Will India's badass Madonna ever rise?
"I stand before you as a doormat. Oh! I mean as a female entertainer." Madonna, the queen of pop, made a fiery, teary, no-holds-barred acceptance speech at the Billboard Music Awards this year. She shook the girl in every woman, and unmasked every celebrity woman's body-shamed, age-shamed - even slut-shamed - journey to the top.
"Thank you for acknowledging my ability to continue my career for 34 years in the face of blatant misogyny, sexism, constant bullying and relentless abuse," Madonna held forth, without so much as batting an eyelid, calling out every sexist remark she ever faced, making every patriarch there is quiver and dread the words bulleting out of her that evening.
And why wouldn't she? Madonna is an artist who has a body of work few peers can match, and yet continues to be shamed for her age-inappropriate dressing, for all the choices she deliberately made and all the decisions she boldly stood by.
Would you dare shame a David Bowie or a John Lennon or even Mikey Craig or Boy George? No. And that makes Madonna a league of her own.
After Madonna's (in)famous twerking episode, British talk host and comedian Piers Morgan charged at her: "You can't be 58 and prancing about like that." And, why not? Well let's reserve the age-shaming debate for a later date.
While the entertainment industry has paced leaps and bounds and garnered support for combining creativity, sexuality and sensuality with art and culture, it clearly isn't enough. The inequality that surfaced in her speech highlighted the hypocrisies we refuse to end.
If you've been called a "witch and a whore" at least once in your career, you would carry it as a badge of honour, rather than deep shame.Madonna undressed every woman celebrity's mind when she defiantly showed a middle finger to all the hypocrisies in the entertainment world.
You cannot ignore Madonna, a "bad feminist" as she calls herself in a world where there are rules for women and none for men. With this, she has opened the Pandora's box of celebrityhood and the price one pays to reach its upper echelons.
The story is no different elsewhere. US president-elect Donald Trump called Hillary Clinton "a nasty woman" in the run-up to the polls. I think the meaning of the word begs to be re-written - it's time we took it as a compliment.
The world just isn't yet ready to allow a woman rule a space so easily claimed by their pompous male counterparts.
And at the age that Madonna and Hillary both are, the attention and adulation that comes their way intimidates men and women both. Closer home, India has not witnessed anything like Madonna. We are a melting pot of cultures, yet no woman artist can match the phenomenon.
Remember Alisha Chinai, who gave us hope with her adventures in pop? Her allegations against music composer Anu Malik almost wiped her name off the labels. She came back only to be paid Rs 15,000 for the song "Kajra re", which became a sensation in the country.
With such prejudices stacked against women, Bollywood is a striking example of a place where women are not only objectified at will, but also ridiculed for allowing themselves to be objectified. Sunny Leone, in a recent interview to the BBC, said she had seen more sexism in Bollywood than in the porn industry.
In our Bollywood circle of first families, the Khans and the younger brigade, will we ever have our own Madonna? Can a woman survive that long - be brash, speak her mind and still be on top of the game, defeating every slur or abuse she encountered on her way to top? Kalki Koechlin has spoken out against abuse and Shruthi Hassan asks us to take the slur "bitch" in our stride.
But, would a Madhuri Dixit come out and speak about her struggles in a sexist industry? Will a woman of her stature express herself fearlessly without being judged?
In an entertainment industry of appeasers and dynasties, will a Madonna ever rise?
It may be very early in the day to say that "Queen" Kangana Ranaut could be a Madonna in the making (no, she is not becoming a pop music icon), but in our misogynist entertainment world, she could redeem her kind, who are all but reduced to being mere doormats. She could sustain the slurs, be called a "witch, "slut", "whore" and much else, yet not need a Khan or Kapoor to set the box office registers ringing.
One cannot help but notice the Madonna-esque defiance in her as she goes about challenging norms - trailblazing her way to the top through her choices. Her "reel" life a reflection of the immense strength she draws from her real life struggles.
What is common between Madonna and Kangana is the vulnerability, the hardships, the extreme sexism they must face for being unapologetically themselves, and yet remain unstoppable.
In an interview to a leading television channel, Kangana said, "If a woman is sexually active, she's called a whore and if she's super-successful, she's called a psychopath." And, just as she said this, she was called "a disgrace to women".
In a world that continues to shame women, some embrace the shame and make it their strength. "I don't find it humiliating when they call me a psychopath, witch or whore."
And that is why we need Kangana to be our Madonna.