MATERIAL GIRL secure the part, who can blame
her ? It has paid off (to have good
The look is pure subservience. The
white-painted face, with lips like a
red gash (open cut or wound
talho), is framed (put around her
hair framed her face) by a
completely straight curtain of dark
glossy ( smooth,shinning) hair. It
is the stark (simple in a severe
way,nun) (5)image of a geisha (a
Japanese girl trained to
entertain (men) by her
conversation, dancing) that stares
( to look at with a fixed gaze
fitar) into the camera. So it is
difficult to believe that this is
Madonna the woman who sums
up (summary) feisty (easily
annoyed or offended ) was
independence in the post-feminist
era posing(body attitude) as a
silent, submissive geisha.
(10)But to take Madonna at face
value is to misunderstand one of
the most complex and intelligent
female stars of the past two
decades.
She is the mistress (a woman who
commands) of reinvention. And
(15)behind every change of image
always total, always perfect
down to the last detail is a
carefully thought-out (process of
thinking) strategy to get the
attention that she wants.
From the moment the Detroit
convent (building in which nuns
live) (20) girl hitch-hiked (travel
by means of free rides in others
people car pegar carona) to New
York twenty years ago with a
burning ambition to be the worlds
most famous woman, she has
shown an amazing talent for
transformation.
She was named the new face of
Max (25)Factor makeup-quite an
achievement (reach successfully)
at the age of forty. But the singer
almost certainly has her eye on her
next movie role. It is no
coincidence that Steven Spielberg
is looking for a woman for his film
adaptation (30) Arthur Goldens
best-selling novel, Memoirs of a
Geisha. And if her new geisha look
is part of Madonnas campaign to
When Madonna was expecting her
(70)daughter, Lourdes, 1996, she
results) before. completely vanished (no longer
(35) She desperately wanted the visible) from view. It wasnt until
role of Evita, so she showed Lourdes was nine moths old that
director Alan Parker she was the she emerged as an Earth Mother,
perfect choice by adoption an wearing pretty dresses and hardly
uncanny (strange or mysterious) any makeup.
resemblance to the Argentinean Then at forty, she moved into the
presidents wife. Indian mystic phase and nine
(40) Madonna has always been a months later her hair, which has
brilliant consolidator of trends, been almost every color under the
(make a solid tendency) picking sun, is now back to its natural dark
up on an existing look and making brown, cut in a bob( to move up
it her own. When she first or down balanar).
bounced (jump to success) into (80) What has drawn Madonna to
charts (news) in 1984 with torn the persona of the geisha, one of
(45)punk tights and big bangles the most notorious symbols of pre-
(bracelets) Material Girl in 1985 feminist woman, virtually
not just a clever imprisoned in the service of men ?
pastiche(imitating the previous Only time will tell, but one thing is
work of another artist) on (85) certain this geisha is being
Marilyn Monroes Diamonds Are a used in the service of only one
Girls Best Friend. The platinum- person: Madonna herself.
blond hair, furs, and glitzy
(excessive showiness)
jewelry she wore for the
(50)video so entranced actors
Sean Penn that he was determined
to have her. Another example of
Madonna dressing for results.
By 1989, when her marriage to
Penn formally ended, she had
already moved on (55) was
involved with Warren Beatty. For a
short time, she dressed like the
gangsters moll (a female
companion of a gangster,a
prostotute) she played in their
joint movie venture, Dick Tracy, in
which she played
Breathless( difficult to breathe
sem folego) Mahoney a role she
took so seriously that she took so
seriously that (60) she was
prepared to put on (increase)
weight for it. When the Beatty
romance ended, she turned to Jean-
Paul Gaultier for space-age outfits
with tight corsets and menacing
(threatening to harm) conical bra
tops.
(65)At the 1995 MTV Music Video
Awards, she adopted the Brigitte
Bardot look with black eyeliner
and loose hair falling over her
shoulders.