The Ottawa Citizen
October 22, 1992, Thursday, FINAL EDITION

Madonna, Sinead defy categorizing

SUSAN RILEY

    If you think the plebiscite question is difficult, try coming up with a
morally responsible, politically correct position on Sinead O'Connor and
Madonna.

   Are they neo-feminist role models or avaricious narcissists? Or do both
simply display classic symptoms of childhood abuse?

   These questions cannot be answered with a Yes or No; we're talking about the
inner lives of two complex individuals, not the fate of a mere country.

   For all their wealth, fame and brashness, neither Madonna nor O'Connor have
entirely escaped the virus that afflicts so many contemporary women: low
self-esteem.

   Madonna's flirtation with bondage in her latest video Erotica and in her new
book, Sex , can be seen as canny marketing, but it also emits faint echoes of
self-dislike.

   Madonna lost her mother when she was young and had a difficult relationship
with her father. She has hinted, in a joking way, that her father slept with
her. Whatever the truth, she has a detached, decidedly mercantile approach to
sex not uncommon among abuse survivors.

   As for O'Connor, she ripped up the Pope's picture on Saturday Night Live and
led anti-abortion protests in her native Ireland, but that doesn't make her a
feminist.

   In the latest Rolling Stone she says: "I have a very deep love and respect
and understanding for men. I have a love and understanding for women, too, but
sometimes I feel more compassion for men because of the pain they're in.

   "I don't feel men are bastards and I don't think its right to frighten them
by trying, in a conglomeration, to act against them. It's very difficult being a
man; far more difficult than being a woman."

   Her sympathy extends to American boxer and convicted rapist Mike Tyson. "Poor
man. He has had the most miserable upbringing. If he looks for solace in the
arms of lots of women, what do you expect him to do? And that woman who is suing
him is a bitch. I don't care if he raped her; he should learn about himself and
why he behaved like that . but equally she should look at herself and the
disgrace she is making of women."

   Could the Pope have said it better?

   O'Connor says she was abused by her mother as a child, disliked by other
schoolgirls because of her beauty and saved from self-destruction by God. But
you have to wonder: if she thinks so little of women in general, what must she
think of herself?

   It may be that O'Connor and Madonna are -- for all their provocations --
profoundly conservative in their sexual politics. They are also reassuringly
male-identified in an industry and culture that has little tolerance for true
difference.

   Even Madonna's interest in lesbianism is more play than passion. For her,
lesbian is just another flavor in the sexual smorgasbord, not a radical
alternative.

   But Madonna, 34, and O'Connor, 25, are not simple victims of sexism or the
crass ethics of their business. Both set their own boundaries in the boardroom,
if not in their personal lives.

   And while they favor buckshot over sniper fire, sometimes they hit the right
targets: in O'Connor's case, the jingoistic playing of national anthems before
rock concerts; in Madonna's, our hypocrisy about sex.

   Besides, both are young. Self-esteem can grow with age and experience; so
does political insight. Their energy may be misdirected, but they aren't
passive.