Last week, Madonna was rushed to hospital after being found unconscious in New York after suffering a severe bacterial infection. The 64-year-old singer has since postponed her world tour, due to begin on July 15th in Vancouver, for the foreseeable future.
The news was first reported by her long-time manager Guy Oseary, who reassured fans on Instagram that Madonna’s ‘health is improving’ and a ‘full recovery is expected’, however she is still under medical care.
‘At this time we will need to pause all commitments, which includes the tour,’ Oseary shared on Instagram. ‘We will share more details with you as soon as we have them, including a new start date for the tour and for rescheduled shows.’
Immediately, Madonna became a trending topic on Google. Reports that she had to be intubated in the hospital spread, suggesting she needed help breathing due to the infection. As family members were captured on camera rushing to New York to be by her side, tabloids reported that her loved ones were ‘preparing for the worst’ and there had been several traumatic days post-hospitalisation that they were unsure whether she would pull through.
Now, ‘What’s wrong with Madonna?’ is a breakout search term on Google as well as ‘Madonna sepsis’ and ‘What is a bacterial infection’. Social media has also exploded with commentary, some speculating that the health scare is more serious than first reported – many wondering what caused the sudden hospitalisation.
And while concern is natural given Madonna’s global stardom, some of the commentary has been absolutely foul. ‘Was this a botched plastic surgery operation disguised as infection?’ one person commented underneath TMZ’s post on Instagram. ‘I smell a fake news rat.’
‘I wouldn't be surprised if Madonna was found unresponsive due to an overdose,’ another wrote on Twitter ‘I would imagine you gotta be on a lot of drugs to accept this as your face.’ Anti-vaxxers have also got in on the commentary, sharing dangerous misinformation about Madonna falling ill due the Covid vaccine.
Even the tabloid reporting has been uncomfortable to read, with so much focus on Madonna pushing herself too far in preparation for her new tour. ‘She thinks that she is still young when, in fact, she is not,’ one tabloid reported a family source saying. ‘She also believes that she is invincible.'
It’s the same old sexist narrative that always comes up with Madonna – at least since she passed the age of 30 – where anything and everything she does is interpreted as some kind of drastic attempt to cling onto her youth. If she wears revealing clothes, she’s ‘mutton dressed as lamb’, if she dances too sexily, she’s ‘trying too hard’, if she gets plastic surgery, she’s ‘ageing disgracefully’. As a global icon whose career has always pushed boundaries and warped the norms of femininity, people are still finding excuses to demonise and shame her for simply breaking expectations.
One would hope that these shameful tactics would be put aside when a person’s health is at risk, and yet Madonna is not only being trolled while in hospital, but also essentially being victim-blamed for her own ill-health.
Even if it were possibly true that Madonna was hospitalised due to plastic surgery, or drugs, or Covid-vaccine complications – which we should make clear, she hasn’t been – she’s still a human being deserving of empathy and kindness. To shame her in her most vulnerable hours is vile, and for what – because you don’t agree with her determination to be sexy and free from gender stereotypes at any age? It all says a lot about the world we live in.