Madonna at the Super Bowl (which I watched on Twitter)

During Madonna’s half-time performance today there were several jokes on Twitter about her age and looks.

Like:

Wow! Maggie Smith can really sing!

— Steve Martin (@SteveMartinToGo) February 6, 2012

(Maggie Smith is 77; She plays old ladies on BBC.)

Madonna (I wasn't going to include pictures, because that's so, so shallow, but I had already googled them anyway.)

 and

Madonna wants to go home and watch Murder, She Wrote so bad right now.

— Lindy West (@thelindywest) February 6, 2012 
 

(Which is actually pretty funny. But I bet Madonna would be watching something hip, like Jag. That’s what my mom, who was born the same year — 1958 — as Madonna, likes to watch of an evening.) (Okay, my mom doesn’t really like television, but she’ll watch that with my dad, who is 6.5 years older, despite my pleading with them to try NCIS.)

There were enough (and more vitriolic) jokes to inspire this tweet:

Nothing funnier than obese, beer-soaked, acne-ridden, cheese-stuffed, sweat-stained males making fun of Madonna’s looks.

— John Fugelsang (@JohnFugelsang) February 6, 2012

So I wondered on Twitter, as you do when you have a burning need to point something out, if we would be making fun of Madonna’s age and looks if she were a man. Several people responded with examples of men who have either performed at half-time and been mocked or who would be if they did.

Only problem? The ages of those comparison males ranged from 9-16 years older than Madonna. For scientific purposes, they were:

(Madonna, and my mother, are 53)

Mick Jagger: 68     

Steven Tyler: 63

Bruce Springsteen: 62

Paul McCartney: 69

Pete Townshend: 66 and Roger Daltrey: 67 (The Who, which I am telling you because I had to look their names up)

So Madonna is compared (unfavorably) age and looks-wise to men who are, on average, thirteen years older than she is.

Possibly this is because she tries too hard to appear youthful, or because this is how people naturally age, men growing old gracefully (George Clooney, Sean Connery) and women hagging out early ([insert female movie star playing the mother/teacher/Mean Queen instead of the love interest]).

What bothers me is that there was also much indignation on the twitters about the GoDaddy commercial in particular and several others that objectify women. Why is it okay to judge a woman on her age/demeanor explicitly and implicitly/subconsciously by arguing it’s okay to mock her because her supposed male peers have faced the same (I say supposed because are people thirteen years older really her peers in the age stakes?).

A lot of the jokes were funny. Madonna is a public figure and well able to take anything we could dish out. I just worry that this is evidence that we’ve bought into the vast media conspiracy selling us on how women should look, how young/attractive/sexy they should be in order to merit our attention/approbation/respect.

I mean, there wasn’t even one twitter reply-er outlier who said, It’s fine to make fun of Madonna; I riff on Bono all the time. Those tinted glasses? Puh-lease. (Bono is 51)

(If you’re on Twitter, I’m @seagullfountain. If you follow me long enough, I’ll retweet the smart people I conversed with tonight and then you can follow them too!)