Madonna Wears A Niqāb, Is Not Sorry

UPDATE: This piece originally reported that Madonna's Instagram featured a burqa, not a niqāb. This was a widely reported error, which I'm sorry to have included. The text has been corrected, and I sincerely apologize for mistake.

Madonna is rarely, if ever, very sorry. And, since the advent of Instagram, the Material Girl has become exponentially less repentant. Since joining last February, she's posted photos of kids with booze, racial slurs in captions, and nary a "sorry" in sight.

Yesterday, Madonna took it up a notch, posting an artfully filtered shot of herself wearing a black niqāb with the caption: "Its that kind of day! #unapologeticbitch." What kind of day was that, Madge? The kind of day that calls for deeply controversial religious and cultural garb that may represent a personal choice of faithful devotion or mass oppression of women by a misogynistic society depending on one's particular interpretation of a 1,000-year-old spiritual text? Was it that kind of day?

I'm not sure I've ever had one of those, but in the event that I do wake up feeling niqāb-y, I hope I'll have the good sense to call in sick and then throw my phone out the window.

The worst part of Madonna's worst Instagrams is her constant need to be THE MOST sorry-not-sorry. There's a time for just bein' yourself, no apologies, but this pattern is beginning to smack of desperation. We get it, M: You have a reputation to uphold. Once upon a time you were the girl who made out with Sexy Black Jesus and humped the VMA stage. You manage to keep coming back again and again in different iterations of yourself, and even when they're hit-or-miss you refuse to get out of the game. That's cool. I'm not one of the agist jerks who thinks you should be put out to pasture. But, I do think you should kick yourself off Instagram — or you should hire a professional eyebrow-raiser to offer up a reality check the next time you stumble across a super cute niqāb and want to show all your friends.

#unapologeticbitch