Madonna has been named Billboard’s Woman of the Year, and I have to be completely honest with you: I did not want to sit down and read this profile at all. Madonna’s profiles and interviews are almost always the worst. But I kept seeing quotes from the piece, and I pulled myself together and read it. And you know what? This is the best interview I’ve read with Madonna in a really long time. It helps that she’s talking to someone she likes, and someone I like: Elizabeth Banks. Banks worships Madonna and gives Madge the platform to talk about her current headspace these days. It’s a focused, interesting interview which you can read here. Some highlights:

Ageism, worries about relevancy: “I don’t care. It’s the rest of society that cares. I don’t ever think about my age until someone says something about it. I feel that I have wisdom, experience, knowledge and a point of view that is important. Can a teenager relate to that? Probably not. But that’s OK. I understand that. “Relevance” is a catchphrase that people throw out because we live in a world full of discrimination. Age is only brought up with regard to women. It’s connected to sexism, chauvinism and misogyny. When Leonardo is 60 years old, no one is going to talk about his relevance. Am I relevant as a female in this society that hates women? Well, to people who are educated and are not chauvinists or misogynists, yes.”

How she feels about the election outcome: “It felt like someone died. It felt like a ­combination of the heartbreak and betrayal you feel when someone you love more than anything leaves you, and also a death. I feel that way every morning; I wake up and say, “Oh, wait, Donald Trump is still the president,” and it wasn’t a bad dream that I had. It feels like women betrayed us. The percentage of women who voted for Trump was insanely high.”

Why she thinks Trump won: “Women hate women. That’s what I think it is. Women’s nature is not to support other women. It’s really sad. Men protect each other, and women protect their men and children. Women turn inward and men are more external. A lot of it has do with jealousy and some sort of tribal inability to accept that one of their kind could lead a nation. Other people just didn’t bother to vote because they didn’t like either candidate, or they didn’t think Trump had a chance in the world. They took their hands off the wheel and then the car crashed.

Whether she was surprised by Trump’s victory: “Of course. I was devastated, surprised, in shock. I haven’t really had a good night’s sleep since he has been elected. We’re f—ed.

Whether she knows any Trump voters: “Yeah, and I’ve gotten into major arguments. They [say they] would rather have a successful businessman running the country than a woman who lies. Just absurd. But people don’t have faith in government as we know it. We live in a country that’s run by bankers. In a way, it makes sense that Donald Trump is the president. Because money rules. Not intelligence, not experience, not a moral compass, not the ability to make wise decisions, not the ability to think of the future of the human race.

Whether she’s ever met Trump: “I wouldn’t call him a friend or anything, but I’ve certainly met him. I did a photo shoot years ago at [Trump’s] Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach [Fla.] for a Versace campaign. He’s a very friendly guy, charismatic in that boastful, macho, alpha-male way. I found his political incorrectness amusing. Of course, I didn’t know he was going to be running for president 20 years later. People like that exist in the world, I’m OK with it. They just can’t be heads of state. I just can’t put him and Barack Obama in the same sentence, same room, same job description.

[From Billboard]

There’s been a lot of analysis of the demographics of the election, and there will continue to be thinkpieces and books and studies about how Trump won and why Hillary Clinton lost. While I still think it’s crazy that Trump got any significant support from women, I wish Madonna would go further into the demographic breakdown: white women voted for Trump in alarming numbers. College-educated white women were the only sub-group of white women to vote for Hillary by a majority. The rest of the white ladies? They voted for Trump by a clear majority. Hispanic women, Asian women, African-American women, they all voted for Hillary Clinton with clear majorities. It’s not a clear-cut case of “women don’t support other women.” It’s more a case of a majority of white women voting for their white privilege rather than women’s rights across the board.

Photos courtesy of Billboard.