Madonna: A Queer Obsession

Since there has been such a thing as a Gay Community, there have been the gay “Divas” — women singers who have a left an indelible mark on the minds and hearts of queers everywhere. There probably isn’t a single female vocalist of the last century who doesn’t have a tremendous gay following, regardless of talent or lack of it (I couldn’t hit a single gay male’s Myspace profile a couple of years ago without hearing “Its Britney Bitch” played back for me). But while there are a ton of women performers who have gay followings, no one has courted her gay audience more than Madonna. And no homo has let himself be led by her like a willing lapdog for over 25 years more than me. This is the story of my Madonna obsession, and if you were a little queer boy growing up in the 80’s, there is a good chance this was your story too.

In 1984, I was ten years old. My taste in pop music was pretty much whatever MTV told me to like at the time; Duran Duran, The Eurythmics, Culture Club, Prince, you name it. (I am far, far less embarrassed by anything I loved in my preteen years than some things I liked as a teenager in the 90’s, I can admit to that much.) It was in this environment, on September 14th 1984, that I was introduced to Madonna, and was left forever changed. Ok, I kinda already knew who Madonna was before that date I’ll admit; in ’84 you couldn’t escape the songs Borderline, Holiday and especially Lucky Star, if you tried, due in no small part to the video of M. prancing around sluttily, belly button exposed, on constant rotation on MTV. But it wasn’t till September 14th of that year that everything changed. Madonna would make her live debut at the very first MTV Video Music Awards, and I would be there to see it. And by “there” I mean watching it on television like most people.

When I was a kid, we had our television in the informal dining room (classy, right?) and I watched TV there every night while eating dinner, usually with my mother or other family members running about busily around me. Of course, I wanted to know what all the kids at school were going to be talking about the next day, so I simply HAD to watch the MTV Awards. The opening act was Madonna’s live debut, as well as the debut of her new single Like A Virgin. M, dressed in a sluttier variation of a wedding dress atop a giant wedding cake, sings Like A Virgin and ends up writhing on the floor like a bitch in heat, all the while wearing rosary beads around her neck. Now, my family was never crazy religious, but I had gone to Catholic school long enough to know what was totally blasphemous. As this was taking place, my Cuban Catholic mother stopped and with this look of disgust on her face and said (in Spanish of course) “She…She looks like a streetwalker!” Of course I ask “what’s a streetwalker?” to which my mother, realizing she had backed herself into a corner where she would have to explain the sex trade to her ten year old child , simply said “A dirty, bad woman.” For the next five minutes or so, this mini rant continued “Why are you watching this? This is horrible! Is this what entertainment is these days? And then (very latina dramatically) she says “God spare us!” and storms off. The idea that someone’s sexuality, or perceived sexuality, could be so offensive and yet provacative struck some kind of chord in me. I even dare say on some level I even related. Even at such a young age, I knew people hated me for really liking boys, just as they seemed to hate Madonna for it. And I learned much, much later in life, a million other little gay boys around the country felt the same way that night. It was like a silent signal had gone off with that performance, and tons of gay youth suddenly became self aware. It’s like the gay version of that moment in Battlestar Galactica when All Along the Watchtower turns on four of the Final Five Cylons, and they suddenly know who they are.

I was obsessed now. Any time Madonna was shown or mentioned I perked up. Girls at school all started to dress like her within days of the MTV awards. Not only that, but the boys started to wear the Madonna style rubber bracelets now too. I was so happy when the popular, jock boys started to wear them, because it gave me total permission to emulate my new idol without fear of getting beat up. Women since the beginning of time have used their sexuality to sell everything, and while Madonna was hardly the first to do so, she was certainly the most blatant about it and the most successful. In the early days, Madonna rarely sang sappy love ballads, she sang lust ballads, songs about men as sex objects. FINALLY! How could a young little queer like me not sing along? Every gay boy in the world could project themselves onto Madonna. All the girls in America wanted to be Madonna, and all the guys wanted to fuck her, but the queer youth understood what she was all about on a whole other level, even if we didn’t really get it about ourselves yet. We might not have fully understood why we wanted that belt buckle that said “Boy Toy”, we just know we wanted it. And now, twenty five years later, when most the Madonna Wannabe girls are soccer moms who voted for Bush, and straight men totally forgot all about her around the time she hit 30, it’s the gay audience who has never abandoned her. And its because she never abandoned us.

From the earliest days of her career, Madonna has been forthcoming and honest about her gay culture influences, and back in the 80’s she was at the forefront of the fight against AIDS, way before the red ribbons or Tom Hanks in Philadelphia. Vogueing was something started by drag queens in the inner city that she brought to the mainstream. And with dance music being such a huge part of gay culture, there is almost no way she couln’t have turned into a gay icon. Even though Madonna was dismissed as being a flash in the pan, Madonna proved everyone wrong by producing hit after hit after hit. And with each new song and video, I would become excited seeing what each new look was going to be. Blonde? Brunnette? Redhead? Pink hair?? Madonna’s constant changing of looks could be considered my first exposure to Drag Queens, even if this one just so happened to be a real woman.

Madonna is not the greatest singer in the world, or the best songwriter, by her own admission. She’s a good dancer, but there are better. Lord knows she can’t act for shit. Yet somehow, Madonna has produced some of the best works of pop music of the past 25 years. In the world of Top 40 Dance/Pop, no one has been as consistent as Madonna. (And if you say “what about Mariah Carey?” then please don’t ever make eye contact with me.) Twenty Five years later, I’m still waiting for the next Madonna to be the Heir to the Pop throne. People like Britney, Christina, JLo and the like all adopted the sex part of Madonna’s act (without ever doing anything as ballsy as putting out a coffee table book of their own pornography I might add), but none have adopted the politics or the style. And none have been influenced as much by gay culture as Madonna. And no, hiring mostly gay back up dancers doesn’t count. Until then I look forward to seeing what Madonna’s going to sing/wear/ say just like I did when I was ten years old, and with the same excitement. It might be a disaster, but at least it won’t be boring. And hopefully Madonna will continue to offend all the right people.