Perhaps nobody has held up a bigger mirror to America's disgust at women daring to age than Madonna, and Doja Cat has had it with the ageism.
In a recent TikTok, Doja Cat ranted about the comments she's seen on social media telling Madonna she should just retire already.
It's not clear what prompted the criticisms—presumably rumors that she was going to join Sabrina Carpenter onstage at Coachella, which turned out to be untrue—but whatever the case, Doja Cat was not having it.
She pointedly told the haters that what they were demanding of Madonna was not only sexist and ageist, but kind of absurd. After all, it's not like music expires like milk!
@dojacat bewhewwwww 🤣
Doja Cat opened her video by saying:
"I’m really tickled and bothered... about how people are telling Madonna to stop..."
"It’s interesting to me because it’s like you’re telling a musician who who makes music, who performs it as their job to stop doing it. I’m trying to wrap my head around that."
She then theorized what's behind this weird anger at a person doing their job.
"Is it because she’s an older woman who feels sexy?"
Yep, probably! She went on to drag the critics even further.
"Is that why you want her to get off stage because you feel threatened by an older woman who can do her job forever?..."
"...And she has something she loves doing and she’s doing it forever and other people are paying money to go there and enjoy it with her and they like it?"
She went on to imply that these critics were projecting their own insecurities onto Madonna—which is certainly nothing new where Madonna is concerned, a woman who was mocked as a "grandma" when she was younger than Taylor Swift is right now.
And she weirdly seems to be the only artist who gets this kind of mockery and criticism. Men never do, of course, but neither do artists like, say, Dolly Parton or Cher, both of whom are older than Madonna and have yet to retire.
It's strange that this criticism persists, even in these supposedly more enlightened times. If anyone told Dolly Parton to wrap it up, the entire internet would come to her defense.
That never seems to be the case with Madonna, which is probably because Madonna has the audacity to still incorporate sex into her "elderly" work. How dare she!
But perhaps what best illustrates how laughably out of touch these critics are, Madonna quite famously predicted the exact form of sexist ageism she's now regularly subjected to all the way back in 1993 when she was just 35—still younger than Taylor Swift is today and only a couple years older than current stars like Ariana Grande and Charli XCX.
Asked by reporter Jonathan Ross if she thinks she'll still be "challenging the taboo" of women being sexual even after 40, she shot back:
“....I mean, who cares? What if I am? I mean, Is there a rule?"
"What, are you just supposed to die when you’re 40? ... You're supposed to just put yourself out to pasture?"
"Why? Life is long – people are living to be 100 years old! I don’t get it.”
Yep, and more than 30 years later, neither does Doja Cat!
And on social media, a LOT of people agreed with Doja Cat's take on Madonna.
The simple fact of the matter is age comes for all of us eventually, and if it makes you angry that someone doesn't let it stop her? Well, as the Queen of Pop once famously sang herself, "You're the one with the problem."
