essay comments by prof - Throughout the 20th century there have been few women who have become as iconic as Madonna*always a strong voice to open with

Throughout the 20th century there have been few women who have become as iconic as Madonna. ***always a strong voice to open with the thesis...and this is especially provocative because many would disagree with you*** Beginning her music career in 1980, Madonna has evolved over the years, and still, two decades later, she continues to be a household name. She has become such a pop cultural icon that “few self-respecting cultural critics would go a whole book without addressing Madonna” (Mezey, 1994, p. 1850). Each decade she has reinvented herself to move forward with the changing time. It is through her music, her style, and her personal identity that has made Madonna the most influential woman in American pop culture. In December 1986, Madonna graced the cover of Life Magazine, with the title, “That Fabulous Couple Madonna and the Camera.” With short curly bleached blonde hair, bright red lipstick, and a strapless, revealing bustier, she poses alone on the cover with no backdrop and captures the audience’s attention with not only her beauty, but more importantly, her confidence, standing there, as if to say, “Here I am.” ***how can you make this intro shorter? what's unnecessary here?*** Madonna’s first CD, a self titled collection of ten songs was released in 1983 with her first single “Everybody” topping out the Billboard disco chart at number three. (UltraStar Entertainment LLC, 2008). Madonna’s “early music and songs are rather conventional popular dance music aimed at a teenage market” (Peach, 1998, p. 191), while much of her music was bubble-gum she soon began to touch on much deeper issues. In her music video for “Borderline,” Madonna “offers herself to males of various colors” and by doing this “broke down racial barriers to sexuality” (Peach, 1998, p. 193), an issue that not much attention had been paid to before. Over the years “her music shifted from disco and bubble-gum rock to personal statement and melodic torch singing, then, with the aid of her music videos, to pop modernism” (Peach, 1998, p. 191). Through both her music and her music videos Madonna touches on themes such as gender, sexuality, identity, and race. She helped to “reveal sexuality to be a construct, fabricated in part by the images and codes of popular culture, rather than a ‘natural’ phenomenon” (Peach, 1998, p. 194), meaning that it is the people within a culture who influence others and create what we know as popular culture. By touching on issues that had previously been taboo Madonna opened doors to subjects’ women singers would never have dared touch. ***so maybe the question you should respond to is, would these changes have happened if Madonna had never appeared?*** In recent years, her influence can be seen in current female pop artists. Most female pop artist