Madonna has been there, done that so not much phases her. So if you’re going to take any issue with her and anything she does, the Queen of Pop has a message for you online haters out there.
“You can hide behind your computer or your phone and say whatever you want — you’re not known. Could you say it to my face? Would you say it to my face? I doubt it,” she tells Cosmopolitan in the issue, out April 14.
Madonna just released her latest studio album, Rebel Heart, and is about to drop a video for it’s latest single, “Ghosttown,” and with all that in mind, the star is opening up about still maintaining a very active career decades after she started it.
“Popularity comes and goes,” she says. “You need to know who you are, what you stand for, and why you’re here.”
of course, part of her formula just might be knowing which contemporary artists to recruit and work with. For Rebel Heart she enlisted the help of Kanye West.
“It’s a little bit of a bullfight, but we take turns. He knows that he’s walking into a room with a person with a strong point of view, and I do too,” she recalls of working with the rapper. “I listen to what he has to say, take it in, and he listens to what I say and takes it in. We didn’t agree on everything, but he has good ideas.”
And in addition to music, Madonna is still fighting the good fight and hoping to change people’s view points on sexuality, including, most recently, social media’s “hypocrisy” when it comes to censoring the female body.
“Don’t be fooled, not much has changed — certainly not for women,” she says. “We still live in a very sexist society that wants to limit people. Since I started, I’ve had people giving me a hard time because they didn’t think you could be sexual or have sexuality or sensuality in your work and be intelligent at the same time. For me, the fight has never ended.”
You can see Madge’s Cosmopolitan covers below.