Oh my God, how can I even start to explain? I feel knocked out of breath. It’s like someone is pressing on my chest. You don’t do anything and people react to you in all of these crazy ways, as if you’re asking them to do these things, as if you want them. I live my life as normal, just doing ordinary things, and it’s as if it’s not enough that they’re normal. People want to make out as if, when I do it, it’s different and weird and like it’s worth pointing at me for it. I ride in my car or go for takeout food, like from McDonald’s, or go to the beach with no makeup or whatever, and it’s like some really big deal. I just don’t get it, I feel really fluttery inside about it, like I can’t concentrate on even watching the television or playing with my baby, who I love. God, deep breath. I was just in the Internet and looking on the top few sites about me, just to make sure of what’s going on and—it’s so humiliating—some guy has made a sculpture of me, constructed out of pictures he’s seen of me and that one waxwork I did in L.A., and in the sculpture—which I can’t even say really looks like me from the pictures I’ve seen of it on the Net, one from the side and one kind of from an angle in front—I’m like on my knees on all fours, on a bear rug, a fuckin’ bear rug! It’d be funny if it wasn’t for the fact that on the bear rug I’m on my knees with my hand on the bear’s head so it’s like I’m facing the same way as the bear and I’m totally naked, like, nothing on and my tits and belly are hanging down because I’m totally pregnant and, behind me, I’m giving birth to my baby. Can you believe that? It’s been mounted as part of some pro-life exhibit in fuckin’ weird-ass New York, where that kind of thing is apparently OK. People go crazy ‘cause supposedly you’re not a good role model and then someone does something like this and it’s like: I’m not in control of whether people think I’m a good role model. Everyone’s too busy thinking of me with my ass in the air pushing out my baby like some twisted porno. It’s sick to think that I have no way of saying “Please don’t put a big sculpture that everyone knows is of me right there in some room where people will come and stare at me.” I feel so naked and vulnerable right here thinking that a picture of me is doing that somewhere else, with all those snotty New York types not even laughing, just being all snotty about it while they look at my vagina giving birth. Like, isn’t it interesting for all these blah-de-blah reasons, but it’ll never be good enough for them to like it, and then they’ll think less of me because they didn’t like this image of me, which I didn’t even put across.
I can’t even go and look at the fuckin’ thing because that would be making an even bigger deal out of it and everyone would be expecting me to make all these comments. But this isn’t even something for me to make a comment about: it’s not something I’ve done, and it’s not something I’ve made public. Some guy has made it public for himself and his reasons. I hope he’s happy now. He’s probably jerking off in the mouth of whatever next project he’s doing, like maybe Laura Bush licking a gun or something. Like, who cares if she has ever licked a gun? I mean, she probably has at some point, even by accident, ‘cause she’s probably been around guns all her life, and, I mean, it ain’t so unusual to be holding something near your face, and maybe you talk real emphatically and your tongue touches it a little. But nobody—yet—has made a fuckin’ bronze statue of Laura Bush tonguing a pistol and put it in public for the Internet to go crazy about ‘cause they haven’t got anything better to do. I mean, sure, I’ve posed on all fours in pictures for magazines, for my music videos, in my live shows and whatever, so in some way it’s not unusual for people to think of me like that. It doesn’t matter when it’s just me. It’s something I enjoy doing ‘cause it expresses something I do with my music, which is exploring sexuality. But I did not give birth that way. No, sir, I gave birth normally, on my back, and I even had a fuckin’ C-section. I didn’t even feel the birth of my baby properly ‘cause I was frozen from the waist down. Nothing about that in the sculpture, though. I look like my thighs are loving clenching up to push my baby out or whatever. From the pictures I saw, you can’t even see that I’m giving birth, so it’s like I’m just in this animal sexual pose, really loving it, or just really calm like it’s no big deal. The bear rug is just more proof that this is supposed to be like some seedy porno scenario with me giving birth or having sex or whatever in front of some log fire while the whole world, whoever wants to, can just tune in and get a load of me groaning and posturing.
And then to put it next to some pro-life stand as if the sculpture is directly to do with that? I have made no comment for a long time to say that I am anti-abortion and it would have been decent for me to have been contacted to see if they could use my body image to say something like that. How does this sculpture say that girls shouldn’t have abortions? Is my work in pop music, film, and video art proof that women can have careers and have babies? I just feel like this whole thing says that you can have a career and a baby and totally not be in control of either of them. This thing is putting my baby at risk. Seeing me when I was young dancing and posing provocatively is one thing, but putting my baby right in there with those images is damaging to our future relationship and to what people think about my kid. Maybe the guy who sculpted the thing thinks it’s liberating for women to be sex objects and mothers all at once, and I kind of think it is, too, and that’s why my new video is going to be me back on form, doing what I do best, which is big dance routines and hot, cutting-edge costumes. At least there’s no way someone can get at me this time for the way that I dressed—I haven’t got anything on! I mean, the sculpture hasn’t. And neither has the baby.