Paper Trail: Big Sister Knows Best

In this excerpt from his new book, Life With My Sister Madonna, Christopher Ciccone discusses the interview Madonna gave with The Advocate in 1991 in which she outed him to the entire world.

By Christopher Ciccone

Madonna ends the year by releasing “Justify My Love,” which on December 3, 1990, premieres on Nightline. Rolling Stone crowns her “Image of the Eighties.” The Immaculate Collection is released and stays at number one in the UK for nine weeks. In the United States it is certified two times platinum, and Forbes names Madonna the top-earning female entertainer of 1990, citing her income as $39 million. The magazine also votes her “America’s Smartest Business Woman.”

I realize that Forbes was right when, on May 7, 1991, just as Truth or Dare is about to be released, the Advocate publishes an interview with Madonna in which she outs me.

In an apparent ploy to garner support for the movie by ingratiating herself with her gay fans, she says, “My brother Christopher’s gay, and he and I have always been the closest members of our family.

"It’s funny. When he was really young, he was so beautiful and had girls all over him, more than any of my other brothers. I knew something was different but it was not clear to me. I just thought, I know there are a lot of girls around, but I don’t get that he has a girlfriend. He was like a girl-magnet. They all seemed incredibly fond of him and close to him in a way I hadn’t seen men with women.

"I’ll tell you when I knew. After I met Christopher [Flynn, Madonna and Christopher’s first dance teacher], I brought my brother to ballet class because he wanted to start studying dance. I just saw something between them. I can’t even tell you exactly what, but then I thought, Oh, I get it. Oh, okay. He likes men too. It was an incredible revelation, but I didn’t say anything to my brother yet. I’m not even sure he knew. He’s two years younger than me. He was still a baby. I could feel something.”

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Excerpted from the book Life With My Sister Madonna, by Christopher Cicconefrom Simon & Schuster.

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Name: jihmy
Date posted: 8/13/2008 2:50:00 PM
Hometown: aberdeen

Comment:
the only news i want to hear is when her plane crashes into the atlantic goodby baby jane hudson
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Name: Bahman
Date posted: 7/31/2008 12:30:00 PM
Hometown: Granada Hills

Comment:
Madonna is a little girl lost in a storm.
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Name: JDW
Date posted: 7/28/2008 9:13:00 AM
Hometown: NYC

Comment:
I remember reading that Advocate interview. At the time Madonna was becoming the biggest publicity whore of all time. Her relationship with Warren Beaty broke up because there was no Madonna off camera. Madonna was the first A list straight celebrity along with Kurt Cobain to do an interview a gay publication like the Advocate. There was no will and Grace. Gerorge Michael, Boy George, KD Lang , Melissa Etheridge, Ellen DeGeneres and (then Madonna pal) Rosie O'Donnell were all still in the closet. It was a very different and more hostile world. In 91 Madonna was selling every second of her private life to the media. Her business. That she so readily sold the private life of a family member so she could sell a couple of more movie tickets to gay fans shows a lack of ethics and loyalty.
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Name: Peter Schneiderman
Date posted: 7/27/2008 4:39:00 PM
Hometown: New York

Comment:
The slavish loyalty to the amoral monster that is Madonna is disgusting. How dare you people judge Christopher? You have no decency or conscience, only pathetic celebrity worship. IF the right to privacy does not exist, there are no rights at all and we all descend into a de-civilized hell of gossip and mutual destruction. I'm no fan of Christopher, but he has rights like every other human being. Rights even a Madonna is bound to respect. Get a clue!
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Name: Nic
Date posted: 7/26/2008 9:54:00 PM
Hometown: Drummond

Comment:
I am sorry you are so bitter about that and gossiping is never good. But, on a side note, your sexuality does not define you as a person. You define yourself-period. Whether bisexual, gay, transgender or lesbian. People are people, sex aside.
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Name: Umberto
Date posted: 7/26/2008 12:06:00 AM
Hometown: Berlin

Comment:
Madonna is a nasty being. All the selfish things she has done is just incredible.
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Name: michael jarboe
Date posted: 7/23/2008 6:37:00 PM
Hometown: miami beach

Comment:
Get over it, He already knew, she knew, it seems all their friends knew and anyone who had ever met or will meet him knows, except maybe his grandma. She didn't "out" him, she spoke honestly to a gay magazine about supporting a gay relative. This double standard of everyone has to treat us openly and give us all our rights but we reserve the right to live our secret lives until we are ready to stop lying doesn't cut it anymore. By treating being gay as just one other aspect of life that is no big deal she was treating him with the respect he wasn't willing to give himself. We can't "have our closet and eat it to".
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Name: danny
Date posted: 7/23/2008 12:01:00 PM
Hometown: portland

Comment:
I don't know why the Advocate is putting this trash in its mag. disgusting.
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Name: JClay
Date posted: 7/22/2008 11:17:00 PM
Hometown: Washington, DC

Comment:
Wow. That's some of the worst writing I've read in a long time.
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Name: darryl
Date posted: 7/22/2008 4:48:00 PM
Hometown: vancouver

Comment:
Boo hoo...being Madonna's brother must be very difficult indeed..yet you manage to get yourself out of bed everyday. Very inspiring. Writing a back stabbing book must be very cathartic and healing. Judas.

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