In between gossiping about Madonna's marriage woes and the possibility that she was mounting Alex Rodriguez complete with riding crop, you may have noticed that the soi-disant Queen of Reinvention is looking pretty bland lately. Sure, her theme for Hard Candy is boxer/fighter/angry lass, but the girl is wearing track suits, boring tees, and children in the public square.

The woman once known for reshaping her image era by era is sliding into her half-century age mark not with a bang, but a bland fashion apogee that's not a statement. It's a question mark.

Is this the most we can expect from a middle aged popstar?

Quite possibly, yes.

On the cover of her new album, “Hard Candy,” Madonna is, appropriately enough, repackaged as a fighter. She is dressed like a contestant on “American Gladiators” from Team Dolce & Gabbana, in a black bodysuit, championship belt, above-the-knee patent leather boots and what appears to be a mullet. Her makeup is pale and alien looking. In the first video releases, “4 Minutes” and “Give It 2 Me,” she dances in sheer tops and more high boots, here with labels like Chanel and Roberto Cavalli.

Yet neither video yielded a breakout Madonna look, nothing like her instant personas of the ’80s and ’90s, which is confusing to her fans. On the street, she has been wearing silk shorts trimmed with lace and tees from Ed Hardy, a label more often associated with Pamela Anderson and the Gastineau Girls.

“She doesn’t seem to have found a particular look for this album,” said Clare Parmenter, a 35-year-old biomedical scientist in London who maintains a fan site called Madonnalicious.com. “It’s a bit — I don’t know how to say it — it’s nondescript.”

Which is a sad state of affairs for a woman who wore cones on her breasts, teased her hair into mangy locks, exploited S&M, became a cowboy, a lesbian, and a workout aficionado.

Now, she's Madonna the Mom, rolling out a new image to coincide with her album and tour, but in real life playing the glamor girl, a role that's already filled by everybody who is not Madonna.

[NYT]