Newflash: Madonna is aging! Every morning, our little Material Girl wakes up another day older.

Consider: It’s already been seven years since Ray of Light dawned, eleven years since Human Nature debuted, fifteen years since Blond Ambition struck, twenty-two long years since Holiday. In only three years, Madonna will be eligible for entry into the prestigious and (no offense, U.K.) real Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

No one should expect so prolific a person, so creative an artist, so scrutinized an idol to look the way she did when it all began. By now, given what she has accomplished, she should be a prune juice-sipping, huddled mass of wrinkles in some luxury rest home, occasionally surfacing to do a cabaret show or hock merchandise on the Home Shopping Network.

But no! She’s as vibrant and ambitious as ever. Madonna’s nearly forty-seven and looks great. When she’s “on,” she’s certainly “on” - styled within an inch of her life, outrageously fit, impeccably made-up. That she looks and sounds fabulous so late into her enviable career is despite - not because of - her immeasurable talent and farsightedness.

And yet there has been an almost constant analysis of Madonna’s beauty and whether it is waning.
Our celebrity culture has transcended the most overt product of entertainment - that is, film, television, music, and theater themselves - to infiltrate the most intimate aspects of its promulgators’ lives.
Thus, we get paparazzi snapshots of Madonna biking through London, leaving yoga class in Los Angeles, and (coming soon!) picking her nose in Central Park.

Worse, there is the ongoing dialogue both in the press and among pop culture enthusiasts about how old she looks. She, like many in the public eye, is dogged with superficial attacks whenever she lets her guard down, labeled “haggard,” “tired,” or “ancient.” God forbid the poor woman stay out a bit late one night and actually display some under-eye baggage. (I mean, who among us has not been there?)

This obsession creates a twofold problem: it feeds upon itself in a vicious cycle and engenders stars playing along (e.g., wearing cutesy message t-shirts for the press to prey upon, selling pictures of private events, whoring out their families to interviewers) blurring the lines of sheer entertainment for the sake of entertainment and “real life.” Fan and media interaction become crucial elements.

Madonna, once called the most photographed woman in the world, does not escape this game and can perhaps be credited with pushing celebrity-as-commodity to its economic apex.

Or is that nadir?

Over the years, Madonna has invited everyone to check her out, warts and all, and has all but begged the media to document her life for us all to watch. And we have.
The problem arises when we get so caught up in the put-down of the external that Madonna, for all her open-mindedness, becomes absolutely terrified of aging, or at least the physical manifestation of aging.
Growing old is part of humanity and, to those whose livelihood ostensibly relies on youth and beauty (which any true Madonna fan would argue she is exempt from), humanity also means fearing what is perceived as physical decline.

I, for one, happen to like my Madonna growing old gracefully. Watching her evolve from the punky, gum-snapping brat in the early eighties through the various stages of her life has been interesting.
The recent Versace campaign, dutifully airbrushed of all imperfections, does not follow the natural progression of a woman who has again and again awed everyone with her artistic gifts and has a strong sense of herself to accept and build on her legacy. It instead reflects a woman nearing fifty who is desperately clinging to the romanticized vision of being young and, hence in her and projected audiences’ (and, crucially, customers’) minds, sexy.

It will take a major overhaul of how consumers take in their entertainment before the emphasis on beauty and age is turned on its ear. As old as time, the system apparently works, giving us so-called aspirational icons, people we should look to for guidance on what the ideal is or should be. It’s a system that has given us the improbably proportioned Barbie dolls, eating disorders, and, of course, plastic surgery.

By her own admission, Madonna subsisted on popcorn and ice cream sundaes in the early stages of her dance and music careers. While never chubby by any means, the baby fat-adorned twenty-five year old soon became a goddess of physical fitness and corporeal dedication.
Her raving about Krispy Kreme doughnuts, even as recently as her appearance on MTV’s “TRL” in 2000, made her more of an authentic person, one who might think twice about a macrobiotic diet (also soon abandoned in part). Whispers of a nose job, anabolic steroids, facelifts, and Botox confuse matters: “Wait, is she for real or not?”

It’s a secret. It’s all an illusion. It’s marketing.