We don’t give enough credit to the women in music who, in retrospect, have shaped how women interact in the world today, and who originated the female-pop-star format. And by “women,” we mean the woman, the queen, Madonna. With such a name, it seems as though it was her birthright to make her mark. And yes, ironically, in a biblical sense, she was the mother of pop, a spawn of sexual freedom and power. In the memoir by Norris W. Burroughs, My Madonna, her past lover chronicles her early years as an ex-dancer in the CBGB-era of New York and who watched her evolution from punk-rock singer to a disco-singing and -dancing pop princess. It was her own vision to unite dance with song in her performances. Madonna is solely responsible for the now-manufactured pop-star image that we see today. The sexualized pop-star image of Brit Brit, RiRi, Lady Gaga, or any women who are able to publicly celebrate their sexuality through their creativity, wouldn’t be possible without Madonna’s personal exploration that pushed female sexuality out of the submissive shadows and into the cultural norm. So…is she the mother of the Boss Bitch mentality that’s trending today? In her movie Truth or Dare, from 1991, she talks about how she feels a need to mother all her dancers on her Blonde Ambition World Tour. Interestingly, her own mother died when she was 5 years old…these are the sort of beginnings that religious allusions are made of.
