Like A Virgin - Legacy

Legacy

After the release of Like a Virgin, Stephen Holden from The New York Times commented: "No phenomenon illustrates more pointedly how pop music history seems to run in cycles than the overnight success of the 24-year-old pop siren known as Madonna. The month before Christmas, Madonna's second album, Like a Virgin sold more than two million copies. Teen-agers were lining up in stores to purchase the album the way their parents had lined up to buy The Beatles records in the late 60's." Madonna proved she was not a one-hit wonder with the release of the album which sold 12 million copies worldwide at the time of its release. Taraborrelli felt that "Like a Virgin is really a portrait of Madonna's uncanny pop instincts empowered by her impatient zeal for creative growth and her innate knack for crafting a good record." He added that the success of the album made it clear what was Madonna's real persona. "She was a street-smart dance queen with the sexy allure of Marilyn Monroe, the coy iciness of Marlene Dietrich and the cutting and protective glibiness of a modern Mae West". Although the album received mixed reviews, Taraborrelli believed that the "mere fact that at the time of its release so many couldn't resist commenting on the record was a testament to the continuous, growing fascination with Madonna.... Every important artist has at least one album in his or her career whose critical and commercial success becomes the artist's magic moment; for Madonna, Like a Virgin was just such a defining moment" Chris Smith, author of 101 Albums That Changed Popular Music believed that it was with Like a Virgin that Madonna was able to steal the spotlight towards herself. She asserted her sexuality as only male rock stars had done before, moving well beyond the limited confines of being a pop artist, to becoming a focal point for nationwide discussions of power relationships in the areas of sex, race, gender, religion, and other divisive social topics. Her songs became a lightning rod for both criticism by conservatives and imitation by the younger female population.

"Like a Virgin" was her first song to attract the attention of organizations who complained that the video and the song promoted sex without marriage and undermined family values, offering an unsavory image of Madonna as a whore. Outraged moralists condemned her as a sex kitten and sought to ban it. Conservatives were angered that Madonna dared to portray the virginal wedding attire in a sexual context. While one section of the population were outraged at the scandal, other were taking joy at the very notion of a virginal Madonna, who retorted by saying,

I was surprised by how people reacted to "Like a Virgin" because when I did that song, to me, I was singing about how something made me feel a certain way—brand-new and fresh—and everyone interpreted it as I don't want to be a virgin anymore. Fuck my brains out! That's not what I sang at all. "Like a Virgin" was always absolutely ambiguous.

The song's influence was most profound on the younger generation. Madonna's public persona of an indomitable, sexually unashamed, supremely confident woman struck a chord with them. Biographer Andrew Morton noted that most of Madonna's admirers were females, who were born-and-brought-up with an image of old-fashioned stereotypes of women as virginal brides, or as whores, or with feminist values that rejected the use of a woman's looks for her self-advancement. Author William McKeen of Rock and roll is here to stay: an anthology commented that with the song, Madonna intermixed such middle-class ideas of femininity with examples of what femininity meant to her, which was having equal opportunity. In addition, at a time when eighties fashions were promoting flat-chested, stick-thin women as ideals of beauty, the more curvaceous Madonna made average girls feel that it was fine to be in the shape they were. A new word called 'Madonna wannabe' was introduced to describe the thousands of girls who tried to emulate Madonna's style. At one point, Macy's allotted an entire floor area for the sale of clothes styled according to Madonna's fashion. University professors, gender-studies experts and feminists earnestly started discussing her role as a post-modernist style and cultural icon. According to author Debbi Voller, "Like a Virgin" gave rise to the icon Madonna.

Madonna has stated that the song she most regrets recording is "Material Girl" and if she had known that the label would be attached to her for decades, she would probably never have done so. After making the video, Madonna said she never wanted to be compared to Monroe, despite posing like her and recreating many of Monroe's signature poses for various photos shoots, most notably in a 1991 issue of Vanity Fair. Reflecting on the song, Madonna told Taraborrelli:

"I can't completely disdain the song and the video, because they certainly were important to my career. But talk about the media hanging on a phrase and misinterpreting the damn thing as well. I didn't write that song, you know, and the video was about how the girl rejected diamonds and money. But God forbid irony should be understood. So when I'm ninety, I'll still be the Material Girl. I guess it's not so bad. Lana Turner was the Sweater Girl until the day she died."

Guilbert commented that "material girl" designated a certain type of liberated women, thus deviating from its original coinage which meant a girl who is tangible and accessible. Author Nicholas Cook said that the meaning and impact of "material girl" was no more circumscribed by the video, rather by its song. Its influence was seen later among such diverse groups such as female versus male, gay versus straight, and academic versus teenage. In 1993, a conference was held at the University of California at Santa Barbara, with the subject as Madonna: Feminist Icon or Material Girl? The conference pondered on the duality of Madonna as both of them and deduced that the question of Madonna's feminism is not easy to decide. Some of the feminists left the conference, citing that they had not been able to make up their minds. "Dress You Up" was also the subject of much media attention, when it was included on the Parents Music Resource Center's (PMRC) "Filthy Fifteen" list, for the perceived sexual content of its lyrics. The Center's founder Tipper Gore had heard her daughter listening to the song, and considered the line "Gonna dress you up in my love" as exemplifying 'vulgar music'. The PMRC called upon the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to give parents a consumer-friendly means of identifying rock records unsuitable for minors—a rating system based on lyrical content. "Dress You Up" received a rating of 'S', for "sex and obscenity", from the RIAA. In June 4, 1985, "Weird Al" Yankovic released a parody called Like a Surgeon.