Madonna at 60: Still Exposing The Double Standards Of Western Society
When I was 12, Madonna was everywhere. It was 1991, and not only had she just staged a juggernaut, global stadium tour, she was also lined up for a supporting role in the film A League Of Their Own, in addition to being the focus of the documentary film, Madonna: Truth Or Dare (or, In Bed With Madonna, as it was known outside of North America).
I recall the constant news coverage of her daily jogs through London’s Hyde Park — the sight of a petite woman surrounded by a throng of huge security guards, in turn surrounded by throngs of jubilant fans. I recall looking forward to the Penny Marshall-directed baseball comedy in which she was set to appear, because it would tell the story of a group of women, through a female lens — a rarity at the time — upon its 1992 theatrical release. I also recall seeing the Madonna: Truth Or Dare documentary — despite its ‘18’ rating — due to an older sibling being a devoted fan.
At the time, I liked some of her songs — a number of the well-known pop classics — but not to the extent that I would characterise myself as a ‘proper fan.’ I was, however, fascinated by the phenomenon of this woman. This woman, though diminutive in physical stature, had the capacity to whip vast swathes of society into a mouth-frothing, hand-wringing fervour. This woman was having a tangible impact in ways I could not yet understand and, as I found myself staring down the barrel of my own impending womanhood, I felt the possibility of such a thing entirely exhilarating.
While it would not be inaccurate to say that this period was the height of her influence in terms of pop culture saturation, Madonna has never disappeared from view and, for that reason, those vast swathes of society have never stopped wringing their hands over her. She has continued to enjoy a dedicated fandom, and continues to perform and create new music — but with Madonna, it was never entirely about her melodious output. Until the 1996 film Evita came along (bringing with it more focused, professional vocal tutelage), her singing voice was neither particularly strong, nor especially notable. What she had — and continues to have — is the ability to bring together interesting collaborators to achieve her vision, the ability to write finely crafted and incisive lyrics, and the desire to plant her feet and do her thing, with the consequence of exposing the double standards of western society.
The media, music industry commentators, purveyors of gossip-for-profit, and even fellow entertainers have always been split in their regard for Madonna. There are those that appreciate and understand her professional endeavours as performance art, and there are those that treat her with continual disdain. It has been this way for over three decades, and shows no sign of changing. From her early days of telling the world about the experience of being Like A Virgin, to sharing her contemporary Rebel Heart, Madonna is regarded in many quarters as being a “controversial” figure; an “attention-seeker,” who repeatedly resorts to “shock” tactics in order to maintain some kind of relevance.
But, against whose standard is the art of Madonna considered “controversial”? How can purveyors of gossip-for-profit blithely dismiss her work as desperate “attention-seeking,” while simultaneously collecting the dollars generated by the headline clicks? Why should it be a problem for us all if certain sections of society find that her material causes “shock”?
Right from the moment she burst onto the scene in 1983, Madonna has challenged the status quo. She has delivered music, art, and performance that serves as commentary on the hypocrisy that operates within a patriarchal society. In doing so, she has ensured that the social outrage and critical response she receives essentially becomes a part of her artistic endeavour. The mouth-frothing and hand-wringing fervour of those that disapprove is subsumed by her work.
Most of it centres on openness about sex, for the very simple reason that it is from this that most of society’s double standards stem. For example, in February 2018, when Archbishop William Goh of Singapore declared that the country should be concerned about her scheduled concert — due to the “immoral values promoted by the secular world” — he did so against a wider background of the Vatican apologising for the rampant child abuse perpetrated by senior figures within the Catholic Church.
So, what is it about Madonna that makes those who are so comfortable within the patriarchal system so terribly uncomfortable? It is the fact that she seeks neither their permission, nor their approval. She was singing about the autonomy and sovereignty of women at a time when it was still legal for a British husband to rape his wife, after all. She was releasing music videos featuring sexualised religious images at a time when Catholicism was actively working to hide abuse within its ranks. She has always told women and girls of all ages to love themselves and express their truth — even though mainstream pop culture, the media in general, and political systems around the world are constantly telling them to doubt themselves, to take up less space, and to quiet down.
She was never the only woman in the music industry doing this vital work, but for a long time, she was the most successful. For 30 years, Madonna has stood in direct opposition to patriarchy and all of its insidious goals, and she has done this in the face of continuous attempts to discredit and undermine her on a personal level. This is evident in the language still used in media coverage about her work. A recent, prime example appeared on France24.com on 12th August 2018 :
“Putting sex in sexagenarian: Madonna still shocks at 60. Giving new meaning to the term sexagenarian, Madonna openly dates men 3 decades younger, maintains a svelte figure, and on her latest tour put on a characteristically provocative show that simulated most conceivable sex acts.”
The piece goes on to use select vocabulary with negative connotations, such as “brash,” “carnal,” and “unapologetic,” while broadly reporting on the apparently noteworthy fact that the performer remains an icon, despite her advancing age.
“Unapologetic.” To whom might she need to apologise? And for what? Is Jack Nicholson ever referred to as “unapologetic” for having the audacity to date women decades younger than himself? For that matter, in 1990, was Warren Beatty ever referred to as “unapologetic” for dating Madonna, who is decades his junior? Of course not, because apologies are not required of men. For men, such behaviour is a badge of honour. For women, it is unseemly, and “provocative.”
Is it not the height of hypocrisy to list her “svelte figure” among the ways in which she “shocks,” while simultaneously trying to solicit ‘clicks’ with a salacious headline, and an image of her in a corset and stockings? Let’s not kid ourselves here. If her “svelte figure” ever increased in girth, the media would be chomping at the bit to shame her for “letting herself go” — just as they do with everyone else. This is how our society works, and Madonna has always known it better than most.
Let’s go deeper and deeper.
Madonna is a woman who decided that she wanted to be successful in music and entertainment, worked hard, and achieved her goal. Acknowledged across the board as a stellar student, she dropped out of college to pursue her dreams in New York, with very little money behind her. Over the course of the following three decades, she went from working hard and studying her craft, to being a record-breaking artist of global renown. While many of her fellow music-makers have enjoyed notable success, Madonna remains the icon that broke ground, and shattered glass ceilings for women in the industry.
Most successful female solo artist; Best-selling female recording artist; Best-selling re-mix album by a female artist; Best-selling compilation album by a solo artist; Best-selling video single of all time; Song topping charts in the most countries; Album topping charts in the most countries; Longest stay at number one in European Hot 100 Albums; Highest grossing concert tour of all time by a female artist; Highest annual earnings for a female pop star; Highest earnings for a female pop star in a year; Highest paid female singer on the planet; World’s richest recording artist; Biggest recording contract for a woman; Fastest selling coffee table book of all time. Make no mistake, her list of achievements goes on and on.
Before The Spice Girls, Lady Gaga, and even the outstanding talent and artistry of Beyonce, Madonna was blazing the trail for women. Way back in 1983, with the song Burning Up, from the album Madonna, she was singing “Do you wanna see me down on my knees? Or bending over backwards now would you be pleased? Unlike the others, I’d do anything, I’m not the same, I have no shame, I’m on fire…” On the same album, with Physical Attraction, she challenged the conventions of pop music of the time by being a woman singing about having a one-night stand from a perspective that is usually attributed to men. (“You say you wanna stay the night, but you’ll leave tomorrow, I don’t care…”)
Then, in 1984, Madonna truly caused her first big stir with the album Like A Virgin — and we saw her work bring society’s double standard into sharp focus for the first time. It became the first album by a woman to sell over 5 million copies in the United States, while its title track rattled a variety of so-called ‘conservative’ quarters — leading to calls for the song and associated video to be banned. The album also included the track Material Girl, which played on the idea of a stereotypical ‘gold-digging’ woman who achieves her own wealth and is then pursued by ‘gold-digging’ men.
Two years later, in 1986, the album True Blue delivered Papa Don’t Preach, which addresses women making choices about their lives and bodies under the judgmental eye of a patriarch. But, this album also placed greater emphasis on Madonna’s other ‘challenging’ lyrical aspect — the aggressive pursuit of romance and physical intimacy.
In pop music, we are accustomed to hearing male artists croon about pursuing the women to whom they are attracted — regardless of how creepy, stalkerish, and inappropriate their songs actually are when examined for concepts of consent. Here, Madonna turned those tables and delivered Open Your Heart, in which she declared, “I’ve had to work much harder than this, for something I want, don’t try to resist me…Don’t try to run I can keep up with you, nothing can stop me from trying, you’ve got to…”
But, it was the year 1989 that Madonna landed a really heavy blow to the status quo in popular culture, with the release of her album Like A Prayer. While the media gave most coverage to the uproar surrounding the video for the title song — which sexualised a depiction of a Catholic saint — the album itself contained a number of rallying cries specifically aimed at women. Till Death Do Us Part, for example, is about abusive relationships (“She takes the keys, he breaks the door…He takes a drink, she goes inside….He starts to scream, the vases fly…”). Oh Father addresses empowerment in the face of oppression (“You can’t make me cry, you once had the power, I never felt so good about myself”).
While her previous releases were mostly love songs, and tracks making feminist points through the telling of stories, Like A Prayer also contained a bona fide feminist anthem — Express Yourself. This song is joyous in its melody, and speaks directly to women about taking charge of their lives, their sexuality (and, specifically, their orgasm), and their emotional well-being, in spite of toxic masculinity.
“Don’t go for second best, baby, put your love to the test. Make him express how he feels, ’cause baby then you know your love is real…What you need is a big strong hand to lift you to your higher ground, make you feel like a queen on a throne, make him love you til you can’t come down…”
Now, 19 years later, this track (and its video) just as easily stands in absolute defiance of the rise of the self-proclaimed ‘Incel’ sub-culture, which has given more space and attention to entitled white men whining for the “re-distribution of sex,” just because they can’t strike up an actual relationship with a human that will tolerate their need for complete control.
“You deserve the best in life, so if the time isn’t right then move on, second best is never enough, you’ll do much better baby on your own… So if you want it right now, make him show you how, express what he’s got, baby ready or not…”
That is the beauty of Express Yourself — it cuts men out of the conversation, while telling women to value themselves more within their relationships and interactions with men. This conversation with women is about self-empowerment and self-love, not the need for superiority over others.
And so, we arrived in the early 1990s, and the peak of Madonna saturation of pop culture. Dick Tracy; Vogue; The Blonde Ambition tour; the Truth Or Dare documentary; the founding of her Maverick entertainment company; A League Of Their Own. Despite this saturation, Madonna continually sought to push boundaries with her work — and so along came the album Erotica, the coffee table book Sex, and another example of her highlighting society’s double standard.
…because apologies are not required of men. For men, such behaviour is a badge of honour. For women, it is unseemly, and “provocative.”
Sex seemed to be met with immediate and widespread vocal derision in the media, as it contained a collection of photographs depicting a variety of sexual imagery featuring the artist, and others. But, at the same time, it broke sales records by selling 1.5 million copies in just three days — no mean feat given the price tag was $50 per copy. Its critical reception stood in contrast to an earlier point in Madonna’s career, when nude photographs of the performer were published in Penthouse and Playboy. The photographs had been taken in the late 1970s, when Madonna needed to earn money to survive and study her craft. Legend has it that she had been paid as little as $25 — $50 per session at the time. Just seven years later, however, in 1985, the pictures sold to those magazines for up to $100,000, because she had just hit the big-time with Like A Virgin.
Mainstream media once again cast its judgement on Madonna and her life choices, while simultaneously covering the subject in wildly sensationalist tone — and profiting from it accordingly. Many sections of society clucked about the inappropriateness of the decisions made by a struggling young woman — without questioning the existence of an environment in which posing nude for a photographer was a choice to be made for such meagre pay-checks. There were no real attempts, either, to question the fact that giant business deals were then made in media about the exact same images. Of course, the only reason she earned $25 — $50 for the poses in the late 1970s, is because she had no real power in that situation. Seven years later, the power she had earned meant the white male owners of soft-porn magazines could pay $100,000 for those pictures, safe in the knowledge that they would see a bountiful return on that investment.
This cuts right to the heart of the matter — the big, glaring double standard in society that Madonna and her works continue to bring sharply into focus. Western society laps up sexually provocative content only when it is delivered within the parameters set out by patriarchy. Mainstream media and advertising — from Cosmopolitan to the Daily Mail; from E! to Channel 5; from Hollywood studios to indie productions — will go to any lengths to bring you the very latest starlet in suggestive and seductive poses, specifically designed to appeal to the male gaze.
Nudity in print is not just within the purview of ‘top-shelf’ publications such as Penthouse and Playboy — it’s right there on the cover of national UK material, such as The Sun, and the Daily Mirror. But, when a woman does it for a purpose other than making profit for wealthy owners of media aimed at men, and in a way that is not specifically designed for the male gaze, patriarchal society and its media bites back. That media clamours to publish nude pictures of Madonna taken before she was famous, for which she received minimal remuneration at the time, but when Madonna releases her own photographic material that is on her terms, to serve her own artistic enterprise, that same media brands her an “attention-seeker,” who has “gone too far.”
The only thing that is “controversial” about the work of Madonna is that she operates outside of the patriarchal media machine. She uses exactly the same strategies and resources (sex, and her female form), but for a different purpose. Her work is a subversion of the patriarchal employment of the male gaze. This means that, when she is presenting society with images, music, lyrics, dance, and theatrics that address sex, gender, autonomy, religion, family, and violence, she does so in a way that challenges the status quo, and the ‘accepted’ power structure.
She is a polarising figure, because she refuses to seek permission. Why should she? She has the talent, knowledge, and resources to do as she pleases in artistic and personal terms. More to the point, she has achieved these things because massive international audiences — including millions of women around the world, and across multiple generations — have embraced her work, and found it to be inspirational.
That makes Madonna dangerous to established power. As far as patriarchal society is concerned, an artist such as Madonna is a disruptive influence — and this is why so much energy and effort is spent trying to discredit her on a personal level. But again, Madonna never disappears from view. Instead, she continues to perform, to speak, and to challenge that precious status quo. Like 1994’s Human Nature says, “You tried to shove me back inside your narrow room…I didn’t know I couldn’t speak my mind… I’m breaking all the rules I didn’t make…Would it sound better if I were a man? I don’t have to justify anything.”
Madonna is still expressing herself — whether those invested in upholding patriarchal structures are ready or not. The needs and desires of the patriarchy have no bearing on her choices — and that is a lesson women everywhere are continuing to learn from her work. Long may that ray of light shine.
