MAUREEN CALLAHAN: Tina Turner never begged for mercy, unlike today’s Montecito moans

There were two Tinas, the legend said for itself: the goddess of rock n’ roll – and the real lady, “the Tina who wears ballet flats and pearls, who believes in elegance”.

But she was also much more than that. Tina Turner – who died of natural causes aged 83 – was an object lesson in how to be a woman. An iconoclast. And never, ever anyone’s victim.

“I am a girl from a cotton field,” she once said, “who pulled herself above what I was not taught.”

Born Anna Mae Bullock, in abject poverty and abandoned by her parents when she was just 3 years old, Tina – for all her fierce talent and drive – became best known as a survivor of domestic violence.

She was talking and writing about it in the 1980s, at a time when such things were not yet discussed. America was a pre-Oprah, pre-Internet, pre-denominational culture. Victimization was not yet valued.

So the idea that a wealthy, well-known, powerful, and beautiful woman could have been repeatedly beaten, tortured, and raped by her own husband—a famous one at that—was something America hadn’t known. .

The idea that a wealthy, well-known, powerful, and beautiful woman could have been repeatedly beaten, tortured, and raped by her own husband—a famous man at that—was something America hadn’t known. (Pictured: Tina with Ike Turner in 1964).

‘You have to believe me now when I tell you something.’

It was Tina opening up to a People magazine reporter in 1981, a world exclusive that earned her just a cover line — not the actual cover — but nonetheless changed the lives of women everywhere.

“My ex-husband was a physically abusive man,” she said. “I suffered basic torture. I was living a life of death. I did not exist. But I survived it. And I went out. I walked. And I haven’t looked back.

In truth, she ran – fleeing her husband while on tour in Dallas, Texas, rushing down a freeway and nearly getting hit by a tractor-trailer before crashing into the lobby of a Ramada Inn with a credit card and 36 cents in my pocket.

“I felt strong,” she said of that moment. That was in 1976. The term “domestic violence” had only entered the lexicon three years earlier.

Tina Turner, then a star, went into hiding in Los Angeles and filed for divorce, demanding that she only take her name.

She was a young mother of two boys, one of whom heard her mother’s screams after Ike Turner threw hot coffee at her, inflicting third-degree burns.

She got by on food stamps and played corporate gigs for McDonald’s in depressing hotel ballrooms across North America. She was left with all the unpaid bills from canceled “Ike & Tina” tour dates. She received no royalties, neither the cars, nor the furs, nor the jewels, nor the house that she had well and truly won. But she didn’t care.

“I wanted better,” she says.

Less than ten years later, Turner released her defining album, “Private Dancer,” in less than three weeks.

“My ex-husband was a physically abusive man,” she said. “I suffered basic torture. I was living a life of death. I did not exist. But I survived it. And I went out. I walked. And I haven’t looked back.

In 1976, Tina went into hiding in Los Angeles and filed for divorce. But, less than ten years later, she released her defining album, “Private Dancer,” in less than three weeks.

Each track was a banger, the album itself a cry from the heart: “Better Be Good to Me”, “Show Some Respect” and of course, “What’s Love Got to Do with It”.

It was 1984, the best year for American pop music, especially for women: Madonna with “Like a Virgin”, Cyndi Lauper at the forefront with “Time After Time”.

But Tina stood out and above. She was the adult in the room. She’d been through some bullshit and come out the other side, stronger and tougher. Of challenge.

No one compares to Tina’s rebirth, majestic in her armor: spiky blonde wigs she made herself, black leather miniskirts, bright red lipstick and legs for days, still performing with high heels.

She was 44 and considered – among the men who wrote the reviews and edited the magazines and produced the talk shows – old.

But women didn’t see it that way. She opened a revolutionary path, showing us that it was never too late to find your power, to leave a bad marriage, to have a fulfilling career. To still be considered beautiful, if not more with age and wisdom. To stop worrying about what everyone else might think.

That’s what made Tina that rare thing: a true American original.

“I wasn’t worried about how men would react to my look,” she wrote in her memoir. “I always performed in front of the women in my audience…there were no women who sang and danced like me – women who could be sexy without making it sexual.”

In 1985, she turned down Steven Spielberg’s offer to star in “The Color Purple.”

“Black people can do better than that,” she said. “I lived in the south in cotton fields. I don’t want to do anything I did.

It was 1984, the best year for American pop music. But Tina (pictured with Cher in 1999) stood out and above. She was the adult in the room. She’d been through some bullshit and come out the other side, stronger and tougher. Of challenge.

Instead, she made “Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome,” playing a domineering queen in a thigh-length chainmail dress, leading an army of men.

“Those are the female warrior roles I want,” Turner said. Naturally.

She decided, after careful consideration, to publish her memoir “I, Tina,” written with music journalist Kurt Loder, in 1986. It was her attempt to move on, to keep reporters from asking questions about the abuse she had survived – but the book had the opposite effect.

It became a worldwide bestseller and once again transformed Tina; this time into a feminist icon.

Domestic violence was no longer a secret in America. It was no longer the shame of the women but that of the men who beat them.

And here is a woman of substance who refused to be a victim.

“I’m a happy person now,” she said. “I don’t dwell on unhappiness.”

What a lesson for today’s culture and for those women – a certain dissatisfied former royal family member comes to mind – who beg our pity, who whimper and moan that “few have asked if I’m going okay” and running to Oprah and Gayle King over the slightest emotional paper-cut.

Women like these would never have been adept at sewing Tina’s sequins.

What a lesson for today’s culture and for those women – a certain dissatisfied former royal comes to mind – who beg our pity, who run to Oprah and Gayle King at the slightest emotional paper cut . (Pictured: Tina with her son Craig, who committed suicide).

In the end, Tina got her happy ending – the love of a good man, a mansion in Switzerland, the adoration and thanks of millions – but that doesn’t mean she didn’t suffer.

Yet we never heard her complain, not once. Not after losing her son to suicide. Not after being diagnosed with PTSD, then cancer, then kidney failure.

She taught generations of women to never give up, to never give in, to fight for the life they wanted and deserved.

As she said of the recording of her only No. 1 hit, “What’s Love Got to Do With It”: “They weren’t used to a loud voice rising above the music.”

It was and still is Tina Turner, for millions of women: that loud voice, standing at the top.