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Madonna and her Guy
A British newspaper reported recently that Madonna has announced her plans to marry her boyfriend, filmmaker Guy Ritchie, at a lavish Scottish cathedral on December 22, 2000. The couple already have a four-month old son, Rocco, and have been living together in a swanky London neighbourhood for about a year.
When Madonna was spotted wearing a large diamond ring shortly after the birth of her son, the media pestered her to admit she was engaged. She denied it hotly, saying that the ring was merely a token of love on the occasion of their son's birth. Now, it seems, the hints about marriage were right. Ritchie proposed and Madonna accepted, and although they initally put the wedding off until next year to accomodate their schedules, it seems both were eager to be married before Christmas. After the $1.4 million wedding, during which Ritchie will sport a kilt and Madonna a dress designed by Stella McCartney, the couple will settle down for a stable, family oriented life in London.
The idea of Madonna settling down into domestic bliss seems ludicrous. Up until now, Madonna has been down on marriage, probably owing to her tumultuous three year marriage to Sean Penn and ultimate divorce in 1989. She has been quoted as saying that everyone should get married at least once just to see what an outdated and silly institution it is. And she has certainly flouted the institution over the years, given her string of lovers and having had a child by her personal trainer, whom she dumped as soon as the child was born. She has been anything but wife-and-motherly throughout her career, has been described as a "gay man trapped in a woman's body" and has answered her critics by saying she does have a penis; it's in her mind.
But now, after living with Ritchie for a year and having had a son with him, she has changed her mind about marriage, saying "We are very much in love, marriage seems like the natural thing to do."
With that statement, she confirms what I've always believed. If you're truly in love, you'll want to get married. When you find the person you want to spend the rest of your life with, all your previous doubts or opinions about the pointlessness of marriage go out the window, and the institution you once regarded as stifling, meaningless, antiquarian or oppressive suddenly unfolds as a warm and welcoming blanket you can wrap around yourselves.
But everyone knows this. Everyone has witnessed confirmed bachelors abruptly marrying after avoiding marriage for years, or embittered women softened by love after they'd sworn it off forever. Even Gloria Steinem, poster girl for the anti-man movement, was recently swept away in spite of herself and disappointed legions of her followers by getting married. It's the kind of wisdom our grandmothers possess, the quiet, secure knowledge that love changes everything, even the world-weary, the jaded, the insecure.
But what's really interesting about this turn of events is how it illustrates another principle I've observed: women are truly happiest in love when they find a man whom they feel is worthy of their submission. The more powerful the woman, the proportionately more powerful the man must be to win her heart.
I'm not a psychologist, but it appears to me that Guy Ritchie, a tough-talking, foul-mouthed Londoner whose films, like "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" and "Snatch" are violent, sexually graphic gangster flicks, is ten times the man Madonna is. It is abundantly clear that he is no toy boy, unlike some of the other men she dominated and then discarded when she got bored. He has been described as her "gruffer half" and is reportedly unimpressed by her fame. Although ten years her junior and not nearly as wealthy or well known, he seems quite comfortable wearing the pants in that family.
He is tough as nails, and not afraid of rolling up his sleeves for a fight. He was arrested recently for assaulting a fan that strayed too near Madonna's home, a typical knight-in-shining-armour fit of jealousy and protectiveness that makes women weak in the knees. (This, perhaps, is a motif in her relationships; Sean Penn was arrested for the same thing). While Madonna holds her own with him - she made him pay to use her song "Lucky Star" in his new movie - Ritchie is clearly no pushover. He likes Madonna, he says, because "she's ballsy" - the unspoken follow up to that statement is "but I'm ballsier".
They had an argument about whether to live in Los Angeles(for the sake of her career) or London(for the sake of his) - and London won out. "Bascially, Guy threatened to leave me and I said, 'okay, we'll live in England'." is how she herself explains the decision. She recently purchased a $15 million home there and has told reporters how much she likes the place and how at home she feels in Britain, despite being outspoken about the dismal condition of Britain's hospitals and her refusal to have her baby in one.
It is hard to imagine Madonna compromising on anything for anyone, and it's even harder to imagine her settling down somewhere to accommodate her husband's career. Having spent her life in New York, Miami, and Los Angeles, and after trying to convince herself and others that she's a Latina instead of an Italian girl from Bay City, it's hard to believe she would choose England for her children's upbringing. Ritchie's influence on her has been great, and while it wouldn't be surprising in any other woman, to see Madonna rearrange her life for a man and desire marriage and children with him is almost unheard of.
I maintain that she's doing all this because she is truly in love, probably for the first time in her life. She is allowing herself to feel feminine instead of taking command like she has in the past. She has found a man who is tougher, stronger, braver, and more masculine than she is. It's unlikely that she can boss him around or scare him into submission or overshadow him with her gargantuan fame. While she is naturally free to continue with her own career and blaze her own trails, being with a man like Ritchie allows her the one joy a life of ballbusting has never allowed; pure, romantic surrender to a dominant, worthy man.
You don't have to be a brash and outlandish powerhouse like Madonna, or a pugilistic tough guy like Ritchie to enjoy the rewards of masculine dominance and feminine submission. Perhaps it's simple a lesson for women who search in vain for a man to love and for men who can't seem to attract the right woman. If women admitted that in order to be truly satisfied in sex, love and marriage they need a man who represents dominant masculinity to them (be it height, strength, wealth, power, or simply robust sexuality) and if men understood that to attract an amazing woman they have to be that much more of an amazing man, (and therefore question their "nice guy" routines and sensitive self-sacrifice, their forays into feminism and their denial of their sexual natures) then like would attract like, and marriage would be a lot more fun for everyone.
If it works for Madonna, it works for anyone. As tough as she is, she has finally met her match - her superior even, judging by bravado alone - and like most women, wants nothing more than to enjoy submitting to him sexually in the ultimate feminine role: wife.
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