Life in the spotlight of intense global fame has always had a downside. Along with the riches and power come the dangers of burnout, addiction and public disaster.
That has often been true for the children of celebrities. Yet at just 13 years of age Madonna’s daughter, Lourdes, has begun to dabble in acting, fashion design, singing and dancing. She is also soon to debut a clothing line called Material Girl in partnership with her uber-famous mother.
It is certainly a dangerous road to follow but, with such a famous mother, Lourdes probably had no choice about embracing a life in the public eye and she must have the best guide in the business on how to court fame and turn it to her advantage. “Madonna has a PhD in using fame. She is a total genius,” said Hollywood correspondent Gayl Murphy.
Like any caring mother, Madonna has exercised firm control over what her daughter does. However, unlike most mothers, that has tended to revolve around headline-grabbing events in which Lourdes can get involved. Two years ago it was reported that Madonna had forbidden Lourdes to take a role in the film The Secret Lives of Bees, which featured young actress Dakota Fanning. She also allegedly vetoed a plan for Lourdes to appear in a Harry Potter film.
Now rumors are circulating that Lourdes has landed a role in a forthcoming film about Edward VIII. The key difference? The Edward VIII film is Madonna’s own project. Despite strong rumors to the contrary, Madonna’s publicists have denied that Lourdes has been cast in the film, but their phrasing has left the door open so that the decision could be changed.
Whatever the truth, a stage career certainly looms. Lourdes has just been accepted into a performing arts high school. At the same time, she has made an appearance in one of her mother’s music videos, appearing as a dancer in the shoot that accompanied the single Celebration last year.
Lourdes also attended the premiere of the Hollywood musical Nine last year, posing on the red carpet next to her mother wearing a black leather jacket and fingerless lace gloves that echoed Madonna’s 1980s style. “Lourdes is still pretty young for this sort of thing. But Madonna at the moment appears to be doing everything that a real stage mom should be doing ... she is showing a lot of control,” said Murphy.
That is certainly true of Lourdes’s highest-profile project yet: her clothing line. The brand, which is inspired by her mother’s early career style, will go on sale this summer. It has been mostly designed and chosen by Lourdes herself, but Madonna has taken a firm grip on the reins of the publicity machine behind it. Lourdes is the face of the brand, which is trying to appeal to teens, but Madonna’s fame is the engine that is generating the publicity.
“The big question mark is whether the Madonna brand really appeals to a wide swath of teens and tweens, which are the key target demographic for the line. In that sense, it’s smart to have Lourdes as a face for the brand,” said David Lipke, a senior editor at Women’s Wear Daily.
Madonna is the one meeting the press, keeping her daughter firmly behind the scenes and acting as Lourdes’ spokeswoman. In a series of interviews last week, Madonna explained that she was fearful of getting Lourdes in front of the cameras and putting her daughter under such public pressure. “That is why I am here talking about the line and she is not. Eventually, I will let her. I feel like she needs to go to high school and focus on her studies,” Madonna said.
If that makes Madonna sound like any other mum, that is not surprising. Parenting expert and top American “mommy blogger” Cathy Hale said celebrity parents had the same protective emotions as any parent, but a very different context for them. “The feelings are the same. At the end of the day, if you are Madonna or any other parent, you are still all dealing with diapers and kids falling down and scraping their knees,” said Hale, who runs the blog MommyQ.com.
But if anyone knows the pitfalls of being a celebrity parent it is Madonna. She has been globally famous for three decades and will have witnessed many spectacular burnouts of celebrity offspring. But, ironically, the role of protective “stage mom” is also a new one for Madonna.
After all, her own fame has been built on a series of clever reinventions. “It is actually another reinvention for Madonna. She’s been a singer, an actress, a pop star and a children’s author. Now she’s a stage mom,” said Murphy.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist