Image Credit: Samuel Benjamin Hernandez Lopez at Pexel

If you have been watching the news or scrolling down social media, you must have heard the news about Madonna receiving a backlash for her appearance on her recent tour.

She has been criticized for doing plastic surgery to change her appearance, by both men and women.

I am particularly alarmed by women criticizing her. But let me first give my background on Madonna. I studied Madonna when I did women’s studies.

A young woman at the time, I understood her struggle and was even inspired by her. My opinion of her hasn’t changed much.

I wouldn’t do plastic surgery.

However, I am not in the spotlight being constantly criticized by the ageist system that expects women to fit a mold.

To survive the system, one has to either get out of the system or change the system. Is it even possible to get out of the system, unless one dies?

One woman alone cannot deal with the emotional damage of growing old in this society where a woman’s value is connected to her body.

Some of us feel angry as we fear we will be judged the same way.

We also feel disappointed because we are fighting the system and she has given in to it.

We are all doing the best we can. It is hard being a woman. It is even harder growing old in an ageist society while being a top-performing artist in her earlier years, and even today.

There is a lot of compassion needed for her, and also for the ones who have courage enough to fight the system and not give in to it, and still fear being judged.

It is hard to accept ourselves in a system like this. It takes a huge amount of support, and radical self-love to accept ourselves in a society like ours.

And when we accept ourselves fully while fighting the system if we choose to do so, we will also accept Madonna and her choices even if we don’t make the same choices.

There is room for everything here.