Madonna has willed herself into becoming an international sex symbol, and tries on new lifestyles the way Shania Twain tries on clothes
Twain, more conventionally beautiful, seems to have her sexuality projected on to her, whether dressing up as a prom queen or a dominatrix.
-----------
As Shania Twain prepares to host the Juno Awards this Sunday,
we examine the many sides of the superstar in a week-long series. Today, Shania as master of reinvention.
--
Much like Madonna -- the inventor of reinvention -- Shania Twain is a shape-shifter: Her career has been defined largely by her staunch unwillingness to be categorized, either musically or personally. Both Madonna and Twain have shattered sexual taboos and genre barriers, relying heavily on their physical and musical versatility to ingratiate them with a wide audience. And perhaps the key to success for both has been the effective marketing of female sexuality in its infinite incarnations.
But there is a significant qualitative difference in the way each uses her sexuality: Twain projects a wholesome, sanatized flirtiness, whereas Madonna oozes libido. Madonna uses her amorphous sexuality as a form of creative expression -- a driving force through which she innovates and provokes controversy and, consequently, sets trends. Twain, conversely, seems to have sexuality projected on to her; she uses her natural conventional beauty to appropriate the guises of various generic dream women for the pleasure of her fans (whether it be a prom queen, a dominatrix or a down-home country girl).
In a sense, Madonna tries on new cultures and lifestyles the way Twain tries on a new crop top and, whereas many of Madonna's creative choices would likely have been considered commercially ill-advised, Twain's all appear to have been commercially pre-sanctioned. But just as Madonna's challenging of sexual norms has been the key to her success, Twain's willingness to embody a wide range of them has been crucial to hers.
Parallels between the two performers stretch all the way back to their troubled youths and their rags-to-riches stories. In countless interviews, we've learned that each is motivated, at least to some extent, by a need to compensate for childhood loss or disappointments. Madonna, who famously lost her mother to cancer at the age of seven, spent most of her childhood caring for her younger siblings in her strict Catholic family home in Bay City, Mich. Legend has it that as soon as she was old enough she moved to New York with $35 to her name, and propelled herself to the top by the sheer force of her ambition.
Twain grew up in Timmins, Ont., with her Irish-Catholic mother and Native adoptive father. The family was very poor: Milk and food was carefully rationed in their home, and often they went without heat in the winter. At the age of eight, Twain was performing in after-hours hotel bars to raise bit of money. When she was 21, her parents died in a car crash and she became the legal guardian of her three younger siblings. But, as soon as the time was right, she headed to Nashville and put her all-consuming drive to work.
Part of why these two women defy definition is that, perhaps because of their personal histories, they've chosen to straddle social divides rather than settling on one side of various fences. Madonna, for instance, has always experimented with the notions of male and female; Catholicism and hereticism; politics and performance. For her part, Twain has dwelled in the grey areas between rich and poor; country and pop; Native and non-Native; small-town girl and international superstar.
Physically, Madonna is arguably the less conventionally beautiful of the two. But she has essentially willed herself into becoming an international sex symbol by using music, dance and visual imagery to a combined effect, forcing people to recognize her strong, feminine sexual needs and desires (an approach which is no doubt intimidating to some).
Twain, on the other hand, has never been comfortable in role of sex symbol. "I'm not a very sexual person," she once told an interviewer for Q magazine. "I'm not the type who needs to flirt. My videos are sexy and I have quite a lot of fun with that, but I'm just not like that. I like good clean fun myself."
As such, there's a fakeness or a tinniness to her ever-evolving sexpot image, but there's also a safety in it that makes her non-threatening. Unlike Madonna, who dons a new persona for each and every video, completely reinventing herself from the inside out, Twain just changes her clothes like a perfectly proportioned paper doll. Madonna uses her sexuality to shock people awake; Twain uses hers to lull people into a breezy fantasy. Evidently, both approaches work.
The secret to Twain's lasting power is that, like Madonna, she has made herself wholely unknowable by refusing to settle on one genre of music, one fashion sensibility or one private lifestyle. But where there is a sense that Madonna has given her life over to being a sort of vessel, a perpetual artistic work in progress, Twain seems to jump from dream girl to dream girl (with varying degrees of sass) to obscure any real sense of herself in her videos. She's obvioulsy not interested in dumping the contents of her psyche into the public consciousness. Though, if the public wants to project theirs on to her, they can go right ahead.
Part four of a six part series.; Tomorrow: Shania as role model;
lgeorge@nationalpost.com
Go here
------------
One main difference between Madonna and Shania, Shania has class. I think she draws the wrong conclusion, Shania's personality is all over her videos, and Shania projects her sensuality naturally. The only thing thing they have in common is they are smart business women, the rest is like comparing a moth to a butterfly. I am proud to say, I do not own any Madonna albums.
-Chris
Linear Mode
