I have been really active on Instagram lately. I don’t know if my stories qualify as “quality content“, but for the most part, I only post shit that I consider worth watching/engaging in. No random food pics à la “Look, I have eaten a chocolate croissant this morning, isn’t that exciting?“, no endless talking-head stories while walking along a street holding a shaky i-phone. (In case you wonder – YES, that’s the kind of “content“ I consider Crap. Capital C.) Granted, I do post the odd selfie here and there. Once a month, when I feel especially sexy or pretty. Or when I’m drunk. Or needy. (Sorry… Nah. Not sorry.) Next time I post a selfie – you know what’s up haha. But it’s okay, so people won’t forget what I look like and can watch me grow older.

Madonna at the ESC. Her performance really defined “pitch problems“ anew for me. I don’t know, what was going on there, but something was very off. I did what I always do when I’m cruising YouTube: I scrolled down to browse the comments and check reactions. It’s annihilating what people write here. Look for yourself:      

      

     

         

 

And? Which one upsets you the most? I mean, Boo Man calling Madonna a “pig“ undoubtedly has some severe mental problems himself. Anger issues or something. Maybe a very difficult childhood. What do I know. But the reason why I hand-picked these couple of comments is that all of them have one thing in common: Public shaming. And apart from Boo Man every commenter from my selection shames her on the basis of her age. She’s a “granny“, an “old lady“ (note: negatively contextualized!) and she “should have retired“ a long time ago. Please everyone, stop singing at 50. Or 40 (“mid 90s“). It depends. But stop. Go die alone at home, singing in the shower. Don’t you dare to perform in public, unless you are a man, David Bowie or Tina Turner. Thanks a lot. 

Hm. I don’t really feel comfortable. Do you? 

Which world do we live in? A world in which random people project all sort off bullshit on other people, while in most cases cowardly hiding behind a pseudonym. A world in which kindness has been traded for judgment, comparison and shaming. 

Yes, she was out of tune. No, it has got nothing to do with her age, her physique or her gender. She sang off-key, full story. Keep your shit out of the equation. 

This is the one side of the coin. 

The other is that it is almost painful to watch how much Madonna obviously struggles with getting older. We see a woman who is 60 years old, whose face doesn’t show a single wrinkle and whose appearance screams “Forever young!“ with every fibre of her body. You kind of feel her desperation. And I’m not saying that she should wear knitted pullovers, pin-striped pants and leather slippers. But the thing is, you can only pull off that “I’m still young“-number so and so long before it gets desperate / ridiculous. 

And to be quite frank, I feel pity for her (or shall I say empathy?) because her struggle is real. As a woman in the entertainment industry, you gotta look young and beautiful – especially if that is what made you famous in the first place. It’s a slippery slope if that is your key asset. Think about Heidi Klum (46), Mariah Carey (49), J-Lo (50) – they’re all in the same spin as Madonna. All looking unnaturally young, and no, it’s definitely not “the genes“ or “good nutrition“… I’m sorry, but this is comic. And it feeds an illusion that a lot of people wrongly digest as “reality“. 

We (and especially the entertainment industry) need female role models who are not afraid of getting older and who display their age with pride and dignity. I honestly consider that a crucial step in the direction of female empowerment. You – not fully owning yourself the way you are makes you weak. You – fully owning yourself, warts, age, body and all, makes you strong.

Madonna could have easily been such a role model – she has achieved so much, has invented herself over and over again, has proven endurance and staying power in a business that is male-dominated and harsh and she has an epic reach. Yet she bowed to the absurd conventions and dictates that are still prevalent in our society. Sad. 

But I don’t blame her. I mean, you always have to look at both sides of the coin. There need to be role models, yes. But there also needs to be an environment that welcomes and supports them. Boo Man and Co. don’t really help. And of course, our beauty industry perpetuates this sick myth as well. The global cosmetic products market brought in $532.43 billion in 2017 and will grow to reach a market value of $805.61 billion by 2023. Big money, I get it. The major driver of this is our society’s ceaseless endeavor to stay young and fresh. “Anti-Aging“. Anti. It already implies you’re fighting against something that you cannot win. Not in the long haul. Why don’t we stop the fight and develop something like a “Pro-Aging“-movement? Just a random idea. Because, just think of it this way: If your energy doesn’t evaporate in a futile fight, you will have a lot of energy you can dedicate to better causes. 

So. What can we do to change this fucked up system? Well, obviously – don’t act like Boo Man. More generally, I believe it’s important that we stop all shaming. And by that I mean stop shaming ourselves or others. As Brené Brown tirelessly keeps repeating: Shame is the notion that you are inherently wrong. Which is bullshit. Nothing good has ever come out of shame. All it does is it creates a mindset that keeps you small and traps you in some sort of victimhood. You neither move forward, nor can you improve, and it generally makes you feel miserable and worthless. You really don’t want that. Chances are, that if you shame someone else, you harbor a lot of shame inside of yourself and just use the other person as your projection screen. The antidote to shame is “shame resilience“, which “is about moving from shame to empathy“ (Brené Brown, Daring Greatly). Empathy. This one is big. Gary Vaynerchuk writes: “What a lot of people don’t understand about empathy is that it’s not just about being caring, but it’s also the ability to understand people on a higher level. It has allowed me to easily create mutually beneficial relationships in both business and my personal life.“ It has a lot to do with being kind. To ourselves and others. 

I think a lot of shame is born out of comparison. From childhood on, we are induced to compare the shit out of us. And being a perfectionist, I literally became the Queen of comparison. It probably even classified as an addiction. And I still haven’t recovered fully from this fatal disease. I would look for “benchmark“ people in like everything that mattered to me and compared myself to them in every possible dimension. If, to my mind, I lost in comparison to these people, I felt worthless AF. So I guess it becomes clear that my self-worth was quite often at stake (sometimes not even existent). For the longest time ever, I attached my self-worth to external parameters. I always feared being judged “not [blank] enough“ and I worked hard to never give anyone reason to do so. (Needless to say, I myself was my fiercest critic.) When I was 16, a friend of my then-boyfriend called me “bulky“ (translated in my head into “not thin enough“), which unsettled me so much that I quit eating properly. I never ended up looking like a skeleton, but I had a fully-fledged eating disorder. My menstruation stopped, and when I went to my gynecologist for a check-up, he informed me that I had an estrogen level of a 6-year-old. But hey – at least I was thin enough now! 

Wow. I was so insecure, you guys, it was surreal. To finish off the story – what helped me put an end to my self-starving phase two years later was a new friend of mine – a girl who was a couple of years older than I and who was so vibrant, radiant, stunning and self-confident – despite the fact that she was absolutely not thin. She taught me a lot in terms of self-acceptance and body awareness – not in a preachy way, but just by fully and unapologetically being and living who she really was. It was captivating. She became a healthy role model for me. Leading by example, so to say.

I could go on and tell a couple more comparison-anecdotes from my life, but I don’t want to turn this text into a tragedy, so I rather stop here. I mean the bottom line is clear: Comparison sucks. It just sucks. I figured there will always be people who look better, sing better, have achieved more, earn more money, travel more, lead happier relationships, are sportier,…you name it, the list is endless. I say, kill the comparative. And become your own superlative. Life’s not supposed to be a competition. I mean we will all die, sooner or later. So what the heck do you want to win!?! It’s stupid crazy-making. We compare ourselves to people who apparently “have it all.“ Big news: No one has it all. And if so – well, good for them! The more genuinely happy and sane people there are on this planet, the better our world will become. 

Gary Vee once said, “If you wanna be an anomaly, you have to act like one. Like, people want all these special things to happen, but then they’re acting like anybody else.“ 

Did you know that the four-leaf-clovers are a genetic anomaly? We commonly believe that they bring good luck.  

An anomaly. Get it? 🙌

I am ok. You are okay. That’s the foundation we can build on.