Madonna Takes A Bigger Risk on Dredging Up the Sex Book in the Present

While it’s nice to see #JusticeForErotica happening after thirty years, Madonna’s decision to dredge up her accompanying project of the day, Sex, proves, perhaps more than anything else, that she might truly believe herself immune to cancel culture. Presumably because of the “carte blanche” that is imagined to come with being amid the last of the living legends. But as a film like Tár recently proved, it doesn’t matter who you are or what you’ve contributed to society—there’s always an occasion to be cancelled.

As something of the “companion” to the Erotica album, Sex was originally published in October of 1992 by Madonna’s then-new company, Maverick, in collaboration with Warner Bros. and Callaway. And the images and excerpts pulled from it caused even more of a stir than Madonna getting her drag on in the “Erotica” video as a riding crop-toting dominatrix named Dita (an alter ego inspired by actress Dita Parlo). Although her publisher was concerned about unleashing the content—afraid that they had possibly given Madonna too much “free rein” (no riding crop pun intended)—the coffee table book was an immediate success.

In mere days, it sold over a million copies worldwide (no small feat considering its cumbersome design) and topped The New York Times Best Seller list for three weeks. It all seemed to prove what Madonna wanted to hold up as a funhouse mirror to conservative America (itself the biggest “undercover” batch of pervs) worked like a charm. She would go on to assert in a 1998 episode of Behind the Music (complete with a talking head segment from Harvey Weinstein), “I was really being explicit about my own sexual fantasies, turning my nose up at the whole idea that, you know, women aren’t allowed to be sexual and erotic and provocative and intelligent and thoughtful at the same time.” Yet, that was a bit of a “smokescreen” for a more authentic underlying motive. As for the “fantasies,” Madonna has appeared to execute one of them throughout most of her real life—this being a strong penchant for younger, non-white men. Which she’s displayed with every boy toy since her divorce from Guy Ritchie, from Jesus Luz to Brahim Zaibat to Timor Steffens to Ahlamalik Williams.

Within the pages of the Sex book itself, this is where she continues to take the greatest risk in the present in terms of having her words used against her in a more crescendoing way than before. Specifically, such assertions as, “One of the best experiences I ever had was with a teenage boy… He was Puerto Rican.” The specification of his ethnicity adding to the notion that this isn’t really “just” a fantasy. For Madonna was known for prowling the Lower East Side in the 80s to pick up underage Puerto Rican boys with her then go-to cohort, Erica Bell.

In 1998, when Madonna was still in the process of perfecting her “softer” side in the wake of all that bond-age rage, she positioned the Sex book in the same Behind the Music interview as being less a political statement and more an act of rebellion, noting, “It was an act of rage on my part. In the beginning, everyone agreed that I was sexy, but no one agreed that I had any talent. And that really irritated me. And the Sex book was sort of the pinnacle of me challenging people and saying, ‘You know what? I’m gonna be sexually provocative and I’m gonna be ironic and I’m gonna prove that I can get everybody’s attention and that everybody’s gonna be interested in it and still be freaked out by it.’” Yet, hadn’t she already done that many times over by 1992? From “Like A Virgin” to “Like A Prayer” to “Justify My Love,” her visuals had consistently been sexually provocative while incorporating an ironic tone. Which is why the excuse she gives for doing it doesn’t quite track. Complete with her assessment, “And it was sort of like my way of saying, ‘See? The world is hypocritical.” But who among any of us is truly immune to a little hypocrisy? Which Madonna engaged in a lot during the early 90s when she grafted much of her work from other, far less famous people (usually BIPOC and/or queer).

Enter another reason the book is a sore/risky subject to bring into the light again so flagrantly: the salt in wound it might add to someone like Judith Reagan. An editor at Simon & Schuster in 1991, it was Reagan who approached Madonna with the idea for the book. Madonna likely thought what she had in mind was too “staid” and decided to take the bare bones of the project and go to another publisher: Callaway. The entity that would also go on to publish Madonna during her children’s book phase in the 00s. Reagan would later state in one of the few comprehensive biographies of Madonna (written by J. Randy Taraborrelli), “She had obviously taken my concept, my photos and ideas and used it as a proposal to secure a deal with another publisher. I never heard from her, not a word of gratitude, or an apology, or anything. Frankly, I thought it was in poor taste.” But, as is no secret by now, Madonna has never given much of a fuck about “good” taste when it comes to advancing her career.

Indeed, by essentially admitting, beneath all the posturing about making a political statement, that she wanted the attention, Madonna played right into her long-standing psychological analysis. The one that dictates when a child loses a parent too early, they’re destined to spend the rest of their lives testing boundaries, seeking approval and wanting to be lavished with an amount of adoration that only fame can vaguely fulfill. You know, interminable void-wise.  

With the reissuing of Sex in conjunction with Yves Saint Laurent curating an exhibit for it at Art Basel, Madonna, once again, appears to be courting the attention she can’t resist, even at such a dangerous time in the history of U.S. witch-hunting. To be sure, the book does continue to push the envelope, even to this day. Unfortunately, its “reboot” comes at a time when the Gatekeepers That Be would prefer that envelope to remain firm in its place—ironically, even more so than in 1992, at a theoretical height of oppression. However, with only eight hundred copies reprinted at a price of almost three thousand dollars, maybe Madonna is actually playing it safe. Re-releasing Body of Evidence, on the other hand… that would be bold.