How did she go from this… to this?

Left : Madonna on one of three covers of V Magazine in May 2014 shot by Steven Klein. Right: Madonna on this month’s V Magazine cover, also shot by Steven Klein

On the latest cover of V Magazine, Madonna is framed within the large-as-the-page masthead, slanted, san-serif lines of the twenty-secondth letter of the English alphabet. She is reportedly 63 years old, but she looks half of that, like she shares the age of Lady Gaga. Her pore-less complexion is as fine as a mannequin’s. Or Barbie’s. Collagen and elastin in peak production. She looks at the reader from the corners of her dramatically made-up eyes, the lids lifted like a simmering pot’s, the whites as white as Mentos. Her lips, in particular, stick out. They are not only overdrawn, they look extra thick. They sit above a pronounced chin that is rather pointy, as if shaped so that it can dovetail into the sharp, pointed groove of the V. The letter elongates her face, keeping it compact and narrow, like a condensed font. Gravity has not reached Madonna.

If Madonna is recognisable on the V Magazine cover, it is likely because she is seen quite frequently these past months in the media, social too, looking like this—a version of herself. But for many no longer following her as Queen of Pop, she seems like another person. From images of her celebrating her birthday with her 27-year-old boyfriend in Puglia, Spain in August to her news-making appearance on The Tonight Show early this month, a different-looking, altered Madonna could be discerned. Fake or real, most chose the former. The singer has never admitted to plastic surgery. The sceptical is certain there is at least some toxins involved and definitely photo trickery. Back in 2019, when speculation was rife that she surgically augmented her derriere, the defiant star retorted, “Desperately Seeking No Ones (sic) Approval… And Entitled to Free Agency Over My Body Like Everyone Else!!”

The same woman? Left: Madonna shot by Herb Ritts for True Blue in 1986. Right: Madonna in this month’s cover story shoot by Steven Klein for V Magazine

The same blonde? Left: in 1987. Photo: Shutterstock. Right: today. Photo: Madonna/Instagram

In 2018, Madonna, then 60, said“I don’t know why ageing is a negative word, it needs to be a positive word.”Sure, but by not ageing negatively, it seems she is negating ageing, at least visually. Or is she ageing in reverse? Is she privy to some magical elixir we know not of? With scientific intervention, ageing needs not manifest itself on the face. And it is likely she works with the best doctors at her calling. And add to that, her own skincare line MDNA Skin, conceived with her aesthetician Michelle Peck and made by the Japanese skincare innovator MTG, and launched in Japan in 2014. But dermatologists reacting online to Madonna’s clearly different face today are sure that there is more than creams and lotions involved, no matter how potent or hi-tech the topical applications may be. Many also put forth confidently that “work has been done” and not just recently. There are reports that even suggested “her curiously taut face” has had “extensive amounts of work that has been done since she hit 40” or at least some fillers or fat transfers as far back as 2009.

That Madonna does not appear to have aged is hardly surprising since she is still an active performer (and, recently, a prolific Instagrammer). At her concert here in 2016, she did look a lot younger than her 58 years even when no one was able to get that close to her to be sure. Or, to see if the mole above the right side of her upper lip is still there or concealed by makeup. Surely, age does not make it disappear! Nevertheless, many in the audience recognised her as Madonna. When MDNA Skin was launched in the US in 2019, she told the media there, “I think it’s ridiculous that we have to hide our age or not be able to embrace it. We have to go the other way and stop cheating and pretending”, as stated in the beauty e-mag Byrdie. Although she does not say how old she is, she seems to be fronting a youthfulness that contradicts what she thinks. It is hard not to construe that photos after photos of her line-less—even pore-less—faces in the media and on her own IG page are not serious attempts to deceive and feign.

Madonna turning the other cheeks. At the Grammy’s (left). Photo: Wireimages, And on The Tonight Show early last month (right). Screen grab: NBC/YouTube

Not only is Madonna’s face defying age, her buttocks are too. In 2015, she exposed her other cheeks on the Grammy Awards red carpet, supposedly because she needed to adjust something under her skirt. Her backside at the time was, of course, no stranger to the public; they had been seen bare before, but no one was asking to see it then. Then it happened again at the MTV Video Awards in September this year, on stage, no less. There was also the harness/support that looked similar to the one she wore at the Grammy’s six years ago. And then The Late Show flaunt, which the visibly embarrassed host Jimmy Fallon could not digest, but Madonna is an artist and—quoting novelist James Baldwin— said, “artists are here to disturb the peace”. Displaying the derrière to upset the tranquility, in her case, is more of a possibilty after the (rumoured) augmentation and, by her admission, the consistent use of MDNA Skin’s Chrome Clay Mask, priced at USD220, on her butt!

This month’s V Magazine cover is shot by Steven Klein, the same photographer who was behind the lens of another V Magazine cover picture of her, seven years ago. It is rather curious that Mr Klein did not see a markedly different Madonna this time round. Did he not wonder how the two photos that he took of the same person could look so vastly unalike? Or was he complicit, merely doing his job, regardless of how his subjects have changed physically, and allowing heavy-handed Photoshopping? The media, too, is rather accepting of the singer’s changed face. We often see the transformation described as “amazing”—likely to mean wonderful than to cause great surprise. Whatever she did to her face, nothing is more astonishing, even bizarre, than what she was alleged to have doctored in March this year. Reports appeared in the media that Madonna posted on IG of a photo that digitally placed her head on the body of a fan! One Amelia Goldie from Australia shared on TikTok, “When Madonna posts a photo of herself to IG to promote her album but its actually your body (I’m not joking)”. No more evidence needed to prove that the posts on Instagram, like magazine covers, is mostly fictional.