you did not watch the video.

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1 hour ago, The First Citizen said:

I do not really see how this song is about empowerment one way or another. Just because Madonna happens to be enacting a piece of satire as a woman who was heavily inspired by Marilyn Monroe does not mean we should read into this song  that much. Even if the lyrics by themselves lead us to believe the song is about a materialistic and shallow girl, is that a bad thing? So I would say the song neither empowers nor minimizes women as a whole because it is describing one particular girl who you might think was materialistic if you did not watch the video.

I so agree. Madonna likes to think that she is not materialistic and that she is very spiritual and she does her thing in order to make the world a better place: LOL..

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Boys may come and boys may go and that's alright to see.
Experiences made me rich and now they're after me 

 

That's the twist plot line, she mentioned it before : in a society that makes women believe that pampering and validation from men was what makes a woman. It was important to remember that women experiences and achievements on their own were more valid. This rhetoric came back with Express Yourself after people didn't got the gist of Material Girl or Like a Virgin.

'Experiences' doesn't refer to sexual experiences but to life experience

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To me that's classic Madonna since day 1:

Presenting a contradiction in a way that she doesn't stand in one corner or the other ("is she a virgin? is she a slut? is she a material girl or only wants love? or both??"), but push your buttons and make you think and hopefully deconstruct some of your own prejudices on the way, while she gets your attention and feeds on that.

She does that PERFECTLY. Genius.

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56 minutes ago, Prayer said:

To me that's classic Madonna since day 1:

Presenting a contradiction in a way that she doesn't stand in one corner or the other ("is she a virgin? is she a slut? is she a material girl or only wants love? or both??"), but push your buttons and make you think and hopefully deconstruct some of your own prejudices on the way, while she gets your attention and feeds on that.

She does that PERFECTLY. Genius.

  I don't know LAV album was ever meant to be that deep. Sometimes it feels like Madonna has crafted this narrative of the wise and all knowing Madame X teaching us life lessons and holding a mirror to society when that was most likely never her intention at the time in most cases.

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I see it simply as parody or comical. Hence the last line

experience has made me rich

and now there after me

Cause everybody's living in a material world

The last line really turns the finger back to the audience of the day, and it was true and still is. 

I don't think that this even has to be a female empowerment song. It's allowed to just be what is, not everything she did or does is about women and feminism and female empowerment. 

I like the contradiction - I think it is more transformative than a true contradiction. It is more playing against the lyrics, but in a way that adds to the narrative. This was a time when people were taking music videos seriously and trying to elevate them to mini films. So the discussions were much like making a film. M or Mary may have found that transferring the narrative directly was too cliche and they wanted to come at from another angle. 

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1 hour ago, The First Citizen said:

  I don't know LAV album was ever meant to be that deep. Sometimes it feels like Madonna has crafted this narrative of the wise and all knowing Madame X teaching us life lessons and holding a mirror to society when that was most likely never her intention at the time in most cases.

Yeah, probably most of the time it's not that deep but I believe something can be superficial and have a deeper meaning somehow and work on both levels. Great pop music can be like that. Even if "Material Girl", the song, didn't have a deeper meaning originally to her and she made up the narrative with the video etc; the fact that she picked up the song originally is telling anyway, at least to me. :cute:

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Because it's an 80s song or pop song it doesn't remove the inner meaning she might wanted to add into the recipe.

It doesn't need to be a strong political message or critic like any other songs she has. But as a woman she has always addressing  her experiences and battles , specially within a heavy male controlled industry. You can do pop and silly songs and still deliver a message or sharing yours. In Papa don't preach she talks about youth pregnancy, In Spanish Eyes she addresses losing someone to AIDS, Goodbye to innocence talks about losing her privacy and being exposed to the celebrity world. Then there's the more personal ones like Till death, Keep it together, Oh Father and Live to tell.

 

 

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Even today I find the song to be empowering to women. She sings in the last verse about how she is the one earning the money now and that was uncommon then. “Experience has made me rich and now they’re after me.” As someone said the song is satirical social commentary. This was done in the 80’s when women were more and more moving into the corporate world and becoming more independent from men. Madonna was known as an empowered woman early on so only those who weren’t paying attention could have gotten it confused.

She really spells it out in the video too that the song is not serious. Even more so in the live performance.

But as we all know some people didn’t get it, and the media continued calling her the material girl for decades on.

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2 hours ago, Aiwa08 said:

What???!!! That is "In This Life" (Erotica), but in "Spanish Eyes" she is crying because her boyfriend/friend is dead, but the reason is really unknown for us. 

It was about HIV/AIDS victims in the latino community

https://www.slantmagazine.com/music/madonna-like-a-prayer/

"the powerful “Spanish Eyes” seemingly and elegantly conflated the then-taboo issue of AIDS with gang violence."

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