Madonna long ago knew that she would not have the same kind of worshipful fame as Marilyn Monroe. Or any other “tragic” figure typically martyred by the gays before everyone else decides to jump on the bandwagon of adhering to that form of “sainthood.” That said, no one has ever really “felt sorry” for M. Certainly not the way they do someone like Britney Spears, or now, another icon of the 00s, Lindsay Lohan. And what do these two women have in common? Substance abuse issues, lack of control–reactionary tendencies of a self-destructive nature. Madonna, in contrast to the majority of iconic figures, has never had addiction issues (unless being addicted to perfectionism counts), nor has she ever let herself get out of control as a result of media harassment.
It’s extremely important to remember that Madonna genuinely invented what pop stardom is today. Before her, the only level of obsession previously known at such a manic (and merchandisable) level was with The Beatles in the 1960s. Before them, Elvis was the blueprint in the 1950s, making women and closeted “queers” swoon with just one sway of his hips. Yet because both parties were men, they were never hounded or torn down by the press (save for that little snafu where John Lennon’s comment about The Beatles being “bigger than Jesus” set the nation quite literally on fire). And they existed at a time when it was still considered the job of print and TV to uphold a certain “squeaky clean” image of the stars that audiences idolized. When Madonna rose to prominence, all that was over. Plus, she was the most hated kind of woman: one with agency and no shame about being a sexual creature.
And so, she was inevitably a target of persecution and torment. Of the variety that began quite early on in her career (so no, she had nary a “grace period” of being on any pedestal), starting from the moment she writhed around on the floor of the VMAs stage with her knickers exposed and quickly followed up the infamy in 1985 when photos of her nude modeling days were sold to Playboy and Penthouse.
The same year, another “skeleton in her closet,” billed as a salacious porno-esque movie, was released by the film’s director. Called A Certain Sacrfice, the sixty-minute outing offers Madonna as a dominatrix type “caught in a vacuum of dominance and submission” with her three “love slaves” (a smorgasbord of male, female and transgender paramours). Oh, and there’s a rape, too. With these three “scandal pieces” joining to create the perfect puzzle of controversy, Madonna found herself in the eye of a media storm frenzy. One that reached such a fever pitch by July 13, 1985, when she appeared at the Philadelphia edition of Live Aid and was all too happy to show them just how “hot” she could be by not “takin’ shit off today”–a reference to her clothing layers and long overcoat as she sang “Holiday,’ “Into the Groove,” “Love Makes the World Go Round” and a cover of The Beatles’ “Revolution” with Thompson Twins (with M mostly there to dance around with her tambourine). Fittingly, one of the MTV VJs commented of the look while she was backstage, “Madonna looks like she’s wearing a Sgt. Pepper-esque jacket today.”
Bette Midler soon after added to the commentary about Madonna by stepping out onto the stage and saying, “I have no idea why I was asked to introduce this next act. Because you all know that I am the soul of good taste and decorum. However, we are thrilled to be able to introduce to you today a woman whose name has been on everyone’s lips for the last six months. A woman who pulled herself up by her bra straps and who has been known to let them down occasionally.” Initial sarcastic tinge aside, this is a prime example of women buying into misogyny themselves. Of joining in with the patriarchy’s narrative about how easy it is to tear “promiscuous” women down. Not only how easy, but how “necessary” it is to do so in order to turn them into cautionary tales.
While TMZ might not have come around until twenty years later, Madonna was nonetheless stalked by the paparazzi as though the sleazoid internet gossip rag had already been born. After the media calmed down about the nude photos when Madonna decided to shrug them off (famously immortalized on the NY Post cover with the headline: “Madonna On Nude Pix: So What!”), they found a new cause célèbre in her August 16th wedding (the same day as her twenty-seventh birthday) to Sean Penn. A relationship that garnered scrutiny not only for the two major stars involved, but because they had only just met in February of the same year. The recipe for disaster was made all the more volatile by the fact that Madonna loved the spotlight, while Sean abhorred it. Some even postulated that Madonna was the one to leak the private location of the nuptials in Malibu to the press so that they would show up. Whoever did leak it (or didn’t), show up they did. In the bushes and in overhead choppers that gave Sean the opportunity to write FUCK OFF in giant letters in the sand of the beach. This is why Penn famously quipped to the wedding guests, “Welcome to the remaking of Apocalypse Now.”
These were words that would end up echoing the entire tone of the marriage (and the two were notoriously referred to as the Poison Penns), as Sean “expressed himself” by beating the shit out of any paparazzo who got too close, in turn putting Madonna in the flashbulb light in a manner she loathed: not being able to control the narrative. Still, the two were a pair of star-crossed lovers, even through all the fights. Andy Warhol, a guest, would corroborate on both the Romeo + Juliet and Apocalypse Now fronts, “Somebody had tipped the reporters off about where the wedding was and about ten helicopters were hovering; it was like Apocalypse Now. And I looked really close at Madonna and she is beautiful. And she and Sean are just so in love.” Love wasn’t enough, however, least of all amid such intense circumstances, and at a time when Penn was embracing his whole “too macho to be tolerant” shtick (reportedly demanding that Madonna get an AIDS test, a testament to both his homophobic and slut-shaming nature–in short, everything that Madonna stood and stands against).
That summer at Live Aid, Madonna kept her clothes on in the burning heat. “You might hold it against me ten years from now,” she told the audience when they cheered her on to take her coat off. She had no idea how right she would be in that regard, at least in terms of the media continuing to constantly find things to hold against her. And though some would argue that what makes Madonna different from other women who have been beaten up by the press was that she courted controversy deliberately, there have been far more occasions when she did not. For a large bulk of her work was designed solely to address how hypocritical society is with the things it finds “taboo.”
Including, of course, lesbianic adultery. For it was her relationship with Sandra Bernhard more than JFK Jr. while married to Sean that got eyebrows raising. After meeting her backstage at one of Bernhard’s comedy shows in 1988, the duo quickly became inseparable to a level that noticeably vexed Sean. Particularly when suggestions were made that the relationship was less than platonic. However, Madonna would, in a twist of historic irony, allegedly meet JFK Jr. three years earlier backstage at one of her Virgin Tour shows at Madison Square Garden (where Miss Monroe famously sang “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” in a gown that threatened to cause heart attacks). They reconnected again in 1987. And maybe Madonna would have found herself in the role Marilyn never could–Mrs. Kennedy–had it not been for that damned Jackie yet again. Because John Jr. was a Mama’s boy through and through, Jackie’s disdain for someone as “tacky” and Marilyn-esque as Madonna was never going to allow such a tawdry affair to flourish into matrimony.
In 1991, Madonna’s now ex-husband, Sean, would run into JFK Jr. at an event honoring Robert De Niro. He went up to Sean to introduce himself, whereupon the former Mr. Madonna replied, “I know who you are. You owe me an apology.” It was also in 1991 that Madonna was honored by AmFAR with an Award of Courage for her contributions to AIDS research and awareness. At this time, the press was torturing her with reports in magazines and newspapers that she was HIV-positive–yet more shade directed at her “whorish” lifestyle. Taking the stage to accept the award, Madonna stated, “When the rumors surfaced that I was HIV-positive, I thought, well, someone’s really bored today, let’s make up a real juicy story. I tried to ignore it but it wouldn’t go away. Instead of pointing the finger at people and having witch hunts and ostracizing each other for lifestyles and sexual preferences, we should all be uniting to fight this disease, but we’re not. Because we’re afraid. We’re scared out of our skins to face the truth that AIDS is not a gay disease, it’s a human disease. Now I’m not HIV-positive, but what if I were? I would be more afraid of how society would treat me for having the disease than the actual disease itself. If this is what I have to deal with for my involvement in fighting this epidemic, then so be it.”
Again, Madonna brought her strength and fortitude (her mother, Madonna Fortin, was part of a family that often bandied the play on their surname of having “Fortintude”) to the controversy. She has served as a benchmark time and time again for dealing with media bullying. Yet no one has ever retrospectively felt obliged to apologize to her–always insisting she “wanted” it all. That she courted the attention. So why should she be treated with reverence? This was a question that seemed to be most particularly posed at the apex of her exposure, therefore tarring and feathering. It began in 1990, with her first banned MTV video, “Justify My Love,” which warranted her “explaining” her artistic choice on an interview with Nightline. The same year, the Blond Ambition Tour attracted outrage in practically every city, notably “the fascist state of Toronto” and Rome. Pantomimed masturbation and other sexualized Catholic imagery certainly didn’t sit well with the Vatican, and Madonna was threatened (not for the last time) with excommunication. This precedent led in effortlessly to 1992: when the trifecta of the Sex book, Erotica and Body of Evidence all came out in succession. Naturally, it was a media field day.
By 1993, the additions of The Girlie Show and Dangerous Game to her oeuvre only fanned the fires of outrage that led people to keep declaring that she was “over.” Yet Madonna, around this time, stated she only felt overexposed when at the gynecologist’s. Once more, she knew how to use her sardonic sense of humor to deflect. But she would later admit that during this period, she felt “like the most hated person on the planet,” recalling, “I made my Erotica album and my Sex book was released. I remember being the headline of every newspaper and magazine. Everything I read about myself was damning. I was called a whore and a witch. One headline compared me to Satan. I said, ‘Wait a minute, isn’t Prince running around with fishnets and high heels and lipstick with his butt hanging out?’ Yes, he was. But he was a man.”
Madonna, indeed, has often been psychologized as having major penis envy, and yet perhaps this speaks to something else she said about the misogynistic brainwashing every woman has been indoctrinated with since the dawn of time: “Women have been so oppressed for so long they believe what men have to say about them. They believe they have to back a man to get the job done. And there are some very good men worth backing, but not because they’re men–because they’re worthy. As women, we have to start appreciating our own worth and each other’s worth. Seek out strong women to befriend, to align yourself with, to learn from, to collaborate with, to be inspired by, to support, and enlightened by.” Maybe it’s only now, apparently with an overblown (in terms of accolades) special called Framing Britney Spears that women are starting to open their eyes and call out “vintage” clips from the recent past of women being treated like shit as usual. But it was taken as par for the course until now. And mainly because Madonna made it look so easy for so long, shrugging off the chauvinistic reactions to everything she did.
Yet, clearly, she was at least somewhat affected, for her public appearances and TV interviews slowed down post-Erotica until the illustrious 1994 “fuck”-fest on David Letterman (the very man coming under fire at present for his 2013 interview with Lindsay Lohan). Already establishing her rebellious mood from the outset, Madonna sat down in the chair and said, “I’m only here ‘cause there isn’t a Knicks game, don’t get excited.” Letterman lamely suggests, “Why don’t you go kiss the guy in the audience?” Madonna counters, “Why are you so obsessed with my sex life?”
In this way, Madonna manages to be the one to make Letterman then feel sexually uncomfortable by herself being so open as she says, “I gave him my underpants and he won’t smell them.”
“What a lovely young woman,” Letterman sarcastically mocks because Madonna keeps rallying sexual innuendos. Where is the retroactive “contempt” for his treatment of her there? For positioning her as some failed experiment of a “lady” who didn’t pass “finishing school” with flying colors. Or is it just because Madonna actually fights for herself that people don’t feel obliged to defend her in any way?–hitting back, “All you do is talk about my sex life on your show, so now you don’t wanna talk about my sex life when I’m on your show.”
Cutting to a commercial, we return to Madonna smoking the cigar Dave just re-lit for her with his own boca. Madonna faux waxes, “This is the closest I’m ever gonna get to kissing you.” Dave belittles, “We can certainly change that… if I don’t have to wait in line.” This was in keeping with his sexist introduction that no man would have ever received: “Our first guest tonight is one of the biggest stars in the world, and in the past ten years she has sold over eighty million albums, starred in countless films and slept with some of the biggest names in the entertainment industry.”
Madonna then proceeded to unravel the entire idea of a “polite” interview, as she had already done in her first appearance on the show in ‘88 with Sandra Bernhard. In the wake of the swearing barrage (they counted “fuck” fourteen times), Madonna told USA Today, “…Letterman knew I was going to do it. I talked to the producers of the show. Everybody was like, this will be really funny if you say ‘fuck’ a lot; they’ll just keep bleeping you. Well, I came out and started doing it, and David freaked out. The way he introduced me was derogatory, so my whole thing was, okay, if that’s how you want to play it, you cannot beat me at this game.”
And no one ever really has beaten her at the game of trying to make her feel ashamed for anything she’s done. This, undoubtedly, is why so few seem to think she is a “victim” in the long-standing misogynistic media juggernaut. From the beginning, she had decided she would always use publicity to her advantage. Though, in recent years, many have found she’s been incapable of doing so–that social media has unmasked some sort of unskilled wizard behind the curtain. Or maybe she’s just fresh out of fucks forever. As she clearly was on that March 31st in 1994 with Letterman.
As the years went on, Madonna’s purported “irrelevance” didn’t keep her from getting reamed by the media. Most especially when it came to mocking her for her age at every turn. An especially notable instance came when she performed “Living For Love” at the 2015 BRIT Awards. A perilous wardrobe malfunction occurred, and when her cape was supposed to be pulled off by one of her dancers seamlessly, it instead pulled her down with it, in a topple that was endlessly ridiculed. Memes galore included Madonna being Photoshopped onto an ad for a stairlift–more vitriol directed at her “elderliness.”
It was no wonder that when Billboard offered her the Woman of the Year title in 2016, she delivered the following speech: “I stand before you as a doormat. Oh, I mean, as a female entertainer. Thank you for acknowledging my ability to continue my career for thirty-four years in the face of blatant sexism and misogyny and constant bullying and relentless abuse… If you’re a girl, you have to play the game. You’re allowed to be pretty and cute and sexy. But don’t act too smart. Don’t have an opinion that’s out of line with the status quo. You are allowed to be objectified by men and dress like a slut, but don’t own your sluttiness. And do not, I repeat do not, share your own sexual fantasies with the world. Be what men want you to be, but more importantly, be what women feel comfortable with you being around other men. And finally, do not age. Because to age is a sin. You will be criticized and vilified and definitely not played on the radio.”
Everything she said is true, and remains largely that way. But, of late, there is a glimmer of hope for less acceptance of male behavior once deemed a garden variety aspect of being a woman in the entertainment industry. Alas, there seems to be no glimmer when it comes to people ever acknowledging the abuse Madonna endured for far longer and well before any other modern iteration of the pop star. She took the lashings so others of the 00s and beyond could suddenly get apologies and expressions of regret for behavior past, while she herself is still met with the same acrid appraisals.
