In the 1984 song “Material Girl”, Madonna declares that she is a material girl. She uses logic that’s hard to argue with since she insists that we all must be material because we are living in a material world. Standing against a red background, she rebuffs countless suitors who bring her expensive gifts, all the while singing that only cold hard cash matters. It’s a quietly dissonant sight to see Madonna sing the importance of materiality because there exists another meaning of the term Madonna. Originating from the Italian, where it’s a respectful way to address a woman (ma donna means my lady), in Christian art a Madonna is a religious depiction (both Catholic and Orthodox) of the Blessed Virgin Mary, sometimes depicted by herself and sometimes accompanied by the Child Jesus. By the end of the video, Madonna seems to be irritated and displeased with men that bring her expensive gifts and ends up, smiling, in a car with a valet that has the foresight to bring her a bouquet of flowers.
The binary of the spiritual and the material is exhilarating: spiritual comes from Latin spiritus, originally meaning “breath” or “breathing,” including the breath of wind or respiration. From this concrete physiological sense, the term developed meanings such as “breath of life,” “vital principle,” and “life itself,” and later extended to “disposition,” “character,” and qualities of mind or soul. The verb spirare (“to breathe”) underlies this development; the semantic shift moves from physical breath to animation and then to non-material or mental states while the word material comes from Latin materialis, from materia, meaning “matter,” “substance,” or “wood/timber.” Its earliest uses designate what is made of physical matter or pertains to the physical world, particularly in scholastic philosophy, where it contrasts with what is mental. Later meanings extend to what is substantial, relevant, or of practical or legal importance.
Material is the building block of the world that we inhabit. In physics, the material world refers to everything that consists of matter and energy and obeys physical laws. The material world does not exclude non-solid or invisible entities as light, radiation, vacuum fluctuations, and quantum fields are part of the material world even though they are intangible.
I think I agree with Madonna ‘Cause we are living in a material world And I am a material girl ‘Cause we are living in a material world You know that we are living in a material world And I am a material girl
Beyond Six Rivers 