As Madonna has been plugging her now very recognizable “beauty roller” over the past few weeks in promotion of the latest addition to her MDNA skin care line (which she has transformed, as only she could, into an art performance), it’s been noticed and pointed out by many with eyes that the “device” strongly resembles, well, something tantamount to what “the Madonna of yore” might have happily advertised in her Erotica/Sex book days: a vibrator.
Never one to stray away from self-awareness (or collaborations that will gain her ageist remarks), Madonna has further trolled her own fan base by releasing yet another promo with The Fat Jewish (who, again, really doesn’t need to be there) that particularly highlights the “device’s” multi-faceted capabilities. As she, comme toujours, oversees the moves of a group of dancers auditioning for her, The Fat Jewish attempts to prove his necessity by inquiring, “Let me ask you a question, why dancers?”
Madonna responds, “Why dancers? I’m glad you asked that, Josh. Everyone knows I started off my career as a terpsichorean. It just feels natural. This new technology is called the beauty roller, it reminds me of the brilliance of dancing because it’s so physical, so animal-like.”
At this point, she breaks off into catch phrase mode with ambient porn-esque music in the background as the camera closes in on the dancers’ bodies as they use the beauty roller with Madonna narrating, “You roll it on your body. Goes along the contours of your jaw. Touch it, Feel it. So sensual, so tactile. Lymphatic drainage. It’s visceral it’s savage…it’s savage viscerality.” Just like masturbation (think: the “Like A Virgin” performance that got Madonna the threat of arrest in Toronto and the contempt of the Catholic Church in Vatican City during her Blond Ambition Tour).
It isn’t just this particular “commercial” (since Madonna knows that all self-promotion must go on Instagram now) for the product that finds Madonna capitalizing on the overt phallic nature of her innovative, one-of-a-kind “mechanism.” One of the Steven Klein-directed endeavors, too, features M cooing, “The high-density black carbon floods the skin with infrared rays.” Hmmm, what else can it flood?
Assuring that there are no words minced about the “savage viscerality” of the roller, in the extended version of the video, Madonna lets “Erotica” play as she and The Fat Jewish continue to argue about the best dancer, with Madonna quipping in between, “I want this to be better than Fifty Shades of Gray. I think that’s possible” and “I want sex but I don’t want sex, like every woman.”
That Madonna has a sense of irony and humor about hawking skin care now that she’s in a certain age bracket is, once more, something that only she and her highly specific sect of clientele are privy to–with everyone else assuming that she’s gone off the deep end, when, in fact, as usual, she’s the only element of pop culture remaining that has any trace of wit or intelligence. All the while still knowing that the only constant that has endured from the beginning of her infiltration into our consciousness is this: sex sells. Even face products.
