The November issue of Harper’s Bazaar USA may just be one of the most important issue in 2013. Featuring the Queen of Pop on the cover, Madonna looks back on her 30-year career and gives us a look at her journey from a small-town girl from Michigan, to one of the most talked-about women in the world.
Penning an essay for the magazine, Madonna tells readers about being an awkward teenager, and what life in New York really was like:
“New York wasn’t everything I thought it would be. It did not welcome me with open arms. The first year, I was held up at gunpoint. Raped on the roof of a building I was dragged up to with a knife in my back, and had my apartment broken into three times. I don’t know why; I had nothing of value after they took my radio the first time.”
Fortunately for Madge, she was able to move on from all the traumatic challenges; all with the help of a postcard of Frida Kahlo:
“Trying to be a professional dancer, paying my rent by posing nude for art classes, staring at people staring at me naked. Daring them to think of me as anything but a form they were trying to capture with their pencils and charcoal. I was defiant. Hell-bent on surviving. On making it. But it was hard and it was lonely, and I had to dare myself every day to keep going. Sometimes I would play the victim and cry in my shoe box of a bedroom with a window that faced a wall, watching the pigeons shit on my windowsill. And I wondered if it was all worth it, but then I would pull myself together and look at a postcard of Frida Kahlo taped to my wall, and the sight of her mustache consoled me. Because she was an artist who didn’t care what people thought. I admired her. She was daring. People gave her a hard time. Life gave her a hard time. If she could do it, then so could I.”
Love her or hate her, you can’t deny that Madonna’s just one of the many women in the world who made their dreams come true by giving everything they’ve got. We salute you, Madge!
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