Simply unique: Madonna is about to celebrate her 65th birthday, and she surely will do it unforgettable due to The Celebration Tour, which of course, will have a spot at the Rogers Arena in Vancouver, B.C., for Jul 15, 2023.
Undoubtedly, it is the perfect time to remember that Madonna is an irreplaceable icon in music history. Still, her influence went beyond the stage to become a new pillar of pop feminism.
Without many of her feats, performances, and "jokes," numerous things that seem mundane today might have taken longer to catch on.
That is why Eduardo Viñuela — a musicology instructor from the University of Oviedo— collected the musical and social influence of Madonna in his book Bitch, she's Madonna.
In addition to recalling the singer's most significant musical successes in this written piece, several moments are quoted in which she was a pioneer, an early influencer, and the leading voice for a change with a feminine focus.
Here are 4 of her most prominent achievements:
# 1 She was a kind of "Phoenix Bird" for minorities
The birth of the video clip phenomenon and MTV coincided. These media offered a new way to reach a mass audience and show them compelling visual essences.
Madonna knew how to take advantage of this resource like very few: although she strove to give an image considered aesthetic and nostalgic like "Marilyn Monroe," she was the first to sexualize religion, to use artistic elements of African descent, Latinos, and the LGBT community.
All of the above gives a unique touch to her performances in these new audiovisuals.
# 2 She challenged the stereotype of women in advertising
Between the 1950s and 1970s, women in advertising were portrayed as smiling robots, submissive, shaved, and doing housework.
Madonna, since she was a teenager, questioned these representations, and it was common to see her without makeup and/or without waxing.
It was not until the 1980s that advertising began to portray women as being independent of the family and freed from the wishes of their husbands.
In large part, according to Viñuela, it is due to Madonna's pop influence that caused a stir worldwide. Nowadays, many of the singer's beauty habits are questioned, but these tendencies that were previously condemned without reason begin to inspire more open criteria.
# 3 She enjoyed her sexuality without taboos
In her youth, when Madonna moved to New York, she confessed to having had several partners and to having explored her bisexuality without holding back. At a time when women were educated to remain virgins until marriage, this was taken as a challenge to "norms."
However, today it is prevalent for sexuality to be enjoyed without stigmas (as long as all parties involved are adults who have been giving their consent, of course.)
In addition, Madonna is a great defender and precursor of anti-harassment movements such as #MeToo.
She always defends free and consensual sexuality. In various interviews regarding her multiple partners, Madonna has only said that she regrets deeply not taking some sexual health precautions and that she was fortunate not to contract any diseases.
# 4 She beat the male industry at "its own game"
Even with Madonna's rise in pop music, the industry was still dominated by the male gender.
When the video clip Like a Prayer was released, and the Catholic Church considered it blasphemous, Pepsi broke the advertising contract it had with Madonna and withdrew the television spot. Of course, the company sued the singer for compensation, but the courts ruled in her favor.
This would later be recorded as an unprecedented event in which freedom of artistic expression was rarely spared and in which a woman was the central involved figure.
In the end, it does not matter what you personally think about Madonna: she will go down in history as the "Queen of Pop," as a pioneer of fashion, and as a unique feminist role model. As if that were not enough, she still has several altruistic causes on her agenda!
Have you noticed the influence of this talented artist in our modern society?
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