American singer-songwriter Madonna has been considered a sexual icon. Various have considered Madonna's sexuality as one of the focal points of her career. The Oxford Dictionary of English (2010) 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 use of explicit sexual content, she faced censorship for her videos, stage performances and other projects, in addition to generate and receive religious and political criticisms. During the AIDS epidemic, Madonna advocated for safe sex.
Critical responses to her sexuality have extended beyond assessments of her individual career. Depending on the reviewer's perspective, she is credited with either reinforcing or expanding ways of expression in mass media culture. American historian Lilly J. Goren was inclined to conclude that Madonna perpetuated the public perception of women performers as sexualized objects, while the music industry simultaneously exploited her use of sexuality as a form of empowerment to increase record sales. Other commentators have examined Madonna's influence on later female artists and her public, while feminist scholars Cheris Kramarae and Dale Spender concluded "she created an illusion of sexual availability that many female pop artists felt compelled to emulate". Although she was generally regarded as highly controversial, Madonna was also compared to both contemporary and earlier performers who used sexuality as part of their public persona and artistic presentation.
Madonna was described in various ways in the media in relation to her sexual persona, often characterized pejoratively, and was compared to a Medusa, succubus and the Whore of Babylon. Public figures such as Steve Allen and Morrissey also commented on Madonna's sexuality, both comparing her to a prostitute. Her sex appeal was recognized in rankings, including Toronto Suns 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.
Press and public In 2006, Ottawa Citizens Dunlevy T'cha, said that "many critics" seen her "variously", including embodying the "contradictions of a society fascinated by fame [or] ambivalent about sexuality". In Record Collecting for Girls (2011), Courtney Smith documented that most people associate Madonna with sex. Vultures 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; author 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 referred to her as a "U.S. pop singer and actress who presents herself on stage and in videos with an exaggerated sexuality". In The Thirty Years' Wars (1996), Andrew Kopkind regarded Madonna as "the premier sex symbol of the decade" (1990s), while Sara Mills cited a commentary about Madonna: "write off Madonna as 'just another sex symbol' is to fail to understand her massive appeal". 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 made her a tabloid-fixture. 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 she was called a "man-eater" and how "used sex to climb to the top". Author Adam Sexton called some press pieces as a "creepy moralism". In the compendium The Madonna Connection (1993), scholars wrote there were persistent rumors of Madonna to be HIV-positive. They wrote that certain segments of society find comfort in identifying her as a carrier of the AIDS virus—a disease perceived 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. However, Mandy Merck from Royal Holloway in Perversions: Deviant Readings by Mandy Merck (1993), said that although Madonna was seen as perhaps "the most self-authored sexual artifact of this (or any other) time", her career coincides with long-held positions on pornography, fashion and sexual conduct.
Madonna's AIDS advocacy Madonna had promoted safe sex awareness in the 1980s and 1990s during the AIDS crisis in the U.S. 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 her to do this. 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).
Madonna's sexual identity Influences and comparisons
Madonna status as a sex symbol was often compared to others contemporary and earlier entertainers. Different publications, including PBS and Los Angeles Times observed that various entertainers have followed Mae West's footsteps in breaking taboos about sexuality, in particular Madonna. Other influences mentioned for Madonna by the public and media outlets included Marlene Dietrich. Around 1990s, feminists noted that Madonna began to explore female sexual fantasies, according to The Madonna Connection (1993), incorporating bondage or sadomasochism through aesthetic expressions. The sadomasochistic motifs in pop artist Andy Warhol's underground films were echoed in the videos for "Erotica" and "Deeper and Deeper".
The 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. Dylan Jones described her as "the most famous sex symbol since Marilyn Monroe".
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".
Australian professor Jeff Lewis commented "more than any other single female figure, [she] has self-consciously 'explored' and displayed women's sexuality". In the early 1990s, Lisa Henderson from Pennsylvania State University even considered her as "the ultimately the epitome of women's sexuality ... at best ambiguous in the end". 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 & 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".