Open Letter to Madonna

Dear Madonna,

You've been fierce your whole life. I'm sure that as a small child you bedazzled your Osh Kosh B'Gosh's so that you were the only kid in the neighborhood with beaded overalls. I know you've been fierce since 1981. You've made a career out of 'reinventing yourself' and selling it.

Because of your nearly three decades of awesomeness, of transcending tack, it pains me to say this: Please put on some pants. It's not that you don't have the body of a weightlifting gazelle--you do. It's not that I can't see your toned hamstrings through your fishnets and see through skirts -- I can. It's just that, as I walked by your ad, posted ten feet high in the window of the Louis Vuitton store, all I could think was: This woman wants attention.

You see, it takes some class to age gracefully (see: Meryl Streep). As women get older, they don't need to be any less fierce to stay on the classy side of the line, they just need to modify their approaches. So when I see you in fishnets, no pants, one platformed-stillettoes-tasseled toe pointing in the air while you rest lightly on a restaurant chair a la Jennifer Beals in Flashdance, I think that you are moving towards the tacky side of the line. Jennifer Beals didn't wear pants too often either -- she was also in her early 20s and hadn't yet had a child, a documentary about sex, or a legal battle over an adorable African quasi-orphan.

So Madonna, please move back toward the classy side of the line and bare those phonebook-tearing arms -- but please please, put on some trousers.

Love,

TP

P.S. Did Marc Jacobs kill a Fraggle to get your skirt/undies/hotpants? I'm not sure that Meryl would wear separates that used to be a Jim Henson character. Just saying. Not judging (this time).