Aspect of Madonna's career
American singer-songwriter Madonna has been considered a sexual icon. Many have considered Madonna's sexuality as one of the focal points of her career. The "Oxford Dictionary of English" (2010) even credited her image as a sex symbol as a source of her international stardom. Her sexual displays have drawn numerous analyses by scholars, sexologists, feminists, and other authors. Due to her constant usage of explicit sexual content, she faced censorship for her videos, stage performances and other projects.
The criticism of Madonna's overt sexuality would become a constant through her career. She decried a double-standard in some opportunities, for which commentators such as Lilly J. Goren, Alina Simone and David Gauntlett have supported some of her statements. She further polarized views about overtly sexuality in an aged woman in media. During the AIDS crisis, Madonna had also promoted safe sex as a means of inhibiting the spread of the virus, and she has advocated for women's sexuality.
Reviews transcended her own career, as her impact in the entertainment industry was documented by different publications and authors. Depending on the reviewer's point of view, she is credited to reinforce or open up a variety of things in mass media culture, both positive and negative. American historian Lilly J. Goren commented that Madonna perpetuated the public perception of women performers as feminine and sexual objects, but also found that industry exploited her concepts of using sexuality to "gain power" (empowerment) and sell more records. An editor defined that "her sexuality never rested on the idea of being attractive", while in "101 Albums That Changed Popular Music" (2009), author pointed out that performers like Madonna used "their sexuality as a weapon to gain equal footing the male-dominated rock world". Her influence on others was also quoted; the earliest reviewers noted an influence on her fandom, including the LGBT community and young female audiences, called Madonna wannabes. Another group explored her influence on other female artists, with feminist scholars Cheris Kramarae and Dale Spender describing her dominant influence by saying "she created an illusion of sexual availability that many female pop artists felt compelled to emulate".
Due to her mainstream sexual-brand, she was called variously. Named by an author in the mid-1990s as the "most arcane and sexually perverse female of the twentieth century", she was further negative called a Medusa, a succubus and a Whore of Babylon. She was both praised and criticized by some industry fellows, including Steve Allen and Morrissey, who both compared her to a prostitute. Both her impact and sex appeal were recognized in listicles, topping the lists of "Toronto Sun"'s 50 Greatest Sex Symbols in history (2006) and VH1's 100 Sexiest Artists (2002).
Critical development.
Madonna has been referred to as a sexual icon or sex symbol; media outlets such as "American Masters", suggest that the singer continued to be a sexual icon as "she's gotten older". The "Oxford Dictionary of English" (2010) credited her image as a sex symbol as a source of her international stardom. In 2011, author Glenn Ward said that it was "often been implied" that Madonna's status was produced in part from the way she willfully deployed images of sexuality.
Her status as a sex symbol was compared to others contemporary and earlier entertainers. Although Sara Mills cites a commentator saying in early 1990s, that "write off Madonna as 'just another sex symbol' is to fail to understand her massive appeal". In "The Thirty Years' Wars" (1996), Andrew Kopkind regarded Madonna as "the premier sex symbol of the decade" (1990s). Author Stuart Jeffries in "Everything, All the Time, Everywhere: How We Became Postmodern" (2021), deemed Madonna as the leading sex symbol of the postmodern era, and a different one from Marilyn Monroe, who he defined as the leading sex symbol of the modern era. Similarly, Dylan Jones felt and referred to her as "the most famous sex symbol since Marilyn Monroe".
Press and public.
In "Record Collecting for Girls" (2011), Courtney Smith documented that most people associate Madonna with sex. "Vulture"'s Meaghan Garvey summarized at least in her first 20 years of career, "no one talked about Madonna without talking about sex". By the late 1980s, physicist Stephen Hawking even name-checked the singer by joking: "I have sold more books on physics than Madonna has on sex". That perception was stronger in the 1990s; Mark Bego reflected "since her arrival on the scene ten years ago, Madonna has become so synonymous with sex (and publicity) that it may be hard to remember that she started as a musical phenomenon." The 1996 edition of the "Hutchinson Encyclopedia" even referred to her as a "U.S. pop singer and actress who presents herself on stage and in videos with an exaggerated sexuality". In 2000, Brian McCollum from Knight Ridder made a comparative in AlltheWeb's results using the phrases "Madonna and music" which garnered 235,000 hits and "Madonna and sex" landing more than 333,000 results.
Her sexuality also became a tabloid-fixture at some stage; in "Profiles of Female Genius" (1994), author Gene Landrum describes that Madonna's libidinal energy and sexuality become in her major attraction for the media and "it has become the focal point for her whole career". Madonna herself noted the "bad press" about her sexuality as early as 1985. Historian Andrea Stuart cited a tabloid headline where Madonna was called a "man-eater" and how "she used sex to climb to the top". Author Adam Sexton called some press pieces as a "creepy moralism" decrying that "reading articles about Madonna, you could get the idea that it was the habit of pop journalists to marry the first person they slept with". In the compendium "The Madonna Connection" (1993), scholars even wrote that "it is no surprise, then that rumors of Madonna testing HIV-positive have been incredibly persistent". They wrote that certain segments of our culture find comfort in identifying her as a carrier of the AIDS virus—a disease perceived by some as a punishment for immoral behavior— and making Madonna HIV-positive establishes her moral guilt and provides for her ultimate containment by death.
Scholarly.
The Madonna studies saw a framework of its developments in theories about sexuality, although Rosemary Pringle from Griffith University, wrote in "Transitions: New Australian feminisms" (2020), that "there has been much controversy in the academy about the cultural and sexual politics of Madonna". Her notoriety, was commented on by Chuck Klosterman in "Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs" (2004): "Whenever I hear intellectuals talk about sexual icons of the present day, the name mentioned most is Madonna".
Citing Steven Anderson's views on Madonna in 1989, qualifying her as "a repository of all our ideas" on topics such as sex, Deborah Jermyn in "Female Celebrity and Ageing" (2016) wrote Madonna still functions as a repository of all of these ideas, except now she plays with these in an aging body. In 2018, sexologist Ana Fernández Alonso from Miguel de Cervantes European University, taught in a Madonna's class in the University of Oviedo that she is an "important" icon for women and for the way of understanding human sexuality in general, and sexual relations in particular.
Madonna's sexuality advocacy.
Madonna had promoted safe sex awareness in the 1980s and 1990s during the AIDS crisis as a means of inhibiting the spread of the virus, and continued to do the same in the next years, as reported Jason Mattera. In "Madonna as Postmodern Myth" (2002), French scholar Georges-Claude Guilbert concurred saying she often reminds her public during interviews and concerts to use condoms. Frances Negrón-Muntaner, commented in "Boricua Pop" (2004), she used her concerts to promote safe sex as a "remember the dead, and affirm the living". Editors of "History+ for Edexcel A Level" (2015), summed up that "she talked a great deal about sex, promoted safe sex in her interviews, distributed condoms at her concerts and performed at AIDS benefits". Upon the publication of her first book, "Sex" (1992), Madonna stated that if people "could talk about [sex] freely, we would have more people practicing safe sex, we wouldn't have people sexually abusing each other".
Madonna donated a percentage of "Papa Don't Preach" (1986) profits to programs advocating sexual responsibility, although it was Planned Parenthood of New York that initially requested it. In a 1988 advertisement for schoolkids, Madonna told "avoid casual sex and you'll avoid AIDS" and "stay away from people who shoot drugs". In the early 1990s, Sire Records had a 900 hotline (900-990-SIRE) that featured a safe-sex message from Madonna. During this decade, she also mentioned about unsafe sex: "I'm not going to sit here and say that from the time I found out about AIDS, I've always had intercourse with a man with a condom on". American professor and critic, Louis Menand called her "a leading spokesperson for safe sex" in his book "American Studies" (2003). In 2015, sexologist Ana Fernández Alonso deemed Madonna as a "sexologist" herself due her to body of work or public statements.
Madonna's sexual identity.
Scope.
In 1991, "New Internationalist" regarded Madonna as a "hotly debated sexual icon". Deborah Bell from University of North Carolina, wrote in "Masquerade" (2015), that "much has been written about Madonna and sexual identity". British media sociologist, David Gauntlett asserts Madonna's image as a sexual free spirit has been "emphatically defined".
Aware of other precursors, by 2002, Australian professor Jeff Lewis commented "more than any other single female figure, [she] has self-consciously 'explored' and displayed women's sexuality". Scholar of sexuality studies John Paul De Cecco and Grant Lukenbill, considered she was "one of the first major performers to blanket America with sexual code-code used specifically to appeal to the entire panorama of sexual expression". In "Madonna, Bawdy &amp; Soul" (1997), Canadian scholar Karlene Faith noted her far-reaching audience saying she "has inscribed her sexual identities on the psyches of millions of children, adolescents, and adults in dozens of nations, on half a dozen continents". Professor Santiago Fouz-Hernandez wrote in "Madonna's Drowned Worlds" (2004) that she symbolized "sexual liberation" for women in many cultures. On the other hand, Donald C. Miller, in "Coming of Age in Popular Culture" (2018), described that she consistently intertwined sexuality with religion, feeling it was something that set her apart from earlier female performers.
Madonna's usage of sexuality.
Shortly after her debut, Madonna's sexuality offered a challenge view to definitions of femininity and masculinity, according to author John Price. He continued saying that Madonna was a leading female figure who represented to many young women across the world, an "empowering figure" in control of her own body. American philosopher Susan Bordo, explains that the singer demonstrated her wannabes, the possibility of a female heterosexuality that was independent of patriarchal control. Meaghan Garven from "Vulture" magazine explained "her sexuality never rested on the idea of being attractive".
Different reviewers and academics in popular culture, further emphasized this stage of her career, with Gauntlett arguing that her sexual assertiveness "has been one of the most distinctive elements of her life and work". In "Girl Heroes" (2002), Susan Hopkins held she didn't only sell sexuality, but power, or rather "sexuality as power". Similarly, Camille Paglia described her "sexual persona" as "her power", while academic Marcel Danesi made also a remark on it. In "100 Entertainers Who Changed America" (2013), Robert Sickels believes that in her 1980s-works, Madonna portrayed herself as the "modern woman": Comfortable in and gratified by her own sexuality, but still a powerful female. She took the idea further in her next decade, Sickels says. In "Contesting Feminist Orthodoxies" (1996), authors explained that the singer not only represented herself as a sexual subject/object, but expressly proposed sexuality as a praxis of and towards artistic freedom, women's liberation, and indeed, gay liberation. Psychiatrist and author Jule Eisenbud commented that she reached a level "equivalent to masculinity" and "has allowed her to maintain her status as a sex symbol". Psychologist Jonathan Young, expressed: "[...] through sexually muscular scenarios of female domination, Madonna turns feminine sexuality as it is conventionally defined inside out: she reveals the hidden fantasy within women's [...]".
The way she deployed her sexuality while aging continued to draw commentaries. Hopkins commented that she was "ageing before the world [...] but she keeps presenting herself as a kind of 'sexual revolutionary'". In 2008, "Blender"'s editor-in-chief, Joe Levy commented about her entrance into the middle age, that "she is trying to go somewhere no one has gone before" with the possible exception of Cher. In 2018,