Encouraging women to embrace and express their sexuality, Madonna's brand of feminism has been in the making for over a quarter of a century.
Women of a certain age will remember the wannabes; they might even have been one. The surf slang was popularized in the mainstream to describe the packs of peroxide blonde high school girls in thrift shop attire—vented t-shirts, denim jackets, rubber bracelets all accessorized with lace, especially the fingerless gloves—who roamed American malls in the mid-1980s.
Costumed in crucifixes and layers of lace, Madonna bounced onto the world stage in 1983 inviting us to take a Holiday, and by the end of 1985 she had become a phenom due to her sophomore album, “Like a Virgin.”
The appeal to high school girls was apparent; Madonna captured the imaginations of the wannabes, and once she held them and other record buyers in the palm of her hand, she crafted messages of empowerment. One might trace it back to “Material Girl.” In her Marilyn Monroe caricature, Madonna uses her old-fashioned feminine wiles to get what she wants, materialistically.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNSUOFgj97M
It’s not the strongest feminist message, but it would open the door to more pointed ones as her career progressed and the wannabes aged with her. Already a controversial figure, particularly for her uninhibited sexuality, Madonna in 1986 released “True Blue,” generally credited for making Madonna a superstar and certifying her position as one of the consummate musical figures of the 1980s.
Again, she included a track on the album that appealed to teenage girls. Long before “16 and Pregnant” aired on MTV, Madonna’s videos played on the channel, including “Papa Don’t Preach” about a pregnant teenager who has made up her own mind to keep her baby.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkxqxWgEEz4
“At the time being a teen mom was still a dirty secret, something to be ashamed of, and a horrible tragedy to befall a family,” writes a Jezebel blogger. ” And yet teen pregnancy was frequent. The issue was huge.”
And then Madonna, an Italian Catholic girl, released “Papa Don’t Preach.”
Source: Fan Pop
While climbing celebrity ranks and prepping for her next role in Pepsi’s famous concert commercials, Madonna again stirred up controversy. This time, the issue wasn’t so much with lyrics, but images. In “Like a Prayer,” Madonna takes on racism, appearing in a flimsy black slip and kissing an African-American religious icon, and later stands among crosses engulfed in flames.
It was too much for the American soda purveyors. Pepsi dropped Madonna, but the song became one of her biggest hits. Nearly a quarter of a century later, Madonna had the last laugh, wrapping up her Super Bowl halftime show with “Prayer” in 2012.
Madonna continued to push the sexual envelope and encouraged women to embrace their sexuality, and perhaps more importantly, openly express it. In terms of iconography, Madge’s boldest feminist statement drove her “Blond Ambition” tour, where she strutted in finely tailored Jean Paul Gaultier suits with slits that exposed her cone bra.
It was a women’s liberation anthem perhaps not heard since the 1970s. The same year as the tour, 1990, Madonna’s “Justify My Love” video was banned from MTV for being too sexually explicit. Author and commentator Camille Paglia came to her defense in the pages of The New York Times.
“Madonna is the true feminist,” Paglia wrote. “She exposes the puritanism and suffocating ideology of American feminism, which is stuck in an adolescent whining mode. Madonna has taught young women to be fully female and sexual while still exercising total control over their lives. She shows girls how to be attractive, sensual, energetic, ambitious, aggressive and funny – all at the same time. Through her enormous impact on young women around the world, Madonna is the future of feminism.”
But Madonna may have finally pushed public tolerance to its limits when she published her “SEX” book around when she released Erotica. By then, she was developing an antagonistic relationship with the press and took hits that most male pop stars would not have had to endure.
Madonna’s response to critics who tried to put her in a box?
A very unapologetic track on her next album, “Human Nature,” often cited as her best example of a woman in charge and holding a mirror up to society. The video was also sexually explicit.
Critics and the press seem ready to pounce anytime Madonna creates a new project, book, album or film. “Why can the press just not wait to hate Madonna at these moments?” wondered one blogger at ohnotheydidnt.com, when Madonna was being attacked—sometimes viciously—for directing a film titled “W.E.” in 2012.
“Because she must be punished, for the same reason that every woman who steps out of line must be punished,” the blogger opined. “Madonna is infuriating to the mainstream commentariat when she dares to extend her range because she is acting in the same way a serious, important male artist acts. (And seizing the director’s chair, that icon of phallic assertiveness, is provocative as hell.)”
At the turn of the last decade, the pop chameleon borrowed from the most masculine of American icons, the cowboy, and released “Music,” on the cover of which she donned a cowboy hat and western shirt. But it was the last track on the album that carried the strongest feminist message, “What It Feels Like for a Girl.” Here she appropriated lines from Ian McEwan’s novel (and resulting 1993 film) “The Cement Garden.”
“Girls can wear jeans and cut their hair short and wear shirts and boots because it’s okay to be a boy; for girls it’s like promotion. But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, according to you, because secretly you believe that being a girl is degrading.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQeOpTWPBfQ
The wannabes are older now, in their 40s and 50s, but if you’ve ever been to a Madonna concert, you’ll seem them. They are women who still look up to their idol as a symbol of strength. Whether she’s singing “Jump” with lyrics about self-empowerment and sufficiency while prospecting a new relationship, or “Some Girls,” another empowerment anthem from her last album.
Producer and collaborator William Orbit said of the song “Some Girls”:
‘Here I am. I am awesome,’ That’s what it communicates to anyone, I am sure. She is just like queen bitch… We love her for that and she knows how to rule.
She certainly knows how to get [to] her subjects [and get] the most devotion out of them. I love to see that relationship between fans and Madonna. It’s a rare thing, so proactive and that song really sums it up. It’s got great lyrics.
