ABSTRACT
Madonna’s forays into issues of gender, sexuality, and identity would attract the interest of many other academics throughout the early 1990s, even leading to an Inside Edition expose on “Madonna scholars.”American feminism has a man problem. The beaming Betty Crockers, hangdog dowdies and parochial prudes who call themselves feminists want men to be like women. They fear and despise the masculine. The academic feminists think their nerdy bookworm husbands are the ideal model of human manhood. Madonna has a far profounder vision of sex than do the feminists. She sees both the animality and the artifice. On “Nightline,” Madonna bizarrely called the video a “celebration of sex.” She imagined happy educational scenes where curious children would ask their parents about the video. Madonna has taught young women to be fully female and sexual while still exercising total control over their lives. She shows girls how to be attractive, sensual, energetic, ambitious, aggressive and funny—all at the same time.
