The differences between the Mad and the Rebel ones

According to the 7th Edition of Oxford Dictionary MAD means having a mind that does not work normally, mentally ill; and REBEL stands for a person who fights against the government of their country or a person who does not like to obey rules or who does not accept normal standards of behaviour, dress, etc.
I belive becoming mad or rebel is determined in a person's chilhood in 80%. The relationship with the parents, the troubles in school, the love affairs, the disappoints in human actions and relations lays dow the primal personality features and that the person choses the 'normal' life or - because of the lived through traumas and experiences - turns to extremity. There are much differences between the minds and even in the acts of this two several-natured characters.

A MAD girl (mainly I talk about girls here) destroyes herself physically and mentally, resorts to violence (Janie's got a gun, have you?), does not really care what others think of her so she can be cold-as-ice and definitely refuses prescribed behavioural norms. Mad ones like Courtney Love, Marina Abramović, Nancy Spungen or Edie Sedgwick.
What about the rebels? In most cases I think a REBEL girl is mad at the same time and owns similar pecularities. The dissimilarity is in the principles they are driven by. I mean they fight for their opinions and phrasing that in public. Loud. May it be about animal, political, female rights or a demonstrating against common clothing. Rebel ones like Joan of Arc, Kathleen Hanna, Patti Smith or all the girls of blaxploitation cinema.




There are differences in the way of their thinking and social life. I think a mad girl is more selfish and puts her own subjective interests forward. A rebel girl is more for the 'company' she's in, what she has chosen to be the part of and uses to plead for. Being mad or rebel is not learnable, it's a genetic gift. But the most important about both of their feelings and thoughts that it's coming from their hearts, their deepest souls, and honest minds. No lies, no masks. They really belive in what they're doing, and if they stop beliving, they stop doing it. So easy.
As a counter-example Lady Gaga is the perfect one. To lay down I'm neither a Gaga-hater nor a Gaga-lover, but she's unavoidable. She's an elaborated, intentionally shocking media-stunt who has a team to create the perfect tools for making an exhibition of her. She's neither mad nor rebel, she's a well-designed trick.




And of course there are those good old 'troublemakers' and rebels of fashion industry, too. Ann Demeulemeester and Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons has created a fashion outside of fashion, a style without the touch of accepted, ordinary fashion, a new prototype of women who have the opportunity to merge in the secret, proper world of New Ages. Not just with the materials, patterns or cuttings but in the conceptions they speak for recreating clothing habits and give us a way to chose the throwing-cliches-out option.
So if the question is, would you like to follow these gorgeous ladies in their revolution, the answer can be nothing else but yes.

Sources: Borough of Clarksville, Marina Abramović via, Kathleen Hanna, Joan of Arc via, Patti Smith, Christina Lindberg in Thriller: They Call Her One-Eye 1975, Ann Demeulemeester Spring 1992 & Spring 1995, Comme des Garçons ad