Is Madonna old enough to be your mother?

I didn’t watch the Super Bowl or the halftime show, but woke up this morning to a Tampa Bay, Florida radio show where a female and male co-host traded comments about Madonna being too old to be gyrating and writhing on stage. The female co-host declared, “She’s old enough to be my mother.”

Not as public, but only three nights before at a dinner in St. Petersburg with five other people one of my colleagues turned to me and proclaimed, “My mother is younger than you.” Although I’m a social scientist, I’m not good at quickly running even simple numbers in my head. So I was stumped for a moment as I tried to figure out from an earlier story she had told about being in second grade when JFK was shot, if I was old enough to be her mother. By the time I had figured that since I had been a junior in high school when Kennedy was assassinated, I was not old enough to be her mother, the conversation—like the radio banter—had moved on.

Might Madonna, like me, reflect on what to make of another adult woman saying she is old enough to be her mother? Is the woman trying to
• elevate her relative youthfulness?
• sort others into simplistic social categories to help her navigate socially?
• suggest that the other woman is stepping on (or dancing over) gendered and racialized age norms?
• consider that her own mother has more daring, vitality, and sensuality than she had imagined?

No matter their motives, the radio hosts and my colleague added their voices to a dominant culture that divides, ranks, and differentially values its members.

I’m as slow at thinking of what to say in these moments as I am at doing calculations in my head, but better late than never:

If you make observations about others’ age, gender, race, sexuality and/or disability, consider the relevance of your comments to the conversation. Can you tell your story or make your point without these comments? Reflect on what you and others gain from your making such comments. Consider who is harmed by these kinds of comments.

For targets or witnesses to such comments, speak up. For instance, I could have said something like: “whoa, I am feeling like I’m in a box labeled ‘older than your mother’. I need to be seen as more multi-faceted than that. Can you think of other ways to make your point without commenting on my age relative to your mother or anyone else?”

Maybe it will open up a dialogue or change someone’s behavior. Even if it doesn’t, by speaking up we take a stand against careless comments that isolate and diminish others.

I’ve now seen Madonna’s halftime show and know that even this megastar had a couple of missteps during her show, but she rocked on. We’ll all have our own missteps as we try to speak up for ourselves and others but we, too, will rock on.