Lust Icon : Madonna

Yes. The answer is yes. I'm extremely intimidated with the idea of tackling Madonna as a Lust Icon. How could I convey to the world how iconic and amazing Madonna is? What photos would I even use? Should I pick someone else this go-around? Someone easier, like say, Lady Gaga?

I sometimes strangely loathe the fact that I even like Madonna [oh-kay LOVE Madonna]. It all just sounds so cliché for a gay man to love Madonna. But, I don't love Madonna the way we all at some point love her. Without sounding like a fanatic, I worship Madonna. Now I know that sounds extreme but, I'm not a crazy person. Madonna is an icon of music, film, fashion, art, and lifestyle. I don't need millions of record sales and awards to prove that. Who she is and what she does in the way that she does it, to me, seals the deal. How does she do that? With absolutely no regrets.

Madonna Louise Ciccone is a child of Italian decent from Bay City, Michigan. Of her youth, she recalls herself as a "lonely girl who was searching for something. I wasn't rebellious in a certain way. I cared about being good at something. I didn't shave my underarms and I didn't wear make-up like normal girls do. But I studied and I got good grades.... I wanted to be somebody." It was that ambition that drove her to drop out of college and pursue a dance career in New York City. She moved to New York in 1977 with only $35 in her pocket and describes the decision as "the bravest thing I'd ever done."



Dance Madonna did, with modern dance troupes and most notably for French disco artist Patrick Hernandez on a world tour. She was deeply connected with the New York scene fronting her first rock band "the Breakfast Club" [and later another group, "Emmy"] and tagging the streets as a graffiti artist known as "Boy Toy" with Debi Mazar [who became a longtime friend and has several cameos in Madonna's videos].

It wasn't until a meeting with Sire Records that she would become a solo artist and release "Everybody" in 1982. That first single was a dance hit and she began to develop her first album, titled "Madonna", that produced the hits "Holiday", "Borderline", and "Lucky Star". Her second album "Like A Virgin" in 1984 led her to become a global success for the first time. That album has been certified diamond, selling over twenty-one million copies, and introduced the world to the sexual envelope pushing performer that we know today.

Enter MTV. Madonna was actually terrified of the performance that is now noted by scholars and by MTV as an iconic performance in MTV history. That performance was at the MTV Video Music Awards to the single "Like A Virgin" and featured Madonna atop a giant wedding cake, wearing a wedding dress and bridal veil, adorned with her characteristic "Boy Toy" belt buckle. "I remember my manager Freddy shouting to me, 'Oh my God! What were you doing? You were wearing a wedding dress. Oh my God! You were rolling around on the floor!' It was the bravest, most blatant sexual thing I had ever done on television."

Already Madonna's style, her performances, and her music videos started influencing young girls and women. Her style became a female fashion trend of the 1980s. It was created by stylist and jewelry designer Maripol and the look consisted of lace tops, skirts over capri pants, fishnet stockings, jewelry bearing the crucifix, bracelets, and bleached hair. Soon, she was taking that style to the big screen appearing in the films "Vision Quest" and "Desperately Seeking Susan" yielding two more hits, "Crazy For You" and "Into the Groove". It was her lack of style, or clothing, that took her into round two of media uproar. In 1985, Penthouse and Playboy magazines published a number of nude photos of a then short for cash Madonna, taken in New York in 1978. She remained completely unapologetic and referred to the whole experience at the 1985 outdoor Live Aid charity concert, saying that she would not take her jacket off because "[the media] might hold it against me ten years from now."

Musically following that, Madonna released the albums "True Blue", and a remix album "You Can Dance", while appearing in the film "Who's That Girl?". Then in 1989, Madonna signed an endorsement deal with soft drink manufacturer Pepsi. In one of her Pepsi commercials, she debuted her song "Like a Prayer" which was followed by the iconic music video featuring many Catholic symbols such as stigmata and burning crosses, and a dream about making love to a saint, leading the Vatican to condemn the video [you don't get more rock star than that]. Religious groups sought to ban the commercial and boycott Pepsi products which led the company to revoke the commercial and cancel her sponsorship contract. The song was included on Madonna's fourth studio album, "Like a Prayer", which Rolling Stone called "...as close to art as pop music gets".  By the end of the 1980s, Madonna was named as the "Artist of the Decade" by media outlets such as MTV, Billboard and Musician magazine.

Starting off the next decade of her career, Madonna appeared in the film "Dick Tracy" which led to the soundtrack album "I'm Breathless" and included the iconic single "Vogue". She was dating her "Dick Tracy" co-star Warren Beatty at the time who pushed her to write "Vogue", as a song that would be a declaration of what her character Breathless Mahoney would say in a song. The success of "Vogue" led to the "Blond Ambition Tour" in 1990. "I know that I'm not the best singer and I know that I'm not the best dancer. But, I can fucking push people's buttons and be as provocative as I want. The tour's goal is to break useless taboos." Rolling Stone praised the tour as an "elaborately choreographed, sexually provocative extravaganza" and proclaimed it "the best tour of 1990". "The Immaculate Collection" was the next album. A greatest hits record that caps off this era of a religiously defiant Madonna, but included the new single "Justify My Love" and was a taste of what was to follow.

What followed is probably my favorite of all of Madonna's persona's, the "Erotica" album. The release of "Erotica" coincided with the release of her first book, "Sex". It consisted of sexually provocative and explicit images, photographed by Steven Meisel. The book caused strong negative reaction from the media and the general public, but sold 1.5 million copies in a matter of days. Following the book and album, she went on "The Girlie Show World Tour" dressed as a whip-cracking dominatrix surrounded by topless dancers. Like everything else at this time, it faced more negative reaction. Particularly in Puerto Rico where she rubbed the island's flags between her legs on stage. The same year, she appeared as a guest on the "Late Show with David Letterman" using profanity that was required to be censored on television and handing Letterman a pair of her underwear and asking him to smell it. The releases of her sexually explicit films, albums and book, and the aggressive appearance on Letterman all made critics question her as a sexual renegade. She faced strong negative publicity from critics and fans, who commented that "she had gone too far" and that her career was over.

Hadn't we already learned that there was no way you could label this icon? She toned down her image for the next set of records, "Bedtime Stories" and "Something to Remember", and went all kinds of proper on the world starring in the lead role in the film "Evita" in which she won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy and an Academy Award for Best Original Song for "You Must Love Me" off the films soundtrack. Just when the world had pegged her as over, she came back with a vengeance.

In 1997, Madonna was introduced to Eastern mysticism and Kabbalah by her friend Sandra Bernhard. This introduction would shape the rest of her musical career up until today. "Ray of Light" was her seventh studio album and next reinvention.  "This record, more than any other records, covers all the areas of life. I had recently joined Kabbalah and I had left off partying—but I had just had a baby, so my mood was complete, and I was incredibly thoughtful, retrospective and intrigued by the mystical aspects of life."

"Ray of Light" brought Madonna four Grammy Awards and the album is listed as one of Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Albums of All Time". The album was followed by the single "Beautiful Stranger" off the "Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me" soundtrack and her next album "Music" which sold four million copies in the first ten days. "I love to work with the weirdos that no one knows about—the people who have raw talent and who are making music unlike anyone else out there. 'Music' is the future of sound."

"Music" was followed by the "Drowned World Tour", another greatest hits album "GHV2", the film "Swept Away", a cameo in the next installment of James Bond films with the single "Die Another Day" off the soundtrack and finding a place on her next album "American Life", followed by the "Re-Invention Tour" and accompanying film documentary "I'm Going To Tell You A Secret". Through all of this, and work to follow, if you look closely enough you can find influences of Kabbalah. Positive influences this time around, rather than the rebellious Catholic references of her past.

And then another album that would change my life, "Confessions On A Dance Floor". Musically the album is structured like a club set composed by a DJ. The songs on the album start out light and happy, and as it progresses becomes intense, with the lyrics dealing more about personal feelings, hence "confessions". It is hailed as a "return to form for the Queen of Pop". Perhaps it was these confessions that led her to become more involved with world issues and prompted her involvement "Raising Malawi" and the documentary "I Am Because We Are" which focused on the problems faced by Malawians. It was also announced at this time that Madonna had sold over 200 million copies of her albums worldwide. To the naked eye, Madonna was finally using her powers for good rather than controversy but, prior to this she was always outspoken of the AIDS epidemic in the gay community.

Which brings us to the Madonna of today. In 2008, she released her eleventh studio album "Hard Candy" which featured collaborations with artists like Timbaland, Justin Timberlake, and Pharrell Williams and was followed by the "Sticky & Sweet Tour". The tour grossed over $280 million, and became the highest-grossing tour by a solo artist. All of this leading to the release of her third greatest hits album "Celebration".

All of the awards and acclaim aside, throughout her career Madonna has repeatedly reinvented herself through a series of visual and musical persona's, earning her the nickname "Queen of Reinvention". In doing so, "she exploited her sexuality to fashion herself into a cultural and commercial icon who, for more than a decade, was unchallenged as the reigning Queen of Pop music". She has influenced numerous music artists throughout her career. Mary Cross, in her book "Madonna: A Biography", wrote, "her influence on pop music is undeniable and far-reaching. New pop icons from Nelly Furtado and Shakira to Gwen Stefani and Christina Aguilera (not to mention Britney Spears) owe Madonna, a debt of thanks for the template she forged, combining provocative sexiness and female power in her image, music, and lyrics."

I love Madonna not for these accomplishments, but as I said in the beginning, for her ability to tackle the world with absolutely no regrets, which is also the final statement in her video "Human Nature". The video for "Human Nature" could quite possibly sum up Madonna. Beautiful, comedic, tough, unapologetic, sexy, rebellious, stylish, and musically gifted. Her career is entirely based on confidence and her desire to "become something". It's an ambition to leave a mark on the world with a hunger to never stop. Madonna : The Lust Icon.