ABSTRACT
Madonna's postmodern reinventions are of particular concern for some feminists who view her multiple personae as a threat to women's socialization, which entails the necessary integration of female identity. This chapter discusses the Madonna's figuration against the backdrop of Baudrillardian theory, where simulation is the pivotal term for a postmodern feminism that addresses differences between and among women. Madonna, a postmodern "product," uses simulation strategically in ways that challenge the stable notion of gender as the edifice of sexual difference. The chapter analyzes Madonna's deconstruction of gender boundaries in the music video Express Yourself to illustrate the fragmentation of gender, which is then refashioned through the flux of identities, more conducive to readings of otherness. Madonna and the complexly figured (wo)man on the bed dislocate and reallocate erotic aims in a polymorphic distribution. As their bodies entwine in a convergence of rhyming black lace, the camera moves horizontally up their bodies toward the locus of categorical rifting, the mouth.
