- Title: USA: POP STAR MADONNA GIVES BIRTH TO HER FIRST CHILD, LOURDES MARIA CICCONE LEON
- Date: 15th October 1996
- Summary: (FILE JULY 18, 1996) ) (RTV - ACCESS ALL) MADONNA ASKING THE PUBLIC TO STOP SENDING BABY GIFTS TO HER HOME AT THE COMMITMENT TO LIFE AIDS BENEFIT IN JULY 1996
- Embargoed: 30th October 1996 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES
- Country: USA
- Topics: Entertainment
- Reuters ID: LVACGMF3B4SO98QPQL5KV57FKVC
- Story Text: Pop star Madonna, whose frequently outrageous sexuality has been a staple of her climb to pop-culture stardom, celebrated the more traditional role of motherhood on Monday (October 14).
She gave birth to a 2.97 kilogramme (six-pound, nine-ounce) baby girl, named Lourdes Maria Ciccone Leon, at the Good Samaritan hospital in Los Angeles, her publicist Liz Rosenberg said.
"Mother Madonna Ciccone, father Carlos Leon and their daughter are all resting comfortably," she said in a statement. "We would like to thank everyone for their kind wishes." Rosenberg added that there would be "absolutely" no further information released and declined to say whether the birth was natural or by Caesarean-section.
It is the first child for Madonna, aged 38. The father, Cuban-born Carlos Leon, aged 30, is a personal trainer to the pop singer and actress. They have not said if they will marry.
"He's not a movie star, you know. Everyone doesn't have to be.
He's the man in her life and they met about a year and a half ago in New York," Rosenberg said at the time the pregnancy was announced in April while Madonna was filming "Evita" in Budapest, Hungary.
Earlier Madonna said half-jokingly on television that she planned to find a suitable candidate for "the fatherhood gig" by taking out a personal ad.
But she did not use Leon as a "stud service," she says in November's Vanity Fair magazine and did not get pregnant for "shock value." "I realise that these are all comments made by persons who cannot live with the idea that something good is happening to me," the Michigan-born entertainer said.
In an interview with a Colombian newspaper this summer, Madonna said she hoped to raise her child in her religion as "a good Catholic," and had not yet decided whether to marry the father of her child.
"I don't know, I love Juan Carlos but that doesn't mean that I'm going to marry him," she told El Tiempo.
Asked why she had decided to have his baby, she said: "I have to work for someone in life. I needed something that's mine that I can be proud of." Asked about rumours of her alleged lesbian love affairs, the flamboyant pop star told the newspaper "the funny thing is I don't like women. What really drives me crazy are men." Her fame is founded on a string of hits but the notoriety that explains much of her runaway success rests unapologetically on raunch -- relentless bodily exposure and a celebratory invocation of sex in various forms.
Madonna Veronica Louise Ciccone had flings with several Hollywood stars, including Warren Beatty, and was married to actor/director Sean Penn.
In 1992, she published a photo album called "Sex," packed with pictures of herself acknowledging aspects of sexual behaviour including sado-masochism and lesbianism. "Erotica," the record that followed, was laced with bedroom moaning.
Before these came "Truth or Dare" (titled "In Bed with Madonna" in Europe), a no-holds-barred documentary of the singer on tour.
On record, she loved to shock. She performed her first hit, the suggestive "Like a Virgin" as a pouting bride; "Material Girl" was a paean to empty materialism; "Papa Don't Preach" about teen pregnancy and the video of "Like a Prayer" upset the Catholic church with religious and sexual imagery. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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