NEVERWORNS No. 1
Madonna's "Bad Girl", lip liner, and panty investment.
Welcome to the newsletter of #NEVERWORNS, a place where I let loose about nothing and everything.
Today, I’m talking about the bitchy rich world in Madonna’s “Bad Girl”…and those hand-washed panties. My former Vogue colleague Anny Choi of @themarketeditor, who is legendary for her epic taste, is shopping out this universe for us.
I love Madonna’s Erotica era. It is the most sleek translation of horniness I’ve ever seen. It’s sexy sex at its finest. When I listen to her music and watch her videos from this time—aka 1992—I imagine Madonna getting ready for sex as if she is getting ready for the date of the century with the ex of an era. She’s squeaky clean and lacquered, every hair on her head is in place while every pubic hair is trimmed, the cuticles are cut, the lips are immaculately lined, and she’s doused in some incredible scent that manages to stay in your hair for days after you sleep with her.
While the “Erotica” music video is perhaps the most well-known—and most representative—moment of Madonna’s Erotica era, “Bad Girl” is a music video that keeps me up at night. “Erotica” is a tongue-wagging, manicured orgy, but “Bad Girl” is a wink, and sex reveals itself in the way a cigarette is lit, the slight angle of a camera, or the elegant curve of a spoon’s long handle sticking out of a can of cat food. Essentially, “Erotica” is a drawn-out orgasm while “Bad Girl” is a whisper that ends with a tongue in the ear.
“Bad Girl” is also a fantastic example of artful voyeurism. Shots are through multiple layers of windows or a view is warped through a peephole. Christopher Walken has a seemingly Peeping Tom role in “Bad Girl” but is actually a creeping guardian angel. In his first scene, he is observing Madonna from below while perched on top of a street light—a reference from the German film Wings of Desire. There’s a close-up shot of his pocket watch from the timepiece company Gleave & Co. It is psychotically ticking, a sort of horological harbinger that tells us not everything is in our control.
Now, for those world-building style moments. In the first scene of “Bad Girl”, we see that Madonna is dead as a sheet, probably Egyptian cotton, is pulled from her porcelain face. (This is the best advertisement for long-lasting lip liner…it’s still perfectly in place even post-mortem! Someone cut MAC a check…it has got to be ’90s-beloved MAC.) Lip liner has always been my pinnacle vision of a hot, put-together professional woman in New York, which plays into why I’m so in love with Madonna’s “Bad Girl” as the whole music video captures the mythology of the impenetrable—well, sometimes penetrable—woman of New York.
Here, Madonna plays a high-powered cuntress who works as an exec or director at a magazine, often with a cigarette dangling between that lined pout. And pay attention to the killer details: She plucks these cigarettes from their own little snuff box. This whole setup surely beats pulling an expired Juul from your back pocket to take a sad drag in the last stall of your office bathroom.
Overall, Madonna lives in a tastefully decorated apartment, and each item is clearly expensive. (The early ’90s was a time when a single woman who worked at a magazine could very well afford a space like this. What a time…that I didn’t exist in!) The pad’s interiors are white and clean, and it’s not decorated ad nauseam to make it feel like a cozy home. There’s a wine bottle and a pile of sheets on the floor. Some of the books are also on the floor. If you look closely around 4:40, you’ll notice some of the art is unhung. Ultimately, the person in this apartment doesn’t really live there. They exist there.
From what I can barely see, she has the size 0 of New York kitchens—probably a baby stove and pathetic counter space. Our “Bad Girl” Madonna can’t be bothered to turn the dial of a burner. She’s too busy being a workhorse. Fun fact: We all know from film tropes that a single, career-driven woman only has time to order out. And if it is “Bad Girl” Madonna, she’s definitely dialing her delivery du jour from a house phone in a lace-trimmed bra. So chic.
When she’s not working herself to exhaustion, our “Bad Girl” Madonna loves to have sex. (Ok, yes, but not really. She obviously has issues with this whole revolving-door intimacy and is actually quite sad.) Throughout “Bad Girl”, we see Madonna take home suitors, or spend the night at their apartments. It’s a classic stereotype that I love: An incredibly coiffed woman who is a dictator at her 9-5 but at night, she’s an austere bar siren who loves to guzzle a martini alone, feel it reach her fingertips, and ultimately, suck and fuck whoever dares to sit next to her.
Sucking and fucking is whatever, and we never really see it in “Bad Girl” like we do in “Erotica”, but we can fantasize about it thanks to the tiniest details. And lots of those details have to do with…you guessed it: clothing! In one instance, Madonna goes straight to the office from a fling’s house. It is the meanest walk of shame I’ve ever seen as if she is on a mission. Her hair still has that blow-dried silhouette but it is now artfully tousled. She’s in sunglasses and she is boasting that huge fuck-you of an angular white collar. When she enters her office, Madonna rips the plastic dry cleaning bag off of a black Alaïa jacket with a nipped waist. (You’ll see it later.) She obviously has this back-up garment in her office prepared for those one-night stands. This girl needs a raise…she’s a true planner.
A few scenes later, after another one-night stand, she finally comes back home to her apartment to a stack of mail on the ground. Now, here is the moment of all moments: She goes to her tiled bathroom, extracts two pairs of panties from her top handle lady bag, and plops them into the sink. Everyone knows that this means that those undergarments are expensive. No machine wash, dry-on-high duds here. This is good underwear. La Perla-level lace, which is crafted for the art of seduction and not just for sucking and fucking.
I can only imagine how these undies are decorated. Maybe with a little pearl dangling from the top. Maybe a slit in the crotch. Maybe there are two little hiked-up straps decorated with two little bull’s eye butterfly accouterments. Whatever they look like, we know that they are expensive and that Madonna is a woman who pays meticulous attention to the quality of her clothes, and of course, has phenomenal taste.
Another cherry-on-the-top moment isn’t clothing but a subtly foul action that is oddly sexy. After one of those day-after romp’s, Madonna comes home to feed her long-haired orange cat, who must be starving. (Too much suckin…you know what? Never mind!) She spoons a heaping can of cat food into a silver bowl. By the way, I love the can. It’s so old school and grossly mammoth, something out of the 1940s, which once again plays into that era’s revival in this music video. Anyways, some of the meat juice–ick, I know, but that’s the point–gets on Madonna’s middle finger and she licks it off like it’s a dessert. Then, she takes a gulp of champagne to wash it down. Basically, this whole scene shows that you just know she’s nasty underneath that waist-whittling Alaïa number. Haute perversion. Delicious
A note on good undergarments…well, I really wanted to get some after watching “Bad Girl”. (I also want some Alaïa, but that will have to wait). At one point in my life—like, last week—I thought underwear was an unnecessary investment. I was the type of girl who’d overnight a chemical-drizzled pack-of-12 cotton thongs from Amazon. But there’s something otherworldly about a woman who has it together underneath her clothes. That is a woman who is with it because she’s willing to invest in herself in the most intimate way.
We wear designer labels all the time, whether it is if-you-know-you know vintage or big House pieces, because we like clothes and fashion but ultimately, it is because we want to feel like we are part of something. With underwear, well, only you really know about it. That’s powerful. It’s like being the only person to witness a miracle. Or getting abducted by aliens. It’s an experience just for you. You just gotta believe in the fact that you know the truth and be confident in that. And the truth is you’ve got nothing to prove in triple-digit undies.
But really, let’s get back to this killer cinematic, very New York moment: I love “Bad Girl” Madonna woman because she might not take the time not to make dinner, but she takes the time to hand-wash her underwear. That’s the real luxury here.
It makes you wonder what “Like a Prayer” era Madonna was wearing underneath that saucy Marlene Stewart number!
Great read and congratulations 🤌🏻🤌🏻🥂🍸