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While Wonder Woman hasn't enjoyed quite as much marketing muscle as its other Hollywood superhero predecessors, the movie, which premieres this Friday, has somehow dominated headlines throughout this entire week.

As the first contemporary Hollywood superhero movie with a female protagonist, the film has understandably received plenty of attention since it was first announced. After all, it had taken Wonder Woman 76 years to make it onto the big screen, so fans are excited, to say the least.

But the controversies surrounding Wonder Woman quickly piled on. Last October, the United Nations named Wonder Woman an honorary ambassador for the empowerment of women and girls. The decision was met with swift backlash from a number of female U.N. staffers, who staged a mini-revolt during a ceremony in New York celebrating the appointment. (Their argument was that the comic book character overly sexualized and objectified, rather than empowered, women.) Two months later, the U.N. dropped Wonder Woman from the role.

This past weekend, a Twitter debate ensued after the Alamo Drafthouse announced their decision to hold an all-woman screening of the film a week after its premiere. Almost immediately, a number of men cried foul and complained the move was "reverse sexism." (Perhaps they forgot they could buy tickets for a screening an hour earlier or at any of the other thousands of theaters that are also screening the movie?) In response to the outrage online, the Alamo Drafthouse decided to add four more all-women screenings, which all, obviously, quickly sold out.

Then, just a few days later, another outrage emerged after The Hollywood Reporter tweeted out a quote from its story on Wonder Woman and its director, Patty Jenkins, which read: "Warner Bros. is gambling $150M with a filmmaker whose only prior big-screen credit was an $8M indie." Critics rapidly pointed out that nobody ever accused other studios of "gambling" away a big-budget film with a rookie director when that filmmaker was a man. For instance, the Jurassic Park reboot was helmed by Colin Trevorrow, who only had one small indie, Safety Not Guaranteed, under his belt. While Gareth Edwards, the director of 2014's , had previously made a film for only $750,000.

And then on Wednesday, Lebanon had decided to ban Wonder Woman from showing in the country, mainly because the film's star, Gal Gadot, who's Israeli, had once served in the armed forces?

Enough! Can't we just enjoy Wonder Woman for what it is? An action-packed, comic book summer blockbuster that audiences will flock to for its badass-ness. Does it have to be the source of endless debates on gender and sexism? Putting so much pressure on this one movie, out of what seem to be hundreds of other comic book films, eclipses the fact that Wonder Woman has actually received some pretty good reviews this week.

Critics have hailed the movie as "a bright and engaging dream delivering us from a nightmare soup of toxic masculinity" (Vanity Fair) and "a welcome change of pace from a superhero realm that's often overloaded with interconnections and cross-references" (The Hollywood Reporter). Gadot has been called "unstoppable and spectacular" (Rolling Stone), while her costar Chris Pine has been deemed "supremely charismatic." But most of all, the majority of reviews agree that Wonder Woman is just plain ol' fun. So please, everybody, let's stop the hysteria, put down the pitchforks, and just give Wonder Woman the break she deserves, shall we? If not, we'll probably be doomed to a string of endless Pirates of the Caribbean sequels. And who wants that?

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Can We All Just Give Wonder Woman a Break?

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While Wonder Woman hasn't enjoyed quite as much marketing muscle as its other Hollywood superhero predecessors, the movie, which premieres this Friday, has somehow dominated headlines throughout this entire week. As the first contemporary Hollywood superhero movie with a female protagonist, the film has understandably received plenty of attention since it was first announced.

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Explore our Queen Elizabeth II news timeline featuring breaking news stories, style features, and Royal wardrobe updates for the Queen and don't miss our coverage of her 90th Birthday celebrations on Vogue.co.uk.

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We are on the brink of seeing three of the world's richest democracies be led by women. This is a moment to take stock, to measure how attitudes have changed to women in power, and what that means for the licence that they now have to define themselves.

It is always harder on the way to power: Clinton's battles with how to present herself as a woman aspiring to be commander in chief - strong or compliant, outspoken or measured - have threaded through the presidential campaign. In office, it would be what she does that counts. Long ago, Angela Merkel became the most powerful politician in Europe, a standing that made a virtue out of ordinariness. It is Theresa May who seems most interesting, and interested, in how she can use her personal brand to sell a political message.

May has an acute sense of how to manage her public image. Track her trajectory to the top and you track what is acceptable to mainstream opinion, or sometimes what is only just acceptable - one of her skills is her judgment of where people are, and how far it is possible to shift them in her direction, or at least enough of them for her to win the argument. She often does it in policy development: she has been ahead of Conservative opinion on matters ranging from the pressing need to recruit more female MPs, domestic violence and female genital mutilation to the conduct of the police and the need for a full investigation into the Hillsborough disaster.

May is hardly a slave to fashion. But as a Tory MP and now leader and prime minister, she embodies it. What she wears embodies what she wants the party to be. Her wardrobe is an object lesson in brand management.

May was first elected as an MP in 1997, the year of the Labour landslide, the year when there were 101 Labour female MPs. That year, precisely 13 Conservative women were elected. And, in an 1998 interview after she became one of the first new MPs to be given a frontbench job, she was confident that gender was irrelevant. How she has changed.

Back then, the Tories were in shock and in decline after 18 years in power. Recovery seemed distant. Yet, for Conservatives, office is always the principle ambition, and that means it often makes a very unconservative accommodation with social trends. After the 1997 defeat, powerful figures in the party grasped that appearing more female-friendly would be at the heart of modernisation. Soon, May was speaking on women's issues. In 2002, after the second election defeat, she became the first woman to chair the party. That was the year she described the Tories as the "nasty party". It was the year she wore kitten heels.

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May dons a colour-block coat on her first day as prime minister. Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA

The kitten heels gave May an identity that was separate from her politics. In popular imagination, they were so ... well, unTory. They were a little quirky. They were almost cheeky. They were animal print, for heaven's sake! It was as if every other woman in the party was still in shiny leather brogues. What May said about herself with those shoes, she came also to say about the party. The shoes helped to identify where the change in public perception had to come; they began to lay the ground for a party leader who really was modernising. Only it was David Cameron who capitalised on it, not May.

Fashion writers applaud May as a woman who treats the frontbench in the Commons like the front row at a fashion show. It's much more than that - since that day at the 2002 party conference, May has never stopped using how she looks to indicate what she is thinking.

She dresses strikingly when she intends to make a striking intervention; as emphasis, not distraction. Last autumn, at the first party conference after the 2015 election victory, May made a deeply controversial speech about immigration in a zip-backed black Roland Mouret dress. A few years earlier, she had been equally provocative about the Human Rights Act in another party conference speech, in a waisted navy jacket and a dress with an asymmetric hemline. During what turned out to be George Osborne's last budget in March, she sat beside the chancellor in a scarlet dress. Soon afterwards, she had a dramatic haircut, following Clinton, Nicola Sturgeon and Merkel with the power bob ( AKA the Pob). At that point, it occurred to me she thought the Brexit vote might not go the government's way and that, if so, it would be her chance for the top. She was not going to lose out to the Camerons again. Picture the tortoise sturdily marching past the snoozing hare. Then remember last July's steps-of-Downing-Street colour-blocked coat and skirt by Amanda Wakeley, and read the wardrobe of triumph.

May can do this because wearing interesting clothes is at last a legitimate - maybe even a desirable - attribute for women in power, and she can take some of the credit for that. When she began her career in Westminster 20 years ago, an interest in fashion was taken as an indication of a woman who can read nothing more challenging than the captions to magazine fashion shoots. Labour women who took part in photo shoots soon after the election in 1997 were told they had destroyed their political credibility. When Sturgeon did the same thing in September last year, even the Daily Mail let it pass.

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At the 2015 Conservative party conference. Photograph: Ray Tang/REX Shutterstock

May has played a part in making style a legitimate part of a political personality. She uses what she wears to underline her wider message: every public appearance announces that she is in touch with a reality outside Westminster (even if it is limited to prosperous southern England), and that she shares ordinary people's - or at least well-off people's - interests in the quotidian concerns of life. But her appearance says something else about her, too. From statement haircut to shiny toe cap, her appearance represents her freedom from anxiety about what other people think - a quality that, May's friends say, is one of her defining characteristics.

May pushes boundaries with clothes as well as policies. Female MPs who reveal that, in fact, they - along with other women - do have breasts still get trolled on Twitter (when Alison McGovern wore a low-cut dress on Channel 4 News last year, she was accused of deliberately trying to distract male viewers from the interview). When May wore that red dress behind Osborne, I'm not sure she thought she was reclaiming breasts from sexploitation. But she was saying that she will wear exactly what she likes.

Contrast this with the Thatcher era. Margaret Thatcher made a Thatcher-shaped hole in the glass ceiling. Apart from the significant fact of being there, she did nothing to make it different for women. Her lack of interest in feminist revolution was exemplified by many things she did, and also by her outfits.

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May's 2011 waisted jacket and dress. Photograph: Toby Melville/REUTERS

Thatcher wore clothes to make her look less threatening than she was: her attitude to gender was far more fully described by her wardrobe than anything that she said ( a speech to the 1969 party conference archly quoting Socrates - "when woman is made equal to man she becomes his superior, and I would not dissent from anyone as wise as Socrates" - may be the best indication of her fey approach). In Thatcher's view, women could share power only if they let men think that they were still making the tea.

One of the more odd developments in feminist politics is the motherhood divide. In last year's Labour leadership contest, Helen Goodman suggested Yvette Cooper's experience as a mother made her the best candidate. It is a terrifying thought that if Andrea Leadsom, a mother, had not tried the same line against the childless May, Leadsom might now be prime minister.

But it has become much more likely that men will face similar random tests of their familiarity with voters' experiences. Women are no longer obliged to pretend to be domestic goddesses. It's hard to imagine May bothering to perpetuate the myth that she cooks for Philip every night the way Thatcher apparently cooked for Denis. Mr May has already been objectified as Maidenhead man, and his choice of outfits is almost as scrutinised as hers.

May says her heroine is Elizabeth I: head of a buccaneering nation; queen of Galleon Britain. And a woman with a fine appreciation for the power of a good frock.

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Theresa May's wardrobe: decoding her brand management

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We are on the brink of seeing three of the world's richest democracies be led by women. This is a moment to take stock, to measure how attitudes have changed to women in power, and what that means for the licence that they now have to define themselves.

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Theresa May: A Political Life In Pictures

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In the week that the prime minister appears on television with Jeremy Paxman for the live debate, we chart the political life of Theresa May in pictures.

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Fit for a Queen! Or in the case of Erdem's show, The Queen - Her Majesty Elizabeth II of the not-very-United Kingdom.

Even before seeing the portrait necklines and brocade dresses, the audience could hear in the show music the high, thin tones of the 1950s upper class. Whether it was a real recording of the royal voice or taken from a film, it had a piquant effect, as did the other player in Erdem's mind. That was Duke Ellington, who met the royal as a young woman and dedicated a piece of music to her called "The Queen's Suite".

Erdem's penchant for the past brought into the broken-down space a grand piano, gilded palm trees, banqueting chairs and cocktail glasses. But for a designer who is always steering between past and present, this was a show that kept to that fine line.

The skill was to take an element from fashion history - say one of those curvy necklines held together with flat velvet bows - but team that with a just-over-the-knee hemline on a narrow dress. Another was to take a tweedy fabric and shape it to trace the body.

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"The tailoring felt really important, with a lightness," said Erdem. "It felt like a sense of optimism, using her tweeds, and imagining that something has been taken off."

Whether or not the designer was dreaming of dressing the young Queen Elizabeth, it was that mix of past and present that worked, although Erdem himself seemed more intrigued by historical elements after working with the curator of the royal collections and visiting Windsor castle to study gowns made by royal couturier Norman Hartnell.

Back to the elegant evening outfits and especially the brocade dresses glimmering with flowers.

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"I love the idea of this kind of wonderful exchange between two people, and Duke Ellington even wrote a poem for her," the designer said. "This collection imagines them all coming to the Cotton Club, or maybe Dorothy Dandridge (an African-American performer) coming to Buckingham Palace. It's about an exchange between two very different places; something that felt quite regal but also quite undone."

This concept of loosened ties and the subtle effect of the half undone is not new to Erdem's shows. But whereas previous inspirations had come from the Edwardian era, this collection included tweedy coats and kitten-heel, sling-back shoes from the 20th century.

How convincing is Erdem with day clothes? He has a wide customer base, not least in his London store, which serves as an atelier. But the appeal may be more for the drape and sparkle of the cocktail hour onwards.

The show was something of a period piece. But charming with it.

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Fit for a Queen! Or in the case of Erdem's show, The Queen - Her Majesty Elizabeth II of the not-very-United Kingdom. Even before seeing the portrait necklines and brocade dresses, the audience could hear in the show music the high, thin tones of the 1950s upper class.

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Why The Queen Is Autumn 2017's Unofficial Catwalk Muse

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See the autumn/winter 2017 fashion trends influenced by Queen Elizabeth II's style

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Explore Queen Elizabeth's style in pictures. A look at the best looks from her coronation dress to her wedding gown and all the best dresses in between - see Queen Elizabeth's best fashion moments on Vogue.

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HM the Queen and I are close contemporaries. Memories in her name reach back to babyhood. My nannie related with the greatest possible pride that one day, when pushing our Silver Cross pram in the park, I was taken for the young Princess Elizabeth. It must have been my bonnet - an early intimation that clothes were to become the very mark and signature of the Queen's public image. That episode ended my heads-up in sartorial royal history, as our tidy day wardrobes parted company - hers towards Norman Hartnell and Hardy Amies, mine towards Jean Muir and Jil Sander. Nor was there a link in the everyday. My understanding is that HM has not been seen about her business in a catalogue of items that are pretty well basic to my kit, and arguably belong to our generation: black tights, jeans, poloneck sweaters, shirt-and-skirt combos, T-shirts with graphic images, pull-on woolly hats, trainers. On the other hand, it's fair to say in this context that no living woman has appeared in a greater array of sartorial effects than has Queen Elizabeth II. And where fashion is concerned, it's interesting that these include many pieces that are said to be royal no-nos, such as off-the-peg dresses, culottes, streetwise long boots, dark shaded sunglasses and black for evening.

HM is now the longest-serving monarch in the nation's chronicles, marking her 90th birthday on April 21 this year. One can speculate whether she will be our last female sovereign. Males are in line for the throne for the next three generations, and we don't know what or who comes after that. In the meantime, the number-crunching of HM is impressive: 266 overseas visits to 119 countries. Last year her diary encompassed 341 official engagements, counting private audiences. Throughout she has communicated a sense of dedication that has shown no sign of waning. I metaphorically raise my hat to her - no matter that our generation is the first in modern times in which a woman could be considered well dressed without one.

Much of the Queen's public life has been bound up in sartorial considerations. A factor that will be brought into focus in this year's exhibition by the Royal Collection Trust, Fashioning a Reign: 90 Years of Style. Equating to a grand historical lookbook, the display covers the Queen's life and reign and is the largest ever shown. It makes clear that decisions over the decades range from satisfying her often-aired belief that people who come to see the Queen ought to be able to do so easily, without being frustrated by her chosen form of outfit, to the more complex question of selecting forms of dress that communicate with the audience. Diplomatically, culturally and socially, the royal wardrobe has an obligation to be booboo-proof, well able to function in the light of a sartorial hotchpotch of tricky sensitivities and trip-up issues. Few would question that the clothing of the Queen has constituted a big help in enabling her to play the part of Her Royal Nimbleness.

How has the style of dress that goes with the royal role come about? One answer is through intensive prepping, personal dedication and learning on the job. Underlying any review of the Queen's attitude to dress is her apparent lack of vanity. Normally, a young woman as good-looking and well-placed as was Princess Elizabeth would have developed some fondness for vanity's self-regard. But we never spot HM glancing at herself in a looking glass, or indicating that she is aware of people's flattery. Even when she dons those magnificent royal jewels, it seems to be more out of a sense of duty than any wish to show them off stylishly. A contra observation relates to her jolly touch on the make-up box. From the beginning she was partial to lipstick, a bright red being a signature. She has been seen in public repairing the shine. An enduring photograph of HM by Cecil Beaton depicts her bearing sceptre, orb and Imperial state crown. She is shown in a luscious lip tone, a nod to the duality of her role as sovereign and woman. (Latterly, the Queen has upped the tone of the blusher on her cheek, and a blue shade enhances her eyes.)

My first recollection of the power of royal dress was the wedding of Princess Elizabeth to Prince Philip. In the midst of postwar austerity and coupon-ridden frugality, it might be thought that the sheer lavishness of the nuptial gown would have struck an inappropriate note. Not a bit of it! The populace lapped up details of Norman Hartnell's creation: the yardage of delectable ivory duchesse satin, the number of seed pearls and crystal beads in the embroideries, the deep folds in the full skirt. All the pageantry seemed to satisfy a hunger long denied.

Once into her reign, an independence of spirit emerged in relation to her clothes that was spot on the generational mood. It applied to many of those of us who came to fashion post-World War II. Allowing for the fact that both mother and daughter were dressed by the London couturier Norman Hartnell, it's clear that the successful formula of floaty chiffons and theatrical effects he had created for the Queen Mother was way off the mark for the young royal. Hartnell's biographer Michael Pick confirms, "the sleek lines of the young Queen's wardrobe differed from her mother's established look." One wonders whether the 2007 photographs of the Queen taken by Annie Leibovitz, which depict her in a stately long gown with shoulders widely enfolded in fur, fully caught on to the sitter's more modern approach to dress. To my mind, they echo the parental generation, or an even earlier period.

Diplomacy is stitched into the royal wardrobe - detail is key. Embroidery, for example, has highlighted relationships between nations and regions. Her coronation dress boasted British and Commonwealth emblems. When the Queen visited Ireland in 2011, her robe for the state banquet at Dublin Castle was embellished with more than 2,000 hand-sewn shamrocks. Colour is more than a shade. Its symbolism may govern options. Take the instance of the blush-pink gown worn by HM at her spectacular James Bond-inspired entrance to the 2012 Olympic Games. Care had to be taken to select a tone that was not associated strongly with any of the participating nations.

Angela Kelly On Dressing The Queen

Staying within the margins of conservative dress, HM began to find her own style in the Sixties and Seventies. For one thing, the Queen's silhouette, with its full bosom, appeared to change. It was widely rumoured in my day that the Queen had undergone a bust reduction. But bodies do alter shape through natural causes, and that could have been the explanation for the reduced curves. Whatever the background story, the proportions of the Queen's body appeared trimmer and sleeker.

For royal attire, read jewellery. The massive collection of royal gems fulfils different, sometimes overlapping functions, representing regal status and personal adornment. Distinct from the Crown Jewels is the Queen's personal assemblage - which includes, for instance, pieces given to her by Prince Philip. If ever there was a pearly girl, it is the Queen. Among many, many strings of pearls in her collection is a double row given as a wedding present by her parents, George VI and Queen Elizabeth. She also received a diamond tiara from her grandmother, Queen Mary, who had been presented with it on the occasion of her own nuptials in 1893. Known as the Girls of Great Britain, the piece is said to be a favourite, and is the lightest of the Queen's tiaras.

She who had had no training for the job became a true professional, and with experience came up with a working wardrobe that suited her singular responsibilities. Much of her clothing could be regarded as costume, custom-made for performance. For instance, necklines on coats and dresses are cut to avoid risking restricting the Queen's freedom of movement. Hemlines may be weighted to guard against untimely gusts of wind and mishap. Hats are fashioned with a fair size crown to give extra height and brims are styled off the face to be friendly to viewers. Many trusted props are apparent. The proportions of an outfit from childhood days of a short jumper and kilted skirt have found a place in her adult wardrobe in myriad forms.

Allowing for fine textiles and custom-made origins, the actual style of her typical daywear on parade is not so radically different from outfits in high-street windows. The easy to wear suits and coats with chiming dresses by and large conform to a look that many of her subjects would be happy to see themselves in. It's transparently clear that the Queen's clothes are not intended to intimidate or overwhelm. As Roger Scruton has written, "the emotion she inspires is unbelligerent tenderness" - and who can doubt that her wardrobe speaks of that? Worth saying on this point is that the fashion-conscious among us had distinct reservations about certain aspects of the Queen's dress. The expressed view was "they never cracked daywear". In contrast, the Queen's formal evening looks were greatly admired by one and all. Fashion editors and social diarists purred over her "fairytale" dresses. In truth, the elements of small bodice and commanding long skirt, the beautiful silks and satins, the splendour of royal jewellery and the pomp of royal regalia did come together to form a theatrical tour de force. Norman Hartnell, who designed the evening gowns that spring to mind, channelled Winterhalter's paintings of Queen Victoria. It was often observed that when the Queen dressed formally for an evening occasion and was entertaining visiting ladies who perhaps represented some competition in the apparel stakes, HM's ensemble could be counted on to score for the home team.

The picture of royal dress familiar to most of us was created by her principal designers. Each contributed their own expertise. Norman Hartnell and Hardy Amies, both of whom were knighted for their services, worked in association with each other where royal patronage was concerned, or at least to some degree. Hartnell wins critical accolades for ceremonial robes and exquisite embroideries. Amies, known for absorbing Parisian couture trends without slavishly following them, introduced brighter colours, sophisticated prints and patterns, smaller hats. However, he stayed by the rules explaining in his biography that the changing length of dresses would be considered "so that no more than a minimum of knee would show". In the miniskirted Sixties he wrote beneath a photograph of the Queen "as short as we dared". Ian Thomas, who was assistant designer at Hartnell, took over in 1970 and under his own label dressed the Queen in the understated elegance that was his hallmark. Stewart Parvin, graduate of the Edinburgh College of Art, followed. Since her arrival in 2002 as the royal dresser, Angela Kelly - now appointed the personal adviser and senior dresser to the Queen - has been interpreting the royal dress code at the dressers' floor at Buckingham Palace and has 11 people in her team.

An exploration of the significance of what amounts to the Queen's soft armour underpins the forthcoming exhibition, the flagship show of which opens at Buckingham Palace in July. Caroline de Guitaut, the curator, emphasises that "clothing has been influential in establishing a relationship between the Queen and the nation."

Looking at the sweep of the story of the Queen's reign from my own standpoint, it's the current phase that tells. Neither she nor I (yet) uses a stick. The Queen's straight-backed unwobbly action of walking backwards down the steps of the Cenotaph last year evoked admiration among my age group and undue peering at her 2in-heeled court shoes. At the time of writing, it was said by some I talked to that the Queen was looking particularly bonny these days. Happening at a period when oldies are snuffed out of public gaze in so many different aspects, how good is it to have the Queen on side. Besides, we are seeing more of her smile.

"Fashioning a Reign" is at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh from April 21, Buckingham Palace from July 23, and Windsor Castle from September 17.

This article was first published in the March 2016 issue of Vogue magazine

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Royal Variety: Inside The Queen's Wardrobe

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Diplomatically, culturally and socially, the Queen's considered wardrobe has played a central role in her reign, helping seal her image around the globe. Drusilla Beyfus looks back on 90 years of royal style - from the tiaras to the tweeds

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No one understands transformation better than Madonna. The music icon, who turns 63 today, forged a symbiotic relationship with the fashion community the moment she burst onto the scene in the '80s, setting trends and playing muse to countless designers. Her ability to switch hair colors, styles, and personas has made her one of the most influential performers of all time. An inescapable presence since her "Material Girl" days, she has inspired collections by Jean Paul Gaultier, Anna Sui, and more; starred in ads for the biggest brands; and created a template that pop successors utilize to this day. Before the world was charting Rihanna's every wardrobe change or chronicling Miley Cyrus's progression from good girl to provocateur, Madonna was evolving with each album, turning her music videos- "Vogue," anyone? -into showcases for the best of the industry's talent.

Madonna has shown each new incarnation-from Like a Prayer-era brunette bombshell to her Evita homage to Eva Perón-in the pages of Vogue, shot by photographers such as Tim Walker and longtime friend Steven Meisel. Even her lady-of-the-manor phase in the bucolic English countryside was captured, with her children Lourdes ( who would eventually land her own Vogue cover) and Rocco by her side. Continuing to grow and evolve through each change, she remains a fashion-favorite mainstay and perhaps the only woman who could turn the Super Bowl halftime show into a giant editorial. Here, a look back at three decades of Madonna in Vogue.

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Madonna Remains the Ultimate Vogue Cover Star

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On her birthday, a look back at the music legend's best moments in the pages of Vogue.

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"What we as women have to really focus on now is our intention to ﬁght for our rights, but to do it with dignity-not whining, not crying. Since we are stronger than men, we shouldn't be afraid of our own strength."
The words belong to Diane von Furstenberg, but the sentiments could be those of any of the designers we honor in this issue-not to mention some of the feistier members of the new generation of models who grace our cover-each of them showing us that the rules about who and what is beautiful are being swept away.

For the first time in the 125 years of Vogue's existence-an anniversary we start celebrating this month-we've crafted a portfolio featuring solely the women of the fashion world. What better way to recognize not only their contributions to how we get dressed every day, but how their interests and concerns, their hopes and joys and fears, dovetail with our own? We spoke to them about their backgrounds, their careers-and their spring 2017 collections, yes-but also about how they felt about our world right now. We wanted to know how the unfolding of so many narratives that will affect women's lives directly-some good, some far less so-were playing out in their design studios and their homes, with their families and friends and loved ones. What kept them up at night-and what made them spring out of bed every day aiming to empower not just themselves but everyone they want to dress?

A few decades ago, just as Vogue -along with everyone else-was starting to reflect the incredible changes in our world made possible by feminism and the women's rights movement, we learned that the personal is political. It's a statement that's as valid today as it was back then. Fashion-which has always reflected the culture and society of its time-is quite plainly both. It seems fitting, then, that the subject of this spring's Costume Institute show should be the individualistic and iconoclastic Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons, whose designs trail-blazed the notion that a woman could celebrate her gender while challenging the world around her. This March, she is in good company.
Stella McCartney
Cozily wrapped in one of her own own designs-an oversize, double-breasted camel coat-with one of her trendy, silver-chained Falabella bags draped across her lap, Stella McCartney, squished into the back of a blacked-out SUV, is jabbing manically on her phone. She's doing grocery shopping between meetings and simultaneously buying something online at an auction-"I can't remember what." Her assistant, piled high with suit bags, sits opposite, occasionally reminding McCartney of upcoming appointments. But her mind is elsewhere. She is a designer who wears her conscience on her sleeve-she campaigns for animal rights and breast-cancer awareness, and against domestic abuse-so it's not surprising that politics is front and center for the 45-year-old right now.

"My spring-summer show was a reaction to the right wing," she says, abandoning her phone and glancing out at the semi-stationary London traffic. "I had all is love written on the clothes, and all the girls danced. After the judgment and the anger, there is love and respect for one another. That was my way of trying to remind everyone that we have to bring it into our work a little more."

Stella is, she tells me, "a glass-half-full girl." In the wake of Brexit and the Trump victory, she sees little point in negative thinking. She breaks into a warm smile, and her enormous swimming-pool-blue eyes light up as she declares, "We can't become the people who sit and moan and ferment. We have to be the people who are twisting and turning things into a solution that works."

Salma Hayek, a fellow supporter of White Ribbon Day-a movement to end violence against women-describes Stella as "a natural-born activist. She is passionate, practical, creative in finding solutions, and committed, with incredible stamina." Indeed, McCartney has managed, in business as well as in her personal life, to stick to her beliefs, refusing to use leather or fur in her products. "I have been told many times by various people that I would never have a successful accessories business," she recalls with a wry smile. "But we now have more iconic bags and shoes than many leather houses. The main thing is to create a beautiful, desirable bag that doesn't compromise style but is for the conscious consumer. I have for sure lost money because of it. But money is not what drives me."

Lest we forget, as well as running her business, Stella has a universe that also encompasses a husband, Alasdhair Willis, creative director of the boot brand Hunter; lots of friends; a house in London; a Georgian country pile with 400 acres; and four children, ages six to twelve. "I am a 7:00-to-9:00 a.m. school drop-off-er, and then I work. I get home for books and bedtime. The aim is to be there before seven." She is so busy, she says, that every five minutes of the day has to be "meticulously planned. The time I truly feel like I have a moment for myself is on my horse. If I can get an hour's ride, then that restores me." -Plum Sykes
Miuccia Prada
Crises are always positive because they force you to think," says Miuccia Prada, reflecting on Italy's political and economic woes. "You redesign reality. When everything is going well, people get lazy!"

Dressed like an irreverent tomboy in a long, cream skirt, with a turquoise feather boa poking out beneath a multicolored leather biker jacket, Mrs. Prada recalls her own professional beginnings during a time of radicalism and political ferment. In Milan in the 1970s, being a woman in fashion, as well as a Marxist and a feminist, was something to own and fight for. Italy wasn't exactly forward in terms of female entrepreneurs, and the leftist culture Prada espoused as a political-science graduate frowned on the idea that clothes and accessories were anything but frivolous-let alone culturally relevant.

"It was very tough," she recalls, speaking in her office at the Prada HQ. "I understand now that I really must have had a big passion because, although I felt unease declaring it to the world, it was never an internal struggle for me. I always felt I was on the right path."That path not only led to a massively popular, $8.6 billion business but it was built from her own worldview. She used democratic and sometimes bizarre materials-army-tent nylon, bottle tops, broken mirrors, shards of cutlery-and introduced "ugly" elements alongside vintage influences as a way to bid farewell to a limited vision of fashion. "Through the 1970s, fashion represented only white people, Northern Americans, rich and bourgeois Europeans. Such an elitist idea was absurd to me."

Today Mrs. Prada feeds her vision from everything around her. "It could be a color or something I see on the street or a silly thing I hear that ends up sticking with me," she says. "Part of the vitality of my work comes from the access to other fields. You have to be quick-thinking, with a curious, 360-degree eye on the worlds of film, music, dance, and art. There is a story behind every fashion show-perhaps one that is politically incorrect, kooky, wild."

A social being, not a socialite; ironic but never detached; compassionate but not sentimental, Mrs. Prada likes to engage. "It's important for me to make clothes for broad groups of people," she says. "The idea of creating things for the same type is dull: beautiful, chic, well read-too boring! Opening your gaze to the rest of the world, to their unforgiving taste, is the challenge I am up for."

As for politics, she says of Donald Trump's election in the U.S., "it really shook things up. The same thing happened in Italy. Renzi lost the referendum, so the left has to wake up: It's now or never." No longer a member of the Communist Party, she finds new ways to keep her fervor alive, citing an upcoming show at her extraordinary Fondazione Prada museum about the history of Fascism in the arts in Italy. "We never use logos or slogans," she says. "I refuse to be political with my brand, but that's because I don't take politics lightly. There are other ways to suggest ideas." -Chiara Barzini
Tory Burch
Tory Burch isn't a raise-your-fist-in-the-street kind of protester. Her response to the current social and political climate is intelligent, subtle, and perhaps more powerful. "How can I say this delicately?" she asks, the lightness of her tone belying the force and clarity she displays when discussing gender parity, an issue that has driven the designer to action. "Equal opportunity, equal pay-it's not a favor; it's a given. We're talking about 50 percent of the population."

Though fluent in the data, Burch doesn't gripe or wallow. Instead, she has targeted the problem by making $25 million available to aspiring female entrepreneurs through her charitable foundation in the past three years. "That," she says, "is impact and scale."

Back in 2004, when Burch herself was a fledgling designer and CEO, her business plan combined expansion with philanthropy. "I was told by many men, particularly, never to say 'social responsibility' and 'business' in the same sentence," she says. "That only made me more determined." Since then, her fashion company-with its mid-century aesthetic softened by a haute-bohemian flair-has found a dynamic global market. And her vision has paid off by attracting motivated employees and resonating with her customers. This month, her foundation's digital Embrace Ambition campaign urges more followers to take action. "Women need something to believe in right now," she says. "They need to stand together."

Burch brings her intellectual curiosity-and restlessness-to every aspect of her work, infusing her designs with an opulent American wanderlust. (Case in point: pre-fall's ode to Milanese furniture designer Gabriella Crespi, with luxurious Indian embroideries and pretty cotton-voile woodblock prints.) As for her own ambitions, Burch's pitch-perfect blend of business-savvy and social conviction might suggest a run for office. (The Tory Party?) "I would never say never," she responds with a wry laugh. "I truly believe in making a difference." -Jessica Kerwin Jenkins
Carolina Herrera
If you don't open your eyes and see what's going on in the world and the way women are dressing now," Carolina Herrera says, "you won't see that it's totally changed. It used to change every ten years, then every five years-now it changes every three months." Which doesn't, by the way, mean that the favorite designer of a certain stratosphere of well-dressed women since she showed her first collection to a swooning society audience 35 years ago is about to lower her standards. "You have to stick to your style, your taste," she says, and in her case that includes a grand tradition of dressing America's First Ladies, from Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Nancy Reagan to Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama. Herrera says that "dressing the First Ladies of this country is an honor for me"- one that she has been open (and on the record) about continuing with Melania Trump. The pursuit of beauty through fashion does not belong to any political party, Herrera maintains.

In a year that will go down in history as one of radical regime change, Herrera has emerged as a figure of resistance purely by following the same rules that she's held since she started her company in 1981. In Herrera's world, to be pulled together is an inner necessity; elegance, a bulwark in a rapidly changing world.

That doesn't mean she won't adapt alongside her customers. "You have to try new things to please people-and to please yourself. You can't say, 'I am not going to do Instagram'-or this and that-'because I didn't do it before,' " says the designer. "You're alive. You're living! Move on!" -Alessandra Codinha
Phoebe Philo
Something happens to women's heads when they walk into a Céline store. This is explained to me on a recent visit to the company's idiosyncratically designed Mayfair flagship-minimal but busy, modest yet precious-with a designer friend who describes the effect on his wife. "She goes into this zone. She can't hear me. She wants this thing and that thing and that thing."

What we want is something Phoebe Philo, Céline's creative director since 2008, has an exquisite understanding of. (When an ultra-cool fashion emporium recently opened in a European city, it was robbed. The thieves' sole target? Anything Céline.) She gives us clothes that can serve as both armor and comfort blanket, with killer details and surprising mixes and explosions of color-mint green, maroon, and scarlet; Yves Klein-blue body prints on white shifts. "What I love about her clothes is the often over-the-top androgynous, tailored look ironically combined with feminine touches," notes the artist Cindy Sherman. "When I wear them, I feel like I've got my act together without trying too hard."

"Comfort and feeling good in clothes is something I think about," says Philo, who intends her designs to offer "a proposal" to women negotiating the chaos, complexity, and contradictions of contemporary life. Of her exponential success atCéline-profits have more than quadrupled in eight years-she acknowledges, "The whole project has gone way beyond my expectations. I didn't come to this-and I don't really come to anything-with a game plan." Along with her instinctual approach, she is almost phobically reticent about putting her work into words, as though articulating an idea would damage its integrity. As she often explains, everything she has to say is in the clothes. How she gets there is the interesting part. "I put things out there that are for me rich and relevant," she says. "If it's not true to me, I can't make it up."

Philo is talking in her light-filled office in an elegantly lived-in Georgian town house in central London, wearing a cozy-urchin gray mohair sweater dress, jeans, and thick-soled white sneakers. Her dark-blonde hair is scraped into a topknot, and her scrubbed face and pale-blue eyes have an attractive, feline sharpness. Here she works with laser-like intensity, in the words of one former colleague, "completely focused and driven, with a huge sense of humor, and joy in the room." Then she pulls back. "I have many other things going on in my life that are very different from fashion, that are not about making things, that are more about human connection," she says. "What we know about the fashion industry is that it's very fast, it's very demanding, it needs a lot of nourishment, and that's OK. I'm a human being and I have the capacity that I have, and I have other things I need to take good care of." Like, say, three children, a husband, her own sanity and happiness. "I step away often."

The latest order of business for Céline is pushing out its online market, something Philo initially resisted in favor of the live experience of touching her clothes in stores but is now embracing with interest. "I'm excited about learning more and understanding it," she says, her eyes alight, "and finding a way of doing it that works for us and our values."

Speaking from the vantage point of her 43 years, Philo says, "One of the things I've enjoyed about getting older is knowing more about myself." There's a quiet power in her refusal to compromise, taking time off, protecting her world by working in London for a Parisian company, fiercely guarding her privacy. Acknowledging a certain fragility conversely frees her to be bold. "I'm under no illusions that I may fail," she says, now perched on the table, dangling her legs over a chair and sipping from a mug of fennel tea. "There are times when I feel vulnerable, I feel unsure, I feel scared. The other side of me is to take risks and question things and be as fearless as I feel I can be in that moment. Making mistakes and getting it wrong are all part of what makes us human and precious and creative."

Philo's husband, art consultant Max Wigram, told Vogue in 2001, the year she took over as head designer of Chloé, that "the world goes in through her eyes." That hasn't changed. "I've always felt somewhat of an outsider in the industry," Philo says. "I like being an observer-of myself, my surroundings, the people close to me, and, of course, the bigger world." Her friend the architect Sophie Hicks points out that "she's not obsessed with fashion. She's detached enough from it to feel the culture in a wider way. That's probably why she's so successful."

What Philo is experiencing now, with the upsets at home with Brexit and in the U.S. with the Trump election, is an environment that "feels very brittle. There's a lot of mistrust in the air, which is unsettling. Minorities are feeling particularly fearful, understandably. I think we have a problem in not wanting to talk about the complexities of everything we're living with: religion, women, men, globalization. People just want it to be good or bad. It's a bit of a shutdown, and if we don't address it and talk about it, we won't heal. From my own standpoint," she continues, "I've always liked very diverse and different things. I'm very curious about 'the other.' I'm very interested in including that-the offness, the chink. If something doesn't have that, I don't gravitate toward it."

Philo senses an uptick in personal, home-grown activism in the U.S., "people beginning to gather up their strength and their courage," she says. In her own studio, the team often discusses the current fractured political situation; how "it stops people from looking around and getting in touch with their compassion and their ability to connect to others. These are things we talk about when we're designing. They just come up. We have these conversations that have nothing to do with clothes or product."

So, she believes, they work their way into the collections. "They're in the room while we're making them." -Eve MacSweeney
Diane von Furstenberg
When I was first starting out in journalism in 1975, I was assigned to do a Q&A with Diane von Furstenberg. I was very nervous. Even though she was only a few years older-a mere 28-she was already a "tycooness," as she likes to call herself. She was rushing to the airport, so we arranged to do the interview in her limo. It was like crawling into a black satin cage with a panther. The European princess was curled in her usual feline pose on the black leather seat, her long black hair spilling over her full-length black mink coat. To complete the noir- and Renoir-odalisque look, she was nibbling from a box of dark chocolates.

We talked about her creation-an affordable "bourgeois" swath of colorful jersey that hugged the body and tied at the waist that was about to become, as she later wrote in her memoir, the "quintessential symbol of the seventies."

During that interview, I realized something profound: I shouldn't have to act or dress like a man to be taken seriously. Like millions of other women around the world, I suddenly understood that you could be professional and sensual, that glamour and ambition could coexist. The dress-five million were sold in the first two years-was a letter of transit to liberation. You didn't have to be handcuffed to the home or the desk; you could whisk from office to disco, or whisk yourself away on a plane with only your wrap dress, a bikini, and some mascara.

In 1997, after seeing the popularity of the wrap with younger women who had plucked them from their moms' closets or picked them up in vintage stores, von Furstenberg revived it, and the comeback is fashion history. The daughter of one president, Julie Nixon Eisenhower, inspired the dress when DVF saw Julie on television in 1973 wearing one of the designer's wrap tops and wrap skirts-and the wife of another, Michelle Obama, showed its staying power when she wore an iconic black-and-white interlocking-print version on the White House Christmas card in 2009.

"People say I made the dress," von Furstenberg told me recently, "but really the dress made me. Through the dress I got confidence and met other American women and shared that confidence."

Von Furstenberg 's exotic love life-she once had trysts with Warren Beatty and Ryan O'Neal on the same weekend-became part of her legend. But now she tells me, "The most important relationship in life is the one you have with yourself. Any other relationship is a plus, not a must. I like my own company. I trust myself. That's why I'm not afraid of death-I'll be with myself."

At 70, full of energy, she has found a chief creative officer, Jonathan Saunders, freeing her to focus on various projects and philanthropy. Having led the Council of Fashion Designers of America since 2006, she also sits on the board of Vital Voices, a women's leadership organization; heads the Diller-von Furstenberg Family Foundation with her husband, Barry Diller; and is raising money to build a Statue of Liberty Museum on Liberty Island.

Though she was an avid Hillary supporter and Trump critic, von Furstenberg has not joined the chorus of designers saying they will never dress Melania Trump. "I have nothing against this poor woman," she says. "I feel bad for her. She's beautiful. She should be treated with respect."

She believes, in the face of the retro-seeming Trump-Pence administration, that women must go into the future feeling strong."We all have to stick together," she says. "My mother, a survivor of the Holocaust, said that no matter what, you can never be a victim. I have been taking Tai Chi lately, and my teacher says something so valuable: If you focus only on power, you fail and your energy stagnates. It's most important to focus on intention. When you have the intention, you get the energy and the power.

"What we as women have to really focus on now is our intention to fight for our rights, but to do it with dignity-not whining, not crying. Since we are stronger than men, we shouldn't be afraid of our own strength." -Maureen Dowd
Maria Grazia Chiuri
The first female artistic director of Dior was born and bred a feminist through the exceptional example set by her parents. "I only realized it later," says Maria Grazia Chiuri, "but my mother was very feminist. She never said anything to me about the importance of getting a husband-it was always 'You have to study, to work, to be able to maintain yourself!' " As a teenager running around Rome in the late seventies, Chiuri was an upbeat and energetic outlier unhampered by the usual Italian-family gender roles. "My father, who was from the South of Italy, washed the dishes and shared the chores, which was really unusual. They never treated me any differently from my brother," she remembers. "So I grew up with the idea that this was normal!"

It's a fine time for Chiuri, 53, to be setting her own example-as a fashion leader, a boss, a mother, and a feminist-at Dior. She's spent 31 years rising from behind the scenes, designing accessories at Fendi and then Valentino, to become the haute couture-honed creative director she is today. Taking up the reins at Dior, a brand with an epic scale, she says, "I can test myself."

The way the world is currently turning is likely only to strengthen the way Chiuri feels. "I started thinking about it again when my daughter, Rachele, became fifteen or sixteen. I look around now and think women have lost a bit; the atmosphere has gone back to being more traditional. What I want for Rachele, and also for my son, is that they are free, that they are not afraid of the future. Some say to be feminist is to be angry. I'm not angry; I'm worried!"

What more should we expect from this feisty, accomplished, and empathetic professional? Strokes of shoe genius, like her terrific kitten-heeled slingbacks embellished with a simple ribbon-tape of Dior-printed bows, for sure. But also, perhaps, a motherly managerial takeover from the inside. "I have a lot of young people in my studio," she says. "I want to make sure that they are confident in their work and have a balance-because sometimes this world we are in can be dangerous." -Sarah Mower
Kate and Laura Mulleavy
When we want to do something," says Rodarte's Kate Mulleavy (above right), "we figure out how to do it." It's the bootstraps ethos that, more than a decade ago, had Kate and her sister, Laura, hauling suitcases full of their hand-sewn garments to New York City for Rodarte's makeshift fashion debut, and more recently, it's what drew the Mulleavys to filmmaking: Woodshock, their first movie, starring their friend and muse Kirsten Dunst, is due out later this year. (Per Laura: "It was something that had to happen. Everything in my mind wanders toward film.")

In these politically uncertain times, we should all take a page from the Mulleavys' playbook. Much like their home state of California-whose leaders have taken a preemptively bold stance against the new administration's policy agendas-the sisters are prepared to stand up for the issues near and dear to them. Chief among those is protecting the wilds of their beloved California, the Mulleavys' main source of inspiration.

Kate and Laura, raised in the crunchy central coast town of Aptos by an artist mom and a botanist dad who "knows everything about mushrooms," are chatting by phone from their Pasadena home, their dog barking in the background, as they wait for a ride to Big Sur for an annual getaway with friends. "We need to come together and recognize that the great beauty of life is nature," says Kate. "I feel committed to trying to preserve that. I think every human being on the planet should."

"The things we care about are being attacked," Laura says. "That's very hurtful." That tension makes its way into their clothes. Last fall, the Mulleavys sent models down the runway in honeycomb-lace dresses strewn with flower appliqués and cascading ruffles inspired by the bees that buzz around their backyard. For now, that is. As Laura says, "One of the things we thought about is: What's it going to be like when they're no longer around?"

The new political reality has them asking other questions, too: like how to amplify more women's voices-"We should be teaching our younger generation of women to fight to be leaders," says Laura-and how to talk about the misogyny that flows beneath the surface of so many industries. "I think being a creative force as a woman is a fascinating thing," Kate observes. "Even in the fashion industry, a lot of times people are willing to take a chance on a man; they're less willing to take a chance on a woman." Adds her sister, "It's not about complaining-it's about wanting more out of the world." -Julia Felsenthal
Vera Wang
I've had three lives in this business," Vera Wang says-"four if you count my salesgirl job during college at the Yves Saint Laurent boutique."

The world, of course, knows Wang, 67, for her wedding gowns. And though she has dressed some of the best-known brides of the twenty-first century (Ivanka Trump and Chelsea Clinton included), Wang admits she's the last person anyone thought would be a bridal designer. "Calvin [Klein] said to me, ' You're doing bridal?' But I became successful because I wasn't a dress designer. I didn't know any rules, and my dresses weren't formulaic."

Wang earned her bona fides-studies at the Sorbonne, a youthful ice-skating career, and fifteen years as a sittings editor at Vogue, collaborating with the likes of Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, and Herb Ritts-but she wanted to be a designer, so at the age of 38 she went to work for Ralph Lauren, splitting her energies and talents between the bridal line that would eventually make her a household name and the kind of Goth-vixen ready-to-wear work she presents at New York Fashion Week. Her most recent runway show featured corseted, cold-shoulder jackets and trousers topped by pelmet skirts-all black-not frothy tulle and bugle beads. And while plenty of other designers do both ready-to-wear and bridal, none shares Wang's black swan-white swan duality.

Later this month she'll put another notch in her belt when she's named a Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur by France's ambassador to the U.S., Gérard Araud, with whom she's been working to create exchange programs between design schools in New York and Paris. After a 50-year career in fashion, Wang is spending more time focused on giving back-an instinct that the election and its aftermath has only amplified. "I encourage all the young women who write me for advice to get a job with someone they admire," she says. "You have to learn skills, technique. It's only from there you can become a rule-breaker." -Nicole Phelps
Victoria Beckham
You can try not to be disarmed by Victoria Beckham, but it's quite challenging. This is, after all, an 80-million-records-selling pop star who, in the early days of her fashion career, personally welcomed guests to her suite at the Waldorf Astoria and talked them through every single look-in between running down to the florist in the lobby to arrange fresh flowers. It's the mixture of humility and do-or-die determination that's intriguing. Given the hara-kiri recklessness of some of her formative sartorial moments ("Let's just say my idea of sexy has evolved," she says now of those peroxided-and-PVC harnessed days), what made her imagine she could cut it as a serious designer?

She was always aware of the industry's preconceptions. "I'd been in a girl band. I was a footballer's wife." But as a theater school alumna who'd been subjected to sustained bullying-and told by her principal "never to leave the house without a full face of makeup"-she wasn't going to allow a little prejudice to insinuate its way between her and her dream.

Nine years later, with critical collateral on her side, her business is booming, with 173 employees, including some who started with her. There was a sell-out limited-edition cosmetics line for Estée Lauder last fall (there will be another by the end of this year). Coming soon: a collection for Target (two, if you include childrenswear), more Victoria Beckham shoes, and a fragrance. With four children at home-from budding fashion photographer Brooklyn, seventeen, to five-year-old Harper-she has rather unexpectedly become someone with whom millions of women identify.

"I think being comfortable is empowering for women," she says. Beckham's mission: to simplify women's lives by designing a nucleus of clothes-in particular, separates-that enables them to put together their own sleek, easy-to-wear silhouettes while still transmitting all the electricity of a fashion statement.

While Beckham has trained herself to filter out the negative, current events on the global stage are challenging her optimism. The Beckhams announced their support for remaining in the E.U. prior to last summer's Brexit vote-but neither is the type to anguish over politics, preferring to focus on specifics, whether it's charitable foundations (she's involved in Born Free Africa, an initiative that helps women with HIV give birth to healthy babies) or fashion, which has a knack of making the political personal, even intimate."A lot of people get a lot of coverage for dressing in a provocative way," Beckham says. Although-or perhaps because-she felt acute pressure to conform to a specific female stereotype when she was a singer, she doesn't want her daughter to experience the same anxieties. "I always say to Harper, 'It's not about being the prettiest in the class-it's what you do in the class.' But Harper also wants to put my heels on. It's a balance." -Lisa Armstrong
Simone Rocha
Recently I have found myself more and more angry," Simone Rocha declares in her sweet, soft voice. "We are in an industry driven by female consumers, but sometimes it doesn't feel like females have the power that they should. So I put my strength and my anger into my designs."

This sentiment might strike you as surprising, coming from a designer whose creations at first blush seem at least as feminine as feminist, and whose slightly twisted but invariably beautiful take on conventional loveliness recently won her the Womenswear Designer of the Year prize at the British Fashion Awards. Rocha 's distinctive sensibility is meant, she insists, to be at least a little subversive. "It's slightly perverted, a little bit off."

Rocha, 30, who showed her first collection in 2010, is not afraid to wear her womanhood on her literal puffy sleeve: Her show notes for her fall 2016 collection refer to "mothering" and "rebirth"-the designer had given birth to her daughter, Valentine, a few months before. (Her partner is the cinematographer Eoin McLoughlin.) Despite her way with a ruffle, her fondness for pale brocades, Rocha says her creations also represent a strength and a hardness. "It's not like I would say my clothes are sexy, but there is a slight provocative feeling to them! So the back of a dress might be see-through, but it's not shouting about it."

She shares this penchant for realism-sometimes magic realism-with her forebears, a trio that she refers to reverently as Miuccia, Rei, and Phoebe. Like theirs, she says, "my work comes from a very personal place. I want to portray both protection and being exposed. The world is such a small place, and yet it's never felt so divided." -Lynn Yaeger
Donatella Versace
In New York, Donatella Versace can sometimes be found at the Waldorf residences, in a vast suite the color of eggshells. This winter she stopped over while on a book tour for her new tome Versace (Rizzoli), a gloriously glossy mix of personal photographs and ad campaigns from the past 20 years. (Although it seems hard to believe, it has been 20 years since her brother Gianni was murdered in Miami Beach and Donatella-his shy yet slinky, intuitively stylish muse/collaborator-assumed the role of artistic director of the brand.) She wore a narrow black crewneck, patchwork leather track pants in winter hues, and spindly yet sturdy ankle boots. She perched on a sofa. The tour had put her in a reflective mood. "No one, in the beginning, likes to be in front with the responsibility for everything," she said. "It was very hard to justify myself. It took a long time to arrive at today, with no more fears."

Vulnerability and the vixen: such an unlikely combination. For those who know Donatella, it is the former that is most endearing. She is self-critical, thoughtful, curious, a devoted mom to her rocker/environmentally concerned son and hardworking daughter, a mensch disguised as a bombshell. To many the world over, she is an icon of the inscrutable and the glossy, the stuff of paparazzi and parody. But what is undeniable to all is her cumulative influence on style culture right now. Behold a red carpet from here to the Middle East and see nonstop Versace (not just her clothes, because not everyone can wear Versace, but her ideas picked over by others in the high-slit/high-wattage game). Consider the current crop of social superstars-the sisters Hadid, Jenner, and Kardashian-and in their ironed tresses, permatans, and chiseled features one sees Donatella. By day they wear leather sweats and vertiginous heels, and by night, chain mail.

And who can forget our former First Lady at her final state dinner, resplendent in rose-gold Atelier Versace? It is Michelle Obama and women of her stature and intelligence who most inspire the designer these days. If she used to swoon over pop stars and cultural enfants terribles, she is now thinking power suits for fall ("It has been a long time") and the working gals who require them. At the Waldorf, Donatella spoke of elections (U.S., Brexit) and resignations (Renzi) and global warming (her son's influence). And mostly she talked about the need for fashion to speak directly to the women thinking about such matters. "This is life today," she said. "This must become luxury, because we are luxurious." -Sally Singer
Mary-Kate & Ashley Olsen
One feels luxuriously dressed in a calm, pure, and minimal way," says Cate Blanchett, serene and soigné in a cashmere blanket coat from the label she's lauding: The Row. Like Blanchett herself, The Row is synonymous with quality and a kind of independent synergy. Of course, she's hardly the only fan: Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen's customers are helping the eleven-year-old label claim the mantle of the wardrobe of our time in the same way that Donna Karan defined New York women's essentials in the nineties.

Behind their international success, Mary-Kate and Ashley have always worked privately and mindfully, showing beautiful clothes their way, sans spectacle. In fact, they loathe fuss. But how did two former child stars-who just turned 30 this past June-become such connoisseurs of so many different women's wardrobes? The twins are as succinct in their response as they are in their designs: "Continuity," says Mary-Kate. "We are a trustworthy brand that really sells exactly what we say we're selling." Adds Ashley: "The only people we feel we need to answer to are our clients."

They attribute their perfectionist resolve to having been given a voice at a very young age and having sat in many meetings with heads of the entertainment and finance industries, allowing both of them to hone their ability to decipher "the good influences versus the bad influences," as Ashley puts it, while staying focused. "We own our brand. We don't get pushed in any direction."

With the exception of a few Italian knits, they manufacture all of their ready-to-wear in the United States. "That means a lot," Mary-Kate says. "We've created at least 80 jobs." Their elegant designs, by their very nature, challenge fast fashion.

As it turns out, the Olsens were ahead of their time in more than just style. In their April 2001 issue of Mary-Kate and Ashley magazine, they predicted Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign as part of a feature devoted to the question "When will we get our first female president, and who might it be?" Sixteen years later, their designs defy age and-even though they have just launched menswear-gender. "It's more about respecting one another, whether you're a female or a male or whatever," says Mary-Kate. With the Women's March on Washington then around the corner, she adds, "Women are not the only ones that feel this way-a lot of people feel it. The atmosphere around the entire globe is very interesting right now."

"What's going to happen tomorrow? Collectively, I feel everyone is asking that," says Ashley, who's made a positive attitude her goal of the year. "What we've built so far is pretty incredible. I would like to push that further-but also to be a little lighter on ourselves." -Emma Elwick-Bates

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15 Iconic Female Designers on Where Fashion-and the World-Are Going

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"What we as women have to really focus on now is our intention to ﬁght for our rights, but to do it with dignity-not whining, not crying. Since we are stronger than men, we shouldn't be afraid of our own strength."

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The " Like A Virgin" and " Material Girl" singer, Madonna Ciccone, turns 58 on Tuesday, and with her birthday comes a flood of memories of her all-time best hits. While Madonna is undoubtedly a talent known for her continued fierceness and ongoing success, she is also a figure to look up to.

With power and confidence, Madonna has proven herself amongst other talented artists both before and after her career peaked in the '80s and '90s and continues to prove herself as anything but mediocre - something that she says keeps her driven over time.

While "mediocre" is by no means a word to describe this renowned pop icon, " feminist" definitely is, and for a variety of reasons. From breaking stereotypes to testing boundaries, Madonna refuses to be treated as anything other than the star she is.

Read on for six quotes that prove she's a true feminist.

1. "Poor is the man whose pleasure depends on the permission of another."

2. "Better to live one year as a tiger than a hundred as a sheep."

3. "I don't follow the rules. I never did, and I'm not going to start."

4. "If you aren't willing to fight for what you believe in, then don't even enter the ring."

5. "The fact that I showed my naked body does not mean that I bared my soul."

6. "A lot of people are afraid to say what they want. That's why they don't get what they want."
NEXT: What Marilyn Monroe Can Teach Us About Feminism On Her 90th Birthday "
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Photo Credit: Röhnert/ullstein bild via Getty Images

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These Quotes Prove That Madonna Is a Feminist Role Model

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The "Like A Virgin" and "Material Girl" singer, Madonna Ciccone, turns 58 on Tuesday, and with her birthday comes a flood of memories of her all-time best hits. While Madonna is undoubtedly a talent known for her continued fierceness and ongoing success, she is also a figure to look up to.

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Just last week, Madonna didn't hold back in an amazing installment of "Carpool Karaoke", but at the Billboard Women in Music Awards on Friday, the iconic singer got real in whole other way in her acceptance speech for the honor of Woman of the Year.

In a decidedly blunt speech, Madonna spoke up about her views on feminism and the many instances of sexism that she's encountered as a woman working in the music industry. She got right to the point in the opening sentence of her acceptance: "I stand before you as a doormat. Oh, I mean, as a female entertainer," Madonna said. "Thank you for acknowledging my ability to continue my career for 34 years in the face of blatant sexism and misogyny and constant bullying and relentless abuse."

Madonna spoke about the struggles she faced early on in her career, even mentioning that in 1979, when she moved to New York City, she was held up at gunpoint, robbed, and raped with a knife to her throat. She said this difficult time taught her that belief in herself was the only real safety in life. Also, around this time her life, Madonna said that David Bowie became a major source of inspiration for her as he broke with gender norms as an artist.

Eventually, however, Madonna found that women in music were not allowed the same freedom as men to break with traditional archetypes.

"If you're a girl, you have to play the game," she said before outlining its rules. "You're allowed to be pretty and cute and sexy. But don't act too smart. Don't have an opinion that's out of line with the status quo. You are allowed to be objectified by men and dress like a slut, but don't own your sluttiness. And do not, I repeat do not, share your own sexual fantasies with the world. Be what men want you to be, but more importantly, be what women feel comfortable with you being around other men. And finally, do not age. Because to age is a sin. You will be criticized and vilified and definitely not played on the radio."

The singer also recalled a time that she was criticized as someone who hindered the progress of women through her ultra sexy image. One feminist writer, Camille Paglia, wrote that by objectifying herself sexually, she set back all women, to which Madonna says she thought, "Oh, if you're a feminist, you don't have sexuality, you deny it. So I said, 'F*ck it. I'm a different kind of feminist. I'm a bad feminist.'"

Ultimately, however, Madonna said that women supporting each other will be the key a continued fight against sexism.

"What I would like to say to all women here today is this: Women have been so oppressed for so long they believe what men have to say about them," she said. "They believe they have to back a man to get the job done. And there are some very good men worth backing, but not because they're men-because they're worthy. As women, we have to start appreciating our own worth and each other's worth. Seek out strong women to befriend, to align yourself with, to learn from, to collaborate with, to be inspired by, to support, and enlightened by."

If her inspirational words weren't enough, Madge also wore an outfit that perfectly mirrored the points about feminism made her in speech. She showed off a custom suit by Gucci's Alessandro Michele that featured a ton of stunning embroidery, plus most significantly, a panel across her back with the word "Euterpe" emblazoned in red.

In Greek mythology, Euterpe is the name of the muse of music. As the Woman of the Year at a major music event-and as points out, one totally in control of her own image (literally wearing a custom-made outfit)-Madonna proves she's owning her own myth.
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Madonna Made Two Powerful Statements at the Billboard Women in Music Awards

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Just last week, Madonna didn't hold back in an amazing installment of "Carpool Karaoke", but at the Billboard Women in Music Awards on Friday, the iconic singer got real in whole other way in her acceptance speech for the honor of Woman of the Year.

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For Op-Ed's 40th anniversary, author and professor Camille Paglia recounts the story behind her 1990 Op-Ed about feminism, Madonna, and the music video "Justify My Love."

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Madonna is notorious for utilizing and marketing her sexuality to fans, critics, and the general public. Her sexual rolling dance in her "Like a Virgin" performance was only the beginning how far she was willing to go. Soon masturbation on stage, perpetual humping choreography, on stage simulated sex, and violation of inanimate objects were added to her repertoire. Madonna has acted as both the slave driver and the objectified women chained to a bed. Many do not link over the top sexuality with feminism, in fact most view degradation of women as an example of patriarchal values inherent in society. Madonna replied to critics "But I chained myself! I'm in charge." Despite this response one may wonder how being the slave of male desire conveys a feminist attitude?

Using her sexuality Madonna morphed from a young pop princess into a shrewd business women, and turned her image into a multimillion-dollar company. As far as feminists are concerned parading around and acting brazenly does not seem to fit the bill; however, feminism is supposed to shy away from the female cult of domesticity. Madonna used her sexuality to sell herself as a brand, while subsequently rallying and pushing away feminists. It may be argued however, that Madonna's use of sexuality would be the future of feminism; a future with women running the show. Subsequently more women have followed suit over the past few decades, using their openness to sexual human behavior as a catalyst for success, fame, and power.

-Do you think Madonna's use of sexuality embodies early feminism?

-How about modern feminism?

-Is using your feminine sexuality to become a mogul really feminism?

-How would modern feminists react to Madonna's use of sexuality?

Like a Feminist
Tentler, Kate. The Village Voice. New York: Nov 24, 1992. Vol. 37, Iss. 47; p. 22 (1 page)

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Madonna is notorious for utilizing and marketing her sexuality to fans, critics, and the general public. Her sexual rolling dance in her "Like a Virgin" performance was only the beginning how far she was willing to go. Soon masturbation on stage, perpetual humping choreography, on stage simulated sex, and violation of inanimate objects were added to her repertoire.

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Madonna gives emotional speech about misogyny, feminism

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Madonna delivers blistering speech following acceptance of Billboard magazine's Woman of the Year, award, decrying music industry misogyny and chauvinism, and being a feminist. Rough Cut (No Reporter Narration).

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Her detractors didn't agree. Who, they cried, wanted to see the actresses 'fried eggs'? Some, unkind, commentators referred to her appearance in the Pirates of the Caribbean film 'Dead Man's Chest'.

Now, just weeks later, Madonna is under fire for committing the same offence.

How dare she? At 56, no less. I'd wager you won't see a report today that doesn't mention her age alongside her cup size.

'Still got it!' a few have already trilled.

Groan. They've utterly missed the point.

Madonna's decision to pose topless has nothing to do with showing-off her wrinkle-free cleavage - nor male titillation. That she's an older woman is powerful, yes. But, to me, it seems pretty clear that this is far from a pop star trying to prove that she's 'still hot' in her fifties.

Keira in Interview magazine. Photo: Patrick Demarchelier/Interview

Madonna's age is just a convenient stick to beat her with. It's an easy reason for critics to cry 'put 'em away' without, on the surface, seeming sexist.

Because there's always something, isn't there? Always a reason that a woman's body isn't deemed 'suitable'. Breasts too small a la Knightley? No thanks. A middle-aged pop star? What the hell was she thinking?

Of course, Madonna is no stranger to nudity. Frankly, she's been taking her clothes off for decades. Her decision to pose for Interview is, then, perhaps less surprising than Knightley's. But it's no less powerful a statement. Here is a woman still at the top of her industry, after almost 40 years. She's weathered numerous musical trends and managed to stay relevant. Why shouldn't she pose with her breasts exposed?

After all, she pretty much started it.

Indeed, just a couple of weeks ago, Madonna posted a censored topless picture of herself from the Nineties, in response to the images of Kim Kardashian's oiled, nude backside in Paper magazine.

'It's confusing,' she wrote. 'Nipples are considered forbidden and provocative but exposing your ass is not. #flummoxed' (sic).

Here is a clear indication that Madonna knew her latest photo shoot would shock. Let's face it, she's saying, topless pictures of famous women always have.

We might be used to seeing pictures of seeing flat chested models in fashion magazines (think Kate Moss on the beach, or backstage at a catwalk show).

Photo: Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott/www.interviewmagazine.com

But a model's body is a commodity - it's the vehicle she's using to sell products. For stars such as Madonna and Knightly, it's different. They are selling their own image, not someone elses. Choosing to bear their breasts is a feminist statement, not a requirement. They are saying: 'Here I am. Take me, or leave me'.

Of course, Madonna and Knightley both have exceptional body types compared to us mere mortals. But, the fact remains. When it all gets too 'real', we simply can't handle it.

There's undeniably an element of desire wrapped-up in all this. Knightley was criticised for being 'unfeminine'. Small boobs aren't traditionally seen as covetable. Neither are those of an older woman.

So, isn't it a blessing that we have these strong, famous women brave enough to turn unrealistic thinking on its head and show us that the female body comes in many forms?

Madonna is flying in the face of what the naked woman 'should' look like. She's controlling her own image, just as she's always done. Her attitude? Just because she's in her fifties, why should she hide away?

The sugary pink cardigan that exposes her breasts in the Interview picture, says it all. 'I'm not ready to button-up like a little old lady. Thanks all the same'.

We all should applaud her (preferably while wearing cut-off PVC gloves) for it.

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Madonna's topless photos are a triumph for all women - whatever their age

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Her detractors didn't agree. Who, they cried, wanted to see the actresses 'fried eggs'? Some, unkind, commentators referred to her appearance in the Pirates of the Caribbean film 'Dead Man's Chest'. Now, just weeks later, Madonna is under fire for committing the same offence. How dare she? At 56, no less.

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Madonna has always been an example of a strong, subversive woman in the music industry. But her speech at this weekend's Billboard Women in Music Awards - where she was honored as Woman of the Year - highlighted her struggle as a female in an industry that historically favors men.

"Thank you for acknowledging my ability to continue my career for 34 years in the face of blatant misogyny, sexism, constant bullying, and relentless abuse," Madonna said, effectively silencing the entire room of attendees. But she continued, bravely recounting the story of her rape on the rooftop of a New York City apartment building, as well as the backlash she encountered from both men and women as a female performer who owned her sexuality.

But one of the more poignant points of Madonna's lacerating speech was the music industry's unwillingness to support women of a certain age. She sent out a warning to women, detailing the "game" they must play in order to survive as a musician. The caution finished with a whammy: "And finally, do not age. Because to age is a sin. You will be criticized. You will be vilified. And you will definitely not be played on the radio."

Madonna's warning is more true than we've likely realized. Female musicians have a much harder time maintaining a career over the age of 40 than their male counterparts. Think about it: David Bowie recorded well-received music until his death earlier this year at the age of 69. The Rolling Stones just released their 25th album this month, even though most of their members are well into their 70s. And older men in the industry are pulling more coin touring than their female counterparts. According to Billboard, Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band headlined the highest-grossing tour of 2016 as of July. Madonna was second, pulling in over $123 million. But she was also the only female act over 40 on the entire list. As for the men? Aside from 'ol Brucie, you have The Rolling Stones, David Gilmour of Pink Floyd, and Iron Maiden - so four out of 10 spots are taken by dudes over 50. Angry yet?

What's more is that these aged male rock stars maintain the status of "sex symbol" they earned in their youth. Mick Jagger just welcomed his eighth child at the ripe old age of 73 and no one batted an eyelash. For older female musicians, their sexuality is a joke to be made on Twitter. Madonna, who was once the pinnacle of sexiness, walked the red carpet at this year's Met Gala in a sheer dress that exposed her (amazingly taught) butt. When she was younger, this look was her signature, and one that launched a thousand look-alikes. But this year, she was smeared, and the image was slapped across a handful of "worst dressed" lists.

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Where Are All Of The Older Female Musicians?

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Madonna has always been an example of a strong, subversive woman in the music industry. But her speech at this weekend's Billboard Women in Music Awards - where she was honored as Woman of the Year - highlighted her struggle as a female in an industry that historically favors men.

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Camille Paglia has accused Madonna of "maudlin self pity" after the singer claimed she had missed out on female support at the beginning of her career.

Madonna spoke out about the sexism, misogyny, and abuse she has struggled with over the years while accepting Billboard's Woman of the Year award. In her speech, she also criticised Paglia, a famed feminist critic, for allegedly claiming she "set women back" by objectifying herself sexually.

"Camille Paglia, the famous feminist writer, said I set women back by objectifying myself sexually. So I thought, 'oh, if you're a feminist, you don't have sexuality, you deny it.' So I said 'f**k it. I'm a different kind of feminist. I'm a bad feminist'," she said in her speech.

Paglia, an American academic who is known for seminal feminist work Sexual Personae, has now maintained that she was one of Madonna's first major supporters. She has also drawn attention to her 1990 comment piece in the New York Times titled "Madonna - Finally, a Real Feminist".

"It is truly tragic to see Madonna descend into embarrassing displays of maudlin self-pity and irrational accusations against others," Paglia said in a scathing statement to the .

Paglia suggested Madonna had become a "prisoner of her own wealth and fame". She also claimed that the media were previously keen to bring her and Madonna together but the musician was not keen.

"It is absolutely ridiculous for Madonna to now claim that she longed to ally with other women at the start of her career but was rebuffed from doing so. The media, in the US and abroad, constantly asked Madonna about me or tried to bring us together, and she always refused."

While accepting her award last week, Madonna said: "I stand before you as a doormat. Oh, I mean, as a female entertainer."

"Thank you for acknowledging my ability to continue my career for 34 years in the face of blatant sexism and misogyny and constant bullying and relentless abuse," she continued. She then went on to discuss her muse, David Bowie, who "embodied male and female spirit" and "made me think there were no rules. But I was wrong. There are no rules - if you're a boy. There are rules if you're a girl."

A representative for Madonna did not immediately respond to request for comment.

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A feminist critic has slammed Madonna for 'maudlin self-pity' over her Billboard speech

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Camille Paglia has accused Madonna of "maudlin self pity" after the singer claimed she had missed out on female support at the beginning of her career. Madonna spoke out about the sexism, misogyny, and abuse she has struggled with over the years while accepting Billboard's Woman of the Year award.

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Madonna's right - ageism does exist and it's often linked to sexism. You just have to look at your TV screen to see how few women over 50 there are compared to men. In fact a new report is being published tomorrow by the Government's older workers' champion Ros Altman, which will say that a double whammy of ageism plus sexism effective ends womens' careers at 45.

However, Madge is off the money on this one - accusing those who have expressed shock about her naked bum cheeks of ageism. Prudish, maybe. Ageist? No. Not in this instance. If Rihanna, Cara Delevingne or any other younger celeb had flashed her bum cheeks on the red carpet, many would have reacted in much the same way. People are bothered by naked flesh full stop. Regardless of whether it belongs to a 56-year-old woman.

Of course Madonna has experienced ageism before - Jimmy Carr's HRT joke at the Brits anyone? As a woman in her 50s in Hollywood, that's sadly inevitable. But it's important to make the distinction that her bum did not make headlines because she's middle-aged - it did so because she's a famous woman who shocked everyone at a major awards ceremony - something Madonna is a pro at.

As much as ageism is a major social problem, we mustn't see it where it doesn't exist. Take Germaine Greer. At the weekend she said that feminism has become ageist, focusing too much on younger women, to the exclusion of children and the elderly. "Give me the right to grow up, let me age," she told the All About Women festival in Sydney. "In our society elder women have no respect."

No disrespect to 76-year-old Greer, but from my experience of feminism as a 24-year-old, I don't think this is true. On the same day that she was making that statement, millions of women across the world came together to celebrate International Women's Day - their age was both wide-ranging and irrelevant.

In the UK, 600 women of different ages came together to march through London with Dr Helen Pankhurst and her 20-year-old daughter Laura. At the Southbank Centre's Women of the World festival, thousands of young women listened to talks given by 'older' women - Sandi Toksvig, 56; Annie Lennox, 60; and event organiser Jude Kelly, 60.

Dr Helen Pankhurst and her daughter Laura outside the Houses of Parliament

If anything, these women were the ones who received the biggest cheers. I know. I was sat in the audience. This was because they're the ones who have been in the business far longer than us 20-somethings, and they're the ones we look up to for knowledge and guidance. We don't just respect them; we want to be them.

Strong female role models are scarce in the world, and most girls and young women want to grab onto as many as they can. Society is slowly starting to acknowledge this too - mentoring programmes are on the rise, and even politicians know that visible older role models are crucial to getting girls into STEM and male-dominated careers.

Greer herself is one of those role models. She's basically the founding mother of modern feminism, and young feminists always seek out her opinion as one they can trust. That's why it's such a shame to hear that Greer thinks she's being excluded from this wave of sisterhood because of her age.

She isn't. Feminism doesn't have an ageist problem - the audience make-up of every major festival proves that to me. But it does seem to have a different issue: communication.

Germaine Greer

On one side, younger women want older mentors. They want to speak to these experienced women who they respect, and some do. But there's also a large group who feel like they can't - that the older women won't have time for them/won't take them seriously because of their age/will think they're immature.

At the same time, those older women look on the young with suspicion. They can't see why these teens and 20-somethings want to talk to them when they could be queuing up to speak to Lena Dunham, Laura Bates, or at least 39-year-old Caitlin Moran - and so they tend to avoid seeking out contact.

This lack of communication is feminism's real problem, and it's one that women of all ages need to counter. Both groups need to find the confidence to get over age barriers and view women as just that: women.

Then perhaps we can stop seeing ageism where it doesn't exist, and instead focus on battling the very real examples of age discrimination that need our collective attention and energy.

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Madonna's bum isn't shocking because she's 56 - stop with the fake ageism

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Madonna's right - ageism does exist and it's often linked to sexism. You just have to look at your TV screen to see how few women over 50 there are compared to men. In fact a new report is being published tomorrow by the Government's older workers' champion Ros Altman, which will say that a double whammy of ageism plus sexism effective ends womens' careers at 45.

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Madonna Vs: Lady Gaga: Making A Statement On Feminisim

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Madonna's world famous conical bra was a statement on mixing femininity and aggression, so we can't help but think Lady Gaga's sparkling bodice number may have been the next step on this front. Picture: Getty

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Just as it was once fashionable among "cool" feminists to love Madonna, it is now permissible to acknowledge that she is tres passe. Or as someone exclaimed the other day when I was talking about Madonna: "I mean, who cares?" The truth is a lot of us still care about Madonna. Too few contemporary female cultural icons have dared to support the feminist movement or feminist thinking. Yet from the start of her career, Madonna claimed to be into "women's lib." Charting her journey to fame and fortune we learn much about the nature of being female in the age of the feminist movement and the organized backlash which seeks to crush it by inventing terms like "post feminist." Looking at where Madonna came from and where she is now, we face the harsh reality that feminism, though nowhere near "post," is definitely in danger of being usurped by false representations of women's liberation that suggest we're so free we can now have it all, be victims, oppressors, whatever we choose. After all, free will and the zeal to work hard is all it takes to make it big time in the free enterprise system. And Madonna, the great high priestess of making it big time, seems to be losing her will to subvert and transform the system and the culture as she revels in the power of having made it.

Fiercely critical of Madonna when I see her work projecting the worst aspects of white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal culture, I am also fiercely affirming of her successful attempts to challenge sexist notions of womanhood, female sexuality, and the like. Those progressive dimensions of Madonna's work are evoked when she explains her reasons for doing the Sex book (celebrating sexuality, challenging corrupt patriarchal constructions of family values); when she champions gay rights; when she opposes censorship; when she contributes to AIDS activism. Yet these days, Madonna's progressive political agendas are being undermined, threatened by her seemingly desperate longing to be "one of the boys" - to be inducted into the white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal hall of fame. At this stage of her career she reminds all of us that even the most progressive and radical among us on the culture scene can undermine positive political actions if we become so enamored of our power that we think it's fine if we project progressive politics when it's in our own interests to do so, while simultaneously reinforcing oppressive norms because we feel like it and/or because it's good for business.

This damaging undermining position is exposed in the October issue of Vanity Fair which highlights Madonna. A frightening gap separates the radical vision of the sexuality Madonna projects in the interview with Maureen Orth (evocatively titled "The Material Girl's Sexual (R)Evolution") and the boringly conventional "kiddie pom" photographs accompanying the text. Seeing the over30 Madonna, re-inventing herself as little girl sex kitten for the thrill of holding onto the sustained patriarchal pornographic gaze of anyone looking, exposes the ways aging in a sexist society can disrupt any woman's allegiances to radical politics. What is the "material girl" to do when she has fast become a woman in an economy of cultural images where her power is so deeply rooted in the romance of youth? Madonna's re-invention of herself in the little girl "porn" image comes across primarily as a ritualistic, opportunistic attempt to keep alive the image of herself as forever young. Casting herself as the little girl on the playground sex symbol, Madonna betrays her earlier radical questioning of sexist objectification of women and announces via these photos that she is willing to play with the boys on their own terms.

Gone is the "hot" Madonna fiercely challenging the status quo. There is nothing "fierce" or interesting about these photographs.

And they do not evoke in me a fierce response. Looking at them I just simply felt sad: That after all her daring, her courageous challenging of sexist constructions of female sexuality, Madonna, at the peak of her power, has stopped pushing against the system. Her new work has no radical edge. It reveals only that she has fully succumbed to the seduction of that white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal insistence that no woman dare escape sexist objectification - the misogynist pornographic gaze that assaults, rapes and violates.

No, the Madonna of today would have women believe that we gain our freedom by embracing the phallocentric perspective, taking over and occupying patriarchal territory so that we do the "dick thing" better than any man ever could.

And is it supposed to make us feminists feel proud, like we won the revolution, when Madonna asserts: "I wouldn't want a penis.It would be lifesaving. It would seem like a contraption that would get in the way. I think I have a dick in my brain. I don't need to have one between my legs."? No doubt that "dick" in her brain accounts for Madonna's that matter, women's liberation, was never about trying to gain the right to be dicks in drag. But I seem to recall that the men I knew back then, you know, when the contemporary feminist movement was "hot," all believed that us little women didn't really want our freedom, we just wanted to be one of the boys. And, in fact, those same men, no doubt thinking through the dicks in their brains, told us that if we "women libbers" just had a good fuck, we would all come to our senses and forget all about liberation. We would, in fact, lean to find pleasure in being dominated. And when feminists did not fall for this dick-thing rap, they tried to seduce us into believing with our brains and our bodies that the ultimate power was to be found in being able to choose to be dominated or dominating. Well, many of us said "thank you but no thanks." And, well, some of us were tempted and began to think that if we could not really have our freedom then the next best thing would be to have the right to be dicks in drag, phallocentric girls doing everything the boys do - only better.

It is this "gaslighting" seductive rap that seduced Madonna so that she, with much grace, "cool," and downright boldness of spirit, shares that same rap with her feminist sisters and all her other fans. Speaking from the perspective of the "dick" in her brain, most of the recent images she projects in videos, films, photographs, etc. tell women and everyone that the thrill, the big orgasm, the real freedom is in experiencing being both dominated and dominating.

Madonna's feminist fans, once so adoring, are on the positive tip when we insist that we want an end to domination, when we resist her allure by saying no - no more seduction and betrayal. We long for the return of the feminist Madonna, the kind of cultural icon Susan Griffin celebrates in Woman and Nature when she writes: "We heard of this woman who was out of control. We heard that she was led by her feelings. That her emotions were violent. That she was impetuous. That she violated and overrode convention...We say we have listened to her voice asking, 'Of what materials can that heart be composed which can melt when insulted and instead of revolting at injustice, kiss the rod?'...And from what is dark and deep within us, we say, tyranny revolts us; we will not kiss the rod."

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On The Issues Magazine: Spring 1993: Desperately Seeking Madonna, The Feminist

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Just as it was once fashionable among "cool" feminists to love Madonna, it is now permissible to acknowledge that she is tres passe. Or as someone exclaimed the other day when I was talking about Madonna: "I mean, who cares?" The truth is a lot of us still care about Madonna.

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Madonna spoke about sexism, ageism, and misogyny during her speech at the Billboard Women in Music event on Friday

The 58-year-old called out Camille in her speech, claiming that the writer said she 'set women back' by objectifying herself sexually

The writer actually hailed Madonna as a 'true feminist' in a 1990s op-ed, and Camille maintains that she was one of the singer's 'first defenders'

Camille discussed the pop star's 'path of self-destruction' and her 'embarrassing inability to deal with aging' in a statement shared with Daily Mail Online

Madonna made waves at the Billboard Women in Music event with her powerful speech about sexism, ageism, and misogyny, but feminist Camille Paglia is hitting back at the iconic singer for her claims that she was rebuffed when looking for female support at the start of her career.

During her speech on Friday, the 58-year-old recalled wishing for a female peer at the start of career and specifically called out Camille, claiming that the famous writer said she 'set women back' by objectifying herself sexually. However, in 1990 it was Camille who hailed Madonna a 'true feminist'.

'It is absolutely ridiculous for Madonna to now claim that she longed to ally with other women at the start of her career but was rebuffed from doing so,' Camille, 69, explained in an exclusive statement to Daily Mail Online.

'The media, in the U.S. and abroad, constantly asked Madonna about me or tried to bring us together, and she always refused,' she added.

In her struggles to stay relevant, Madonna has debased herself with adolescent, pitifully inept Instagrams

Camille noted that in 1994, Esquire actually asked her to interview the singer for a cover story, but Madonna was the one who 'rejected the proposal'.

'Instead, they got the geriatric novelist Norman Mailer, who knew nothing about Madonna or popular music, with predictably vapid results,' Camille recalled. 'HBO wanted to film Madonna and me conversing at a restaurant. Again, she rejected it. And Penthouse too proposed a joint cover story that was shot down.'

Although Madonna claimed in her speech that Camille opposed her and her music, the writer argued that she was 'Madonna's first major defender, when she was still considered a pop tart and a sham puppet created by shadowy male producers.'

Camille went on to reference her 'ultra-controversial' 1990 New York Times op-ed, 'Finally, a Real Feminist', in which she celebrated Madonna for embracing sex, beauty and Hollywood glamour.

'I was widely attacked for my finale, which was dismissed as preposterous but which in fact came true: "Madonna is the future of feminism".'

Camille still cites Madonna as 'one of the most creative and influential women artists of the modern era', but she argued that the singer's 'artistic development has been stalled for 20 years' an she has become a 'prisoner of her own wealth and fame'.

'It is truly tragic to see Madonna descend into embarrassing displays of maudlin self-pity and irrational accusations against others,' Camille added. 'She is turning into a horrifying combination of delusional, vampiric Norma Desmond and bitter Joan Crawford on the bottle.'

In her speech, Madonna also spoke about ageism, explaining that for women, 'to age is a sin' and they will be criticized, but Camille stated that the singer's 'number one issue' on her path of self-destruction is her 'embarrassing inability to deal with aging'.

Camille noted that while Madonna's role model, Marlene Dietrich, retained her class and style until her death, the singer is making a fool of herself 'with vulgar displays while trying to remain youthful.

Last May, Madonna wore a breast and buttock-baring Givenchy outfit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art Gala, and while she said the controversial ensemble was a 'political statement' fighting ageism and the notion that women can't be sexy at a certain age, Camille firmly disagreed.

'She has become a cringe-making pastiche of ratty blonde hair extensions and artificially swollen cheeks, obscuring the magnificent classic bone structure that made her one of the most photogenic celebrities of the 1990s,' Camille said.

'In her struggles to stay relevant, Madonna has debased herself with adolescent, pitifully inept Instagrams that cannot compete with Rihanna's brilliant work in that genre.

'Instead of lugubrious rants and hysterical recriminations, perhaps Madonna should try a little honest self-critique.'

READ CAMILLE PAGLIA'S FULL RESPONSE TO MADONNA

Madonna is one of the most creative and influential women artists of the modern era. She transformed music and dance and produced stunning videos that were among the major works of art of the late twentieth century. She single-handedly broke the power of the Stalinist puritans of old-guard feminism and was instrumental in the triumph of pro-sex feminism in the 1990s.

Hence it is truly tragic to see Madonna descend into embarrassing displays of maudlin self-pity and irrational accusations against others. She is turning into a horrifying combination of delusional, vampiric Norma Desmond and bitter Joan Crawford on the bottle.

I was Madonna's first major defender, when she was still considered a pop tart and a sham puppet created by shadowy male producers. In my ultra-controversial 1990 op-ed on her in the New York Times, 'Finally, a Real Feminist', I hailed her cutting-edge work and celebrated her embrace of sex, beauty, and Hollywood glamour, which had been under attack for the past quarter century of dreary second-wave feminism. I was widely attacked for my finale, which was dismissed as preposterous but which in fact came true: 'Madonna is the future of feminism'.

It is absolutely ridiculous for Madonna to now claim that she longed to ally with other women at the start of her career but was rebuffed from doing so. The media, in the U.S. and abroad, constantly asked Madonna about me or tried to bring us together, and she always refused.

For example, in 1994, Esquire magazine asked me to interview her for a cover story, but she rejected the proposal. Instead, they got the geriatric novelist Norman Mailer, who knew nothing about Madonna or popular music, with predictably vapid results. HBO wanted to film Madonna and me conversing at a restaurant. Again, she rejected it. And Penthouse too proposed a joint cover story that was shot down.

The real issue is that while Madonna's world tours have remained highly successful, her artistic development has been stalled for 20 years. The last truly innovative work she did was with electronica producer William Orbit. Madonna has become a prisoner of her own wealth and fame. Her most authentic ideas were inspired by her childhood rebellion against the repressive code of American Catholicism.

When she switched over to Hollywood chic Kabbalah, with its easy-going ethic and pat bromides, she lost her creative drive. Furthermore, Madonna seems to lack the humility and persistence that are required for the study of serious art. She collects art for display, but obviously it has not broadened or deepened her imagination.

The number one issue in Madonna's current path of self-destruction is her embarrassing inability to deal with aging. She has failed to study the example of her great role model, Marlene Dietrich, who retained her class and style to the end. Madonna keeps chasing after youth, humiliating herself with vulgar displays, like the horrendously trashy, buttock-baring outfit she wore to the Metropolitan Museum of Art Gala in May.

She has become a cringe-making pastiche of ratty blonde hair extensions and artificially swollen cheeks, obscuring the magnificent classic bone structure that made her one of the most photogenic celebrities of the 1990s. In her struggles to stay relevant, Madonna has debased herself with adolescent, pitifully inept Instagrams that cannot compete with Rihanna's brilliant work in that genre.

Instead of lugubrious rants and hysterical recriminations, perhaps Madonna should try a little honest self-critique.

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Camille Paglia hits back at Madonna's claims that she rebuffed by her

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Madonna spoke about sexism, ageism, and misogyny during her speech at the Billboard Women in Music event on Friday The 58-year-old called out Camille in her speech, claiming that the writer said she 'set women back' by objectifying herself sexually The writer actually hailed Madonna as a 'true feminist' in

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www.theory.org.uk Resources: Madonna and queer theory

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Information on Theodor Adorno prepared by David Gauntlett, Professor of Media and Communications at University of Westminster.

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Madonna has said that women are "still the most marginalised group" in society.

In an interview with Out magazine, Madonna echoed Patricia Arquette's recent Oscars acceptance speech by claiming that women were failing to make the same progress as gay people and African Americans.

She said: "Gay rights are way more advanced than women's rights. People are a lot more open-minded to the gay community than they are to women, period."

The Rebel Heart singer added: "It's moved along for the gay community, for the African-American community, but women are still just trading on their ass. To me, the last great frontier is women."

Elsewhere in the interview, Madonna criticised the fact that women are still expected to behave in certain ways, and referenced recent comments by Björk, in which the Icelandic songwriter said she struggled to get credit for her artistic ideas: "People are always saying, 'So he's the producer,' or 'Who produced it?' and I have to say, 'I did. I co-produced that with Diplo. I co-produced that with Kanye.' Whatever - everything is a co-production. I'm the one who stays in the studio throughout, from beginning to end - all of these people come and go."

At the Oscars in February, Patricia Arquette collected the award for best supporting actress and used her speech in order to call for equal pay and gender equality. Arquette said afterwards: "It's time for all the women in America and all the men who love women and all the gay people and all the people of colour that we've fought for, to fight for us now." These latter comments drew criticism from some quarters, with feminist writer Roxane Gay tweeting: "The idea that queers & POC have had their time in the struggle spotlight long enough. Eek. Ma'am."

Madonna did go on to talk of her love of the gay community in the interview, however, saying she always felt "understood" by gay men. "I didn't feel like straight men understood me," she said. "They just wanted to have sex with me. Gay men understood me, and I felt comfortable around them. There was only that one problem, which is that they didn't want to have sex with me! So ... conundrum! I was like, 'How am I ever going to get a date? Maybe if I cut my hair and I lose a lot of weight, someone will mistake me for a guy and ask me out.'"

Rebel Heart, Madonna's 13th studio album, was released on Monday. The record has been plagued by a bumpy promotional campaign, after the singer was criticised for posting images online that appeared to compare her to prominent black leaders such as Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela. During a performance at the Brit awards in February, the singer ended up suffering from whiplash after being pulled from the stage.

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Madonna: Women are the most marginalised group in society

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Madonna has said that women are "still the most marginalised group" in society. In an interview with Out magazine, Madonna echoed Patricia Arquette's recent Oscars acceptance speech by claiming that women were failing to make the same progress as gay people and African Americans. She said: "Gay rights are way more advanced than women's rights.

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Superstar. Chameleon. Truth-teller. Sexually liberated provocateur. Feminist. Mother. Artist.

This list of wholly accurate words and phrases you could use to describe Madonna is long and impressive. But, it's not complete. Yes, she's one of the few modern-day celebrities who can truly get away with a single-word moniker that's universally known and understood in every corner of the globe. But, much more interesting than that is the fact that Madonna has never shied away from the opportunity to evolve - even now, at the stage in her career where most artists would rest on their laurels and coast. Even more interesting still, she's a profoundly thoughtful human being who goes much deeper than you could possibly imagine.

With the release of her 13th studio album, Rebel Heart (which drops tomorrow), she's proving that at 56, she's as relevant as ever - maybe even more so. Despite a leak that forced her to move up the timeline and delivery of this album by several months, she's managed to whip up a frenzy among fans that is likely to result in the most expensive tour of 2015 (outpricing even Taylor Swift).

And, she's been smart about the whole campaign, releasing a new video on Snapchat, giving fans a chance to chat with her on Grindr, and doing an AMA on Instagram. Those are just a few examples of her creative approaches to marketing music to a fan base that's evolved considerably since she put out her first eponymous album in 1983, but they don't read like gimmicks, which is easily proven by the love and attention fans - both new and old - are doling out. Madonna found herself among the most talked-about arrivals (and performers) at the Grammys this year. When she suffered an injury after a fall on stage at the Brit Awards last month, the world came to her defense, when petty gossips gloated at her misfortune.

However, none of that is what you notice when you get the opportunity to sit down with the musician for a quiet chat. Clad in corseted lace and leather, with a diamond-encrusted whistle around her neck, Madonna reads immediately as Madonna, the superstar. But, once you start to talk and your nerves fade away a bit, all that's left is a thoughtful, fiercely confident woman who has many, many ideas about the world around us. Both what's wrong with it and how we can inspire the change we need to make life better for people - and especially women - around the globe. In the wake of International Women's Day, we can't imagine anything better. Ahead, all the insights we gleaned from our conversation with one of the most powerful celebrities in the world.

There's an incredible braggadocio to "Bitch I'm Madonna," your song with Nicki Minaj. Somehow, i t's still rare to see female pop stars go there, though. Was that a leap for you at all?

"No. I mean, I think a song like ' Express Yourself ' is just as sort of audacious, and it's certainly empowering. But, this is just a little bit more cheeky. I feel like I've earned the right to say, 'Bitch, I'm Madonna. Don't fuck with me.' I'm allowed to do this now. I've earned my stripes."

Do you think stars should have to earn their stripes to be able to project cockiness like that?
"Yes. I think it's good to earn it. I think everything has to be earned, and, you know, you're going to accept that kind of energy coming from somebody who's had a lot of life experience and understand that it's coming from an informed place, versus somebody who's just starting out."

On your path to that informed, experienced place, you fielded a lot of hate from people who didn't understand your brand of self-expression, or agree with your ideas about social justice. What do you want your newer fans, who didn't grow up seeing that, to know - especially about the lessons you learned during that time?
"It is important for them to realize that things that they take for granted weren't always as they are now. When I was coming up, the gay community was exceptionally marginalized, and if you were HIV-positive, you were treated like you had leprosy. There was a lot of discrimination and a lot of prejudice and a lot of craziness, and also, there wasn't a cure for AIDS. There was no ARVs. There was no way to keep people who were HIV-positive alive, so I was growing up in a time where people I loved and artists that I admired were dying all around me.

"I think people take it for granted now that if you have HIV, you can live a healthy life. Or, if you're gay, you can live an openly gay life. These things were not the norm when I was starting my career. And, nor was a woman expressing her sexuality. I mean, now, we have artists like Nicki Minaj and Miley Cyrus, who will very clearly and openly express their sexuality. But, when I did it, I got the shit kicked out of me for it. So, I think it's important for people to understand that it wasn't always this way - not for women, not for the gay community. We should all examine, even in pop culture."

So, given the progress that we have made - especially in light of the president's addressing bisexual and transgender rights for the first time ever in the State of the Union, and with the Supreme Court finally agreeing to hear gay marriage - what do you think the next social issue is that we need to focus our attention on?
"Well, I think that we still live in an incredibly sexist society, even though it seems like women have made a lot of strides. A woman is still put in a category, still put in boxes. You can be sexy, but you can't be smart. You can be smart, but you can't be sexy. You can be sexy, but you can't be 50.

"So, we live in a very ageist society, which means we live in a sexist society because nobody ever gives men shit for how they behave, however old they are. There is no rulebook. As a man, you can date whoever you want. You can dress however you want. You can do whatever you want in any area that you want. But, if you're a woman, there are rules, and there are boundaries. And, I feel like a lot of my biggest critics are women."

How do we solve for that?
"I think, as a whole, women need to be more supportive of each other."

Is mentorship the answer there? Or, do we need change that's deeper and more radical than that?
"That's part of it. I think women need to embrace one another. In our society, we have always wanted to pit women against each other. Strong, powerful women aren't comfortable in a room with other strong, powerful women - or they're two bitches that have to fight each other, or be competitive with one another. And, I think that we need to get rid of those stereotypes, and women need to embrace one another and be more vocally supportive of one another. Be happy for other women's success. That's important."

Do you think there's room for women to criticize each other in that world view?
"I think it depends on where the criticism is coming from. I mean, there's nothing wrong with criticism, as long as it's coming from the right place - as long as it's constructive criticism. But, there's no point in making disparaging remarks about somebody just for the sake of tearing them down and making them feel bad. And, that's what an awful lot of people do."

Speaking of woman-on-woman hate, you and Camille Paglia have had a complicated relationship over the years, where she was equal parts champion and critic of what you did and how you did it.
"I think she hated me."

Ha. But, at the same time, when everyone was up in arms over your video for "Justify My Love" she came most vocally to your defense, in a 1990 New York Times op ed. She wrote, "Madonna has taught young women to be fully female and sexual while still exercising total control over their lives." That taps into a conversation we're still having today about women and sexuality. Because, of course a woman should be able to own her sexuality and still be perceived as powerful. But, in today's pop world especially, is that display of sexuality always empowering - in the way you meant it to be? Sometimes, my fear is that while those ideas are completely right, the way they're executed recasts something that's really as much about titillating men as about empowering women. It's almost hiding under the guise of feminism.
"That's not the way I meant it. But, yes. For instance, when I published my sex book, I think that what freaked people out most about that was that it was from a very female point of view, and a lot of men were extremely uncomfortable with it - and I wasn't doing it to please men. I was doing it to please myself, and I think that really unnerved people. And, I think more women need to do that.

"I think a lot of women who are perceived as being sexually liberated are actually playing into the hands of what men want, what men feel safe with. And, you know, it would be good to know that you could be a viable, successful pop star in today's world without having a big ass, for instance. I've had this discussion with my 18-year-old daughter, who's said, 'Mom, what's going on? It's like if you don't have a video where you have a big ass, people aren't going to watch your video.' And, you know, it's interesting for her to make that observation."

You have formed the opinions and ideas of so many people when it comes to taking risks and not giving a shit about what people think. How do you summon that kind of fearlessness?
"Well, it's important to be fearless and educated. You can't just say, 'I don't give a shit, and I'm going to say what I want and do what I want and not be informed.' You need to be consciously aware of what's going on in the world, and you have to know your worth. Your worth ultimately isn't on the outside of you, but on the inside of you - because that's what lasts.

"What builds character is taking the road less traveled, sticking to your guns, earning your way through life, and not playing into what people expect of you. It's about not doing things because you want approval, but doing things because they reflect who you are and what you want to say. Those are self-empowering ideals.

"Of course, we all have to care about how we look, and, of course, we all do. I mean, we can't negate that, but the measure of one's worth has to come from the inside, and we don't live in a society that encourages that. We live in a society that encourages the opposite. That's why I think it's a scary time for women right now."

How do you find that strength to deal with that, on a personal level?
"Surround yourself with like-minded people. Always aim to be the stupidest person in the room, so that there's always somebody who you're looking up to; someone who's inspiring you and teaching you. Also, find something to love about yourself. I mean, we live in a culture that is really focused on self-loathing, and I think it's really hard for young women growing up right now."

You've always seemed incredibly resilient, and, well, bulletproof. But, in "Joan of Arc," you reveal a surprisingly vulnerable side of yourself, with lyrics like, "Each time they write a hateful word / dragging my soul into the dirt / I wanna die." Do you really take notice of the haters in that way?
"Yeah. I mean, it's not like I'm paralyzed by them, or that I'm sobbing in my room, but sometimes, actually, I'm astounded by how passionate people are in their hatred. That's very disturbing - sign of the times."

But, you'd still primarily define yourself as tough? As resilient?
"Well, I am. Otherwise I wouldn't have survived, but I'm human, so how could I not have my moments of vulnerability, of weakness, of doubt? Like, am I doing the right thing? Am I making the right choice? Have I done the right thing? Am I saying the right thing? But, I think it's important to have moments of self-doubt. And then, of course, it's also important to not overthink things and to move on and to not look back and be paralyzed by it.

"I mean, if you have a moment of doubt, or if you feel vulnerable, that's God's way of protecting you. You need to have those moments, otherwise you just barrel through life without any kind of consciousness. You'd be a robot." Rebel Heart goes on sale tomorrow, March 10. Listen to a six-song preview below on Spotify.

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The Madonna Interview You NEED To Read (& Bookmark!)

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Superstar. Chameleon. Truth-teller. Sexually liberated provocateur. Feminist. Mother. Artist. This list of wholly accurate words and phrases you could use to describe Madonna is long and impressive. But, it's not complete. Yes, she's one of the few modern-day celebrities who can truly get away with a single-word moniker that's universally known and understood in every corner of the globe.

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Mr. Sawyer asked for Madonna's reaction to feminist charges that, in the neck manacle and floor-crawling of an earlier video, "Express Yourself," she condoned the "degradation" and "humiliation" of women. Madonna waffled: "But I chained myself! I'm in charge." Well, no. Madonna the producer may have chosen the chain, but Madonna the sexual persona in the video is alternately a cross-dressing dominatrix and a slave of male desire.

But who cares what the feminists say anyhow? They have been outrageously negative about Madonna from the start. In 1985, Ms. magazine pointedly feted quirky, cuddly singer Cyndi Lauper as its woman of the year. Great judgment: gimmicky Lauper went nowhere, while Madonna grew, flourished, metamorphosed and became an international star of staggering dimensions. She is also a shrewd business tycoon, a modern woman of all-around talent.

Madonna is the true feminist. She exposes the puritanism and suffocating ideology of American feminism, which is stuck in an adolescent whining mode. Madonna has taught young women to be fully female and sexual while still exercising total control over their lives. She shows girls how to be attractive, sensual, energetic, ambitious, aggressive and funny -- all at the same time.

American feminism has a man problem. The beaming Betty Crockers, hangdog dowdies and parochial prudes who call themselves feminists want men to be like women. They fear and despise the masculine. The academic feminists think their nerdy bookworm husbands are the ideal model of human manhood.

But Madonna loves real men. She sees the beauty of masculinity, in all its rough vigor and sweaty athletic perfection. She also admires the men who are actually like women: transsexuals and flamboyant drag queens, the heroes of the 1969 Stonewall rebellion, which started the gay liberation movement.

"Justify My Love" is an eerie, sultry tableau of jaded androgynous creatures, trapped in a decadent sexual underground. Its hypnotic images are drawn from such sado-masochistic films as Lililana Cazani's"The Night Porter" and Luchino Visconti's "The Damned." It's the perverse and knowing world of the photographers Helmut Newton and Robert Mapplethorpe.

Contemporary American feminism, which began by rejecting Freud because of his alleged sexism, has shut itself off from his ideas of ambiguity, contradiction, conflict, ambivalence. Its simplistic psychology is illustrated by the new cliche of the date-rape furor:" 'No' always means 'no'. " Will we ever graduate from the Girl Scouts? "No" has always been, and always will be, part of the dangerous, alluring courtship ritual of sex and seduction, observable even in the animal kingdom.

Madonna has a far profounder vision of sex than do the feminists. She sees both the animality and the artifice. Changing her costume style and hair color virtually every month, Madonna embodies the eternal values of beauty and pleasure. Feminism says, "No more masks." Madonna says we are nothing but masks.

Through her enormous impact on young women around the world, Madonna is the future of feminism.

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Mr. Sawyer asked for Madonna's reaction to feminist charges that, in the neck manacle and floor-crawling of an earlier video, "Express Yourself," she condoned the "degradation" and "humiliation" of women. Madonna waffled: "But I chained myself! I'm in charge." Well, no.

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Women of a certain age will remember the wannabes; they might even have been one. The surf slang was popularized in the mainstream to describe the packs of peroxide blonde high school girls in thrift shop attire-vented t-shirts, denim jackets, rubber bracelets all accessorized with lace, especially the fingerless gloves-who roamed American malls in the mid-1980s.

Costumed in crucifixes and layers of lace, Madonna bounced onto the world stage in 1983 inviting us to take a Holiday, and by the end of 1985 she had become a phenom due to her sophomore album, "Like a Virgin." The appeal to high school girls was apparent; Madonna captured the imaginations of the wannabes, and once she held them and other record buyers in the palm of her hand, she crafted messages of empowerment. One might trace it back to "Material Girl." In her Marilyn Monroe caricature, Madonna uses her old-fashioned feminine wiles to get what she wants, materialistically.

It's not the strongest feminist message, but it would open the door to more pointed ones as her career progressed and the wannabes aged with her. Already a controversial figure, particularly for her uninhibited sexuality, Madonna in 1986 released "True Blue," generally credited for making Madonna a superstar and certifying her position as one of the consummate musical figures of the 1980s. Again, she included a track on the album that appealed to teenage girls. Long before "16 and Pregnant" aired on MTV, Madonna's videos played on the channel, including "Papa Don't Preach" about a pregnant teenager who has made up her own mind to keep her baby.

"At the time being a teen mom was still a dirty secret, something to be ashamed of, and a horrible tragedy to befall a family," writes a Jezebel blogger. " And yet teen pregnancy was frequent. The issue was huge."

And then Madonnna, an Italian Catholic girl, released "Papa Don't Preach."

While climbing celebrity ranks and prepping for her next role in Pepsi's famous concert commercials, Madonna again stirred up controversy. This time, the issue wasn't so much with lyrics, but images. In "Like a Prayer," Madonna takes on racism, appearing in a flimsy black slip and kissing an African-American religious icon, and later stands among crosses engulfed in flames. It was too much for the American soda purveyors. Pepsi dropped Madonna, but the song became one of her biggest hits. Nearly a quarter of a century later, Madonna had the last laugh, wrapping up her Super Bowl halftime show with "Prayer" in 2012.

Madonna continued to push the sexual envelope and encouraged women to embrace their sexuality, and perhaps more importantly, openly express it. In terms of iconography, Madge's boldest feminist statement drove her "Blond Ambition" tour, where she strutted in finely tailored Jean Paul Gaultier suits with slits that exposed her cone bra.

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The Evolution Of Madonna's Feminist Message

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Women of a certain age will remember the wannabes; they might even have been one. The surf slang was popularized in the mainstream to describe the packs of peroxide blonde high school girls in thrift shop attire-vented t-shirts, denim jackets, rubber bracelets all accessorized with lace, especially the fingerless gloves-who roamed American malls in the mid-1980s.

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Last week, after seeing a clip of Madonna twerking on an episode of Carpool Karaoke, Piers Morgan pretended to vomit into a bucket. "Oh she makes my skin crawl," he announced, before decreeing to the viewers of Good Morning Britain that "you can't be 58 and prancing about like that".

Granted, it is a mere drop in the ocean of drivel to have come from the mouth of Piers Morgan (who, frankly, makes my skin crawl) over the years. Over the last few weeks, in fact. But in this instance, his views are shared by all too many. Because to exist as a woman in music, and - more importantly - to continue to do so beyond 30, is a deeply offensive thing.

It's a fact that Madonna has railed against often over the years, but never with quite such clarity and acerbic conviction as she did on Friday night at Billboard's Women in Music event. While accepting her woman of the year award (a well-intentioned, somewhat cumbersome honour, but that's a debate for another day), she announced, "I stand before you as a doormat. Oh, I mean, as a female entertainer."

She continued, "Thank you for acknowledging my ability to continue my career for 34 years in the face of blatant sexism and misogyny and constant bullying and relentless abuse." She discussed her muse, David Bowie, who "embodied male and female spirit" and "made me think there were no rules. But I was wrong. There are no rules - if you're a boy. There are rules if you're a girl."

Those rules are as follows: "If you're a girl, you have to play the game. You're allowed to be pretty and cute and sexy. But don't act too smart. Don't have an opinion that's out of line with the status quo. You are allowed to be objectified by men and dress like a slut, but don't own your sluttiness. And do not, I repeat do not, share your own sexual fantasies with the world. Be what men want you to be, but more importantly, be what women feel comfortable with you being around other men. And finally, do not age. Because to age is a sin. You will be criticised and vilified and definitely not played on the radio."

It's impossible to condense all the instances of gender inequality in music - both explicit and insidious - into one speech. But as far as scraping the surface of injustice goes, Madonna's speech, in all its concise clarity, powered by decades of lived experience, was an important and moving thing indeed.

The music industry has progressed in leaps and bounds when it comes to its treatment of women. Slowly but surely, female artists are being allowed to own their creativity, their sexuality and their artistic agency. Pop acts like Fifth Harmony and Little Mix are no longer held up as mere empty vessels into which to pour your male fantasies, the likes of Christine and the Queens occupy an androgynous, queer space previously only inhabited by men, and Beyoncé, the biggest pop star on the planet, has performed in front of a 20ft sign saying "FEMINIST". This is progress in which Madonna - for all her flaws - has played, and continues to play, a significant part, but there's still much to overcome. And her speech reminded us of that in a way that was (as is usually the case with the Queen of Pop) pretty hard to ignore.

Madonna's flaws, to be clear, are not insignificant. She's suggested gay rights are "way more advanced than women's rights", as if the two are separate, never-overlapping entities in competition with one another; she's praised Margaret Thatcher; she's inappropriately compared her album leaking to rape and terrorism - an album she'd used Photoshopped images of black civil rights leaders to promote. She's tripped up, that's for sure. But she's also remained an unapologetically empowered, innovative and evocative entertainer, and continued to joyously exist in a space so desperate to eject her.

"I think the most controversial thing I have ever done is to stick around," she told the audience at the end of her speech. It's a tough call, coming from the woman who simulated an orgy atop the Last Supper table during her last tour - but she's probably right.

Topics

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Madonna was right: there are rules if you are a girl

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Last week, after seeing a clip of Madonna twerking on an episode of Carpool Karaoke, Piers Morgan pretended to vomit into a bucket. "Oh she makes my skin crawl," he announced, before decreeing to the viewers of Good Morning Britain that "you can't be 58 and prancing about like that".

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Madonna at her first tv appearence declares "I want to rule the world"

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may have been unable to sink the Titanic for the second week in a row, but she's reigning on the charts around the globe.

Her latest album, Ray of Light, which debuted on March 3 to rave reviews, has sold a collective three million albums around the world. Madonna currently holds the coveted top spot in eight countries: Israel, Switzerland, Germany, Norway, Greece, Singapore, Finland and Great Britain.

Ray of Light held onto the No. 2 spot on the Billboard charts in America with second week sales of 225,000 (bringing her two-week total to just under 600,000 copies sold in the States alone). In addition, Madonna sits at No. 2 in a number of countries, including Ireland, Sweden, France, Canada and Spain.

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Madonna may have been unable to sink the Titanic for the second week in a row, but she's reigning on the charts around the globe. Her latest album, Ray of Light, which debuted on March 3 to rave reviews, has sold a collective three million albums around the world.

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Pop legend Madonna is known for her constant reinvention as a performer. Her biggest hits include "Papa Don't Preach," "Like a Prayer," "Vogue," "Secret" and "Ray of Light," among many others.

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Of the 18 works on show, about half were dedicated to one model: Kate Moss. Alas explained: "She's a really close friend. And it's so much easier to make photos of someone you really know and you connect with. You can do things you couldn't do with someone you don't know."

Moss rolled up to the event, as did fellow Mert and Marcus subjects Madonna-looking very Marlon Brando in Moschino -and Lara Stone. Many arrived in Maserati cars-a partner sponsor of the event. As they inspected the images, Piggott explained: "This is a sneak preview of a broader portfolio of work. We're doing a book in March. So this is like a little teaser for a big exhibition we are going to do in March. We don't know what the name for it is yet."

A lot of the images on show are strictly NSFW but as Alas said, provocation and spontaneity are both fundamental elements in the Mert and Marcus formula: "Most of these images were an accidental moment. And most of them are of friends. We make a plan to do this idea; this character, in this location-and then some accident happens. Most of the images we chose here are images that we hadn't really prepared for."

After the preview, many of the guests headed across Berkeley Square to Mark's Club, where W Magazine 's Edward Enninful was hosting a celebration dinner after being awarded the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II earlier in the day.

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Madonna, Kate Moss, and More Mingle at the Mert and Marcus Exhibition in London

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Of the 18 works on show, about half were dedicated to one model: Kate Moss. Alas explained: "She's a really close friend. And it's so much easier to make photos of someone you really know and you connect with. You can do things you couldn't do with someone you don't know."

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Madonna Exhibition London Tickets - 21 February 2009 Tickets at Old Truman Brewery - London | View

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Madonna Exhibition London - Simply Madonna Exhibition, London Hosts Madonna Exhibition at Old Truman Brewery, Tickets for Simply Madonna Exhibition London Event,

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The singer agreed to pose for New York photographer Martin H. M. Schreiber for just $30.

After she became famous Schreiber sold the pictures to Playboy magazine who published the images in 1988.

Seven Dials in Covent Garden's is set to play host to the London premiere of The Madonna Nudes - 30th Anniversary exhibition, a collection of these intimate photographs of the fifty year old pop Diva, taken when she was just 20.

The black and white pictures are available to buy from £3,400 and likely to become serious collectors' items.

Also for sale is a unique piece of never seen before memorabilia - a one off print of the original Polaroid test shot, which, included with the original model release and the Polaroid, is expected to fetch in excess of £40,000.

This would eclipse the previous record of $37,500 recently paid at auction earlier this year for the Lee Friedlander photograph which also featured in the 1985 Playboy. The exhibition will be co-hosted by Seven Dials and Impure Art the UK's only erotic art gallery.

Jamie McCartney of Impure Art comments: "When you have wonderful nude photos of a beautiful young woman, taken by a great photographer and she happens to be a global icon, it's a no brainer.

"With such a fantastic central London venue and with Madonna herself being in town, we are expecting huge interest."

The Madonna Nudes will showcase at 19 Earlham Street, Seven Dials, WC2 from 2nd to 19th July. The gallery will be open seven days - Monday to Saturday, 12-7pm, and Sunday 12-6pm.

For more information please visit www.sevendials.co.uk or www.impureart.com for details.

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The singer agreed to pose for New York photographer Martin H. M. Schreiber for just $30. After she became famous Schreiber sold the pictures to Playboy magazine who published the images in 1988.

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AN exhibition dedicated to the history of Madonna's fashion is coming to Macy's. The pop-up exhibit will open for one day only at Macy's in Century City, California, featuring some of the singer's most famous costumes.

Madonna hand-picked her favourite eight pieces from her vast costume archive and her personal collection to feature in the installation - including that instantly-recognisable Jean Paul Gaultier conical corset, from the Blonde Ambition tour, and the Like A Virgin wedding dress that she wore to the MTV VMAs in 1984. The exhibition will sit alongside the latest collection from the Material Girl line that she created for Macy's with her daughter Lourdes.

"The pop-up exhibit at Macy's perfectly exemplifies the inspiration and spirit of the Material Girl line and will give my fans a great opportunity to see the evolution of my style over the years," said Madonna.

The one-off installation was curated and styled by Arianne Phillips, who has creatively collaborated with the singer for years.

"Fashion has never been the same [since Madonna]," said Phillips. "Bold and unforgiving, humorous and shocking, we can depend on her to challenge us to rethink fashion. Madonna has taken sacred garments like the wedding dress and religious embellishments and re-contextualised them." Of the Like a Virgin wedding dress Phillips commented: "That was one of the most shocking, liberating and influential moments in pop culture and fashion history."

The Madonna's Fashion Evolution exhibition will be open to customers at the Macy's Century City store in California on Thursday April 25 from 6pm to 8pm.

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Madonna Fashion Exhibition Pops Up At Macy's

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AN exhibition dedicated to the history of Madonna's fashion is coming to Macy's. The pop-up exhibit will open for one day only at Macy's in Century City, California, featuring some of the singer's most famous costumes.

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Madonna-related clips from Jean-Michel Baquiat: The Radiant Child

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Various Madonna-related clips from Tamra Davis's excellent new documentary film Jean-Michael Basquiat: The Radiant Child. Posted strictly for the purpose of promoting the film.

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Walking into the Bilbao Guggenheim's galleries to see their Basquiat retrospective, you can hear Martin Luther King's I Have A Dream speech booming out of the speakers. By the exhibition's end Charlie Parker's Now's The Time has replaced it as the soundtrack. Together they sum up two very different aspects of Basquiat; part Harlem Renaissance, part child of the civil rights era. His art turned these influences into something strikingly of its time, and as the exhibitions reveals, reverberates still today.

It's hard sometimes to see Basquiat the artist from the baggage of Basquiat the cultural icon. It's easy to overlook just how talented he was, his skill with composition and colour, density and structure; because Basquiat's life clouds his paintings. As Glenn O'Brien, writer of the Basquiat-starring Downtown 81, says, "Basquiat's got fans like Bob Marley's got fans." So it's odd to consider that he's not had a major museum retrospective in Europe until now, seeing as he's one of the few artists whose cultural place transcends beyond the worlds of art. He should be selling out blockbuster exhibitions at the Tate and Pompidou, but has been relegated to small, niche institutions outside of Europe's major public galleries.

When he died, aged just 27, of a heroin overdose, he left a legacy of over 1000 paintings and 3000 drawings. A life's work compiled in just 12 years. He'd gone from the streets to the elite of the art world, and most importantly, took the streets with him.

Basquiat's place in the world has always existed uneasily between extremes. He was a downtown punk and an uptown b-boy; he easily slipped between high culture and low culture, between Madonna and Andy Warhol. He came from the counter-cultural immediacy and language of graffiti, but his work tackles the serious legacy of Cy Twombly, Pablo Picasso and Francis Bacon. He's invoked by Jay Z as a status symbol and by Killer Mike as a social campaigner. He listened to Ravel's Bolero whilst painting, relaxed to Charlie Parker and Miles Davis, and performed in an experimental punk band called Gray. In a minimalist age he created incredibly complex work yet was still seen as a savant; as art's primal, wild man. The immediacy of his image making defies the complex arrangements that go into them, their casual beauty a cipher for an incredibly detailed visual language that he created, and he made these complex and difficult things look easy. He was the First Black Art Star, took black expression into the New York's white gallery scene, and became a genuine celebrity.

"So what do we do," the poet Christian Campbell asks "with the cult mythologies about Basquiat, in which criticism on his art amounts to a TMZ report (Who did he fuck? How did he die? What was he on? How was his hair?)" The Guggenheim show's answer, refreshingly, is to ignore it and focus on the art.

The early paintings, made largely on reclaimed materials, pieces of boards, abandoned doors, bear the influences of Basquiat's time on the streets as a graffiti artist, his childhood dream of being a cartoonist, and his obsession with art history.

He also found black heroes missing in art, so figured them into his own work, and so turned modern black life into art. He saw the nobility and tradition of black life and culture as absent and venerated it. Early paintings like Famous Negro Athletes, that feature a scratched back face, a baseball, his signature crown; or King of Baseball, a blue figure, crown, and baseball. These are simple and forceful images, using single lines and few colours, and that minimalism reinforces their political point.

Soon though, his paintings were becoming incredibly complex as he developed his unique visual language. His recurring motifs of black heads, crowns, copyright symbols, baseball players, boxers, text, text scratched out, bodies and the fascination with disembodiment; these motifs spread across his entire work, they crop up again and again, forming a visual link between his works.

In sportspeople, the boxers and baseball players, he saw African American heroes, he saw struggle, resistance, victory and strength. He often talked of having a boxing match with Julian Schnabel. His exhibition of collaborative paintings with Andy Warhol featuring a poster of both of them wearing boxing gloves. It was art as competition, and Basquiat sought to prove himself, as a black man in a white world.

Seeing so many of Basquiat's painting in once place, it becomes clearer and clearer that Basquiat's work's major theme is an unending questioning of America's racial politics and social hypocrisies. A critique of a world where he could sell work to collectors for incredible amounts of money and yet not be able to get a taxi home; where his friend and fellow graffiti writer, Michael Stewart, could be arrested and beaten to death by police; by his place as a lauded black artist showing his paintings on white walls, to white people, and by the way people belittled him, saw him as a novelty and treated him as primitive.

His painting, Defacement, was a memorial to the his friend Michael Stewart, features two cartoonish, brightly coloured police officers, armed with batons, beating a black silhouette, under the word defacement. Who's being vandalised, who's defaced? The subway car that Michael Stewart was painting when the police attacked him? Or Michael himself. Basquiat paints Michael's body as a silhouette because it's not just a one off, not just Michael, it's any number of black men targeted by police, and it's not gone away.

Michael's death was a watershed moment for Basquiat and his political consciousness. The works up until that point had been content to simply place the black body within art's history, and reclaim it as a form of representation. After his death, they become more implicitly political, less cartoonish, and much angrier. Irony Of Negro Policeman, for example, is a grotesque caricature of the hypocrisy of oppressor joining the oppressed, his face a mask, his body caged in with lines of paint, daubed with the word 'pawn' in the corner.

When Basquiat started to work and become friends with Andy Warhol, in 83/84, he was himself seen as the pawn, Andy's pet, used to keep Andy relevant as his critical acclaim flagged. But Basquiat managed to draw Andy back to painting, in a series of collaborative works exhibited by Tony Shafrazi in 85, as well as a series derived from the The Last Supper, exhibited in Milan. The critics hated them, described Basquiat as an "art world mascot" and an "all too willing accessory"in the New York Times. They fell out, and after Andy's death, Basquiat became inconsolable, and turned to heroin in greater quantities.

His final works, exhibited for one night only at Baghoomian's gallery at the Cable Building in SoHo, New York, in 1988, just six months before death, show t=his grief, his work is stripped back, stripped of colour, pulsing with the intensity of language. He had become obsessed with listening to Beethoven's Eroica, and specifically, for differences between different versions and interpretations of the symphony. It could act as a metaphor for Basquiat's work as a whole, this revision, sampling, and language of symbols, that runs through his work.

The show is titled Now's The Time, a reference to Charlie Parker, but more obliquely, to Basquiat himself. Now's the time to revisit his work, to give him the museum retrospective his work deserves, but also because it's still the time to evaluate racism and stereotyping, by seeing it again through Basquiat's eyes, it's clear how little has changed in the last 27 years. How many Michael Stewart's have their been this year alone?

But also, what Basquiat's career makes clear is how few black artists there've been since, how white the art world remains, and how patronising its attitudes can be. Basquiat might've painted black heroes into art, but he remains one of a few black heroes to make it and prove that black art matters.
Jean Michel Basquiat Now's The Time is open at Guggenhem Bilbao until November 1st.

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​black art matters: jean michel basquiat

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Walking into the Bilbao Guggenheim's galleries to see their Basquiat retrospective, you can hear Martin Luther King's I Have A Dream speech booming out of the speakers. By the exhibition's end Charlie Parker's Now's The Time has replaced it as the soundtrack.

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Jean-Michel Basquiat's short life reads like a kind of Rakes Progress of Eighties New York: from teenage graffiti artist to art world superstar to heroin-induced death aged 27, all in under a decade. But Basquiat has become much more than an icon of monetarist-era excess. Thirty years on from his tragic demise, his status as one of the key artists of our age appears to be actually rising - particularly among the young - a position reflected in extraordinary prices; the $110.5 million (£85 million) achieved earlier this year for Untitled 1982 is the highest price ever paid for an American artist at auction.

But how much of Basquiat's appeal lies in his paintings and how much in his image: the dreadlocked young Brooklynite rubbing shoulders with the likes of Madonna and Andy Warhol. This show - incredibly Basquiat's first major British survey - begins from the preposterous premise that he was "one of the most significant artists of the 20th century". And while it aims to look behind the myth, it hits us with so much of that myth it's hard, at first, to actually see the work.

Credit: Whitney Museum of American Art, ARS, New York, AD

Huge projections of Basquiat are everywhere as we enter: dancing to Duke Ellington in his studio, shyly smiling in interview, grooving at the legendary Mudd Club in a vast blow-up still. The first half of the show, indeed, feels like a handsomely staged portrait of late-Seventies-early-Eighties New York in which Basquiat plays the starring role.

Never a full-blown graffiti artist in the train-tagging sense, Basquiat made his name with cryptic poetic statements sprayed around the city. From the age of 19 he was continually filmed and photographed. We see Basquiat in fading newspapers, wobbly underground videos and in portraits with his hero Andy Warhol, with whom he made a number of works.

The paintings, drawings and collaborative bits and pieces used to illustrate this part of the show are an intriguing jumble of juvenile bric-a-brac: a graffiti-covered fridge, large pieces of quite interesting graffiti and a not very good joint portrait with Warhol. But the only work in this section to give a real sense of Basquiat's value is a painter - which is, lest we forget, his principle claim to fame - is Untitled 1982 (sorry, many works here have that title): a marvellously vigorous image of a boxer with a gas mask for a head (or is it a skull with a halo?) that looks scrawled, but positively bursts with tension and energy.

Credit: © The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat

On the lower floor we get to look at a critical mass of Basquiat's paintings, focusing on his obsessions with music and art history, and revealing him as an inveterate maker of lists. Self-Portrait, 1981, comprising his dreadlocked silhouette plus the scribbled track listing from a Thelonious Monk album, has a rough-hewn, but effortless cool that immediately explains Basquiat's appeal to the young.

As he began cannibalising the art books littered around his studio, from Gray's Anatomy to Leonardo, his paintings became surrogate pin boards: photocopies of his own drawings merge with lists of whatever was running through his head. Apparently random classical references intercut with Afro-American history and cartoon monsters in Jawbone of an Ass. Glenn is overlain with a huge Afro-graffiti head which suggests anger and frustration, but doesn't quite transcend the crude adolescent gesture.

Credit: Private Collection

There's a breathless energy to the way Basquiat synthesizes disparate elements, as though everything's hitting the canvas at the precise moment it flows into his head, a quality that parallels the DJ re-mixing then being pioneered on New York's dance floors and which presages the random connections of the internet. At the same time the wilfully cack-handed primitivism of his brush strokes is weirdly reminiscent, not of classic New York abstract expression as you might expect, but of deeply unfashionable European art brut - raw art - of the Fifties, by the likes of Jean Dubuffet and Karel Appel.

The paintings in the final room come together in an exhilarating flow of ideas that makes all the contextual myth-making - intriguing though it is - feel superfluous. But if the man certainly had it, this feels like the beginning of a career rather than the climax. Poor old Basquiat never proceeded beyond the prodigy stage. But a prodigy, in the fullest sense, he certainly was.

Sept 21 until Jan 28; 020 7638 4141; barbican.org.uk

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Basquiat: Boom for Real is an exhilarating glimpse behind the myth: Barbican, London, review

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Jean-Michel Basquiat's short life reads like a kind of Rakes Progress of Eighties New York: from teenage graffiti artist to art world superstar to heroin-induced death aged 27, all in under a decade. But Basquiat has become much more than an icon of monetarist-era excess.

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Keith Haring ventured to New York City in '78 to study at The School of Visual Arts where he formed a close group of friends who bonded through a shared untraditional, uninhibited lifestyle that thrived in the chaos of the city. The group consisted of graffiti artists, musicians, and performance artists who frequented counterculture hangouts like The Mudd Club, Paradise Garage, and Club 57. Keith organized art shows at the Mudd Club and he would often perform at Club 57, showcasing his own videotapes, reciting poetry, exhibiting art, and dancing to hip-hop while enjoying the sexually charged scene. Keith's friend, Kenny Scharf said, "At Club 57 there were drugs and promiscuity-it was one big orgy family. Sometimes I'd look around and say, "Oh, my God! I've had sex æwith everybody in this room!" It was just the spirit of the times-and it was before AIDS".

While juggling the demands of school and friends, Keith made some money working as a busboy at Danceteria, the same place where Madonna worked as a coat-check girl in the early 80's. Keith recalled, "Everything was very exciting - living in Greenwich Village, having my own apartment and going to school. And it was great meeting Kenny Scharf and Jean-Michel Basquiat, who became my friends and also wanted to become artists."

In 1980, Keith took his drawings to the streets using white chalk on unused advertising panels hung along the subway walls. "I kept seeing more and more of these black spaces, and I drew on them whenever I saw one. Because they were so fragile, people left them alone and respected them; they didn't rub them out or try to mess them up. It gave them this other power. It was this chalk-white fragile thing in the middle of all this power and tension and violence that the subway was. People were completely enthralled." said Keith.

He was an active artist, covering as many as 40 panels within a day while he openly engaged with the public, maintaing a hint of incognito to avoid arrest but always connecting with onlookers who asked questions about his work. "The drawings were quite simple - pyramids, flying saucers, human figures, winged figures, television sets, animals, and babies. Soon the baby with rays all around it became a kind of signature, and the people of New York who rode the subways began recognizing these drawing, although they had no idea who made them." said Keith.

"We were two odd birds in the same environment," remembered Madonna. "I watched Keith come up from that street base, which is where I also came up from. I've always responded to Keith's art. From the very beginning there was a lot of innocence and a joy that was coupled with a brutal awareness of the world. The fact is, there's a lot of irony in Keith's work, just as there's a lot of irony in my work. And that's what attracts me to his stuff. I mean, you have these bold colors and those childlike figures and a lot of babies, but if you really look at those works closely, they're really very powerful and really scary."

In '77, Madonna dropped out of her studies at the University of Michigan and moved to New York City to pursue a dance career that allowed her to perform at the American Dance Theatre. Rebelling from her strictly religious upbringing, Madonna frequented New York's underground dance clubs with a diverse group of gay friends who ushered her into the city's sexualized, artistic atmosphere. Madonna picked up odd jobs to pay rent until she met boyfriend, Dan Gilroy, who led an underground ska-punk band called The Breakfast Club.

Shortly thereafter, Madonna and Dan moved to France where Madonna worked briefly as a showgirl, a gig which helped affirm her love for performance. Once back in New York City, Madonna formed several bands and eventually became lead singer of her boyfriends band, The Breakfast Club. Madonna officially went solo in '81 when she hired a manager who helped release her first hit, "Everybody", which hit number one on the dance charts in '82.

Jean-Michel Basquiat grew up in a decent household, but at 15 he fled to the streets of Brooklyn where he became a young, starving artist. He looked like a Caribbean street rat, making little money by selling homemade t-shirts and postcards while he crashed at various friend's apartments. Jean-Michel initially got recognition in the city streets by tagging edifices with clever messages using the graffiti name, SAMO. Recognized as SAMO, Jean-Michel was a featured guest on a public access program called TV Party which showcased Brooklyn's young, artistic, counterculture crowd.

After making regular appearances on the show, the host of TV Party, Glen O'Brien, chose to feature Jean-Michel to star in his independent film, Downtown 81. Inspired by Andy Warhol's films, Downtown '81 relied on its actors to play themselves as characters, forgoing a scripted storyline. In describing the film, Glen said "Penniless, Jean-Michel was kicked out of his apartment, then tried to sell his paintings for daily income. He showed up at clubs and tried to pick up girls to go to her apartment to have someplace to sleep. Basically, it was based on his real life...". Blondie's Debbie Harry co-starred with Jean-Michel in Downtown 81, and after the film was shot Debbie featured Jean-Michel as a disc jockey in her music video, Rapture.

As Jean-Michel established a growing circle of influential friends, he gained recognition as an artist and received more opportunities to show his work. His paintings were primitive and unique, using text and child-like drawings to call out cultural issues, intentionally crossing out text as a way to draw more attention to it. Jean-Michel's paintings immediately drew in rave reviews from peers and critics, helping quickly establish Jean-Michel as a young genius sought after by art dealers and celebrities alike.

Jean-Michel spent his money quickly and lavishly, buying dozens of Armani suits, expensive dinners, vacations, cocaine, and hiring a chauffeur to drive him around the city. Keith Haring said Jean-Michel's spending was his "way of sticking your nose up at people who were looking down on you...Being black and a kid having dreadlocks, he couldn't even get a taxi. But he could spend $10,000 in his pocket." As an attractive, young artist whose look, lifestyle, and fame drew in growing attention, Jean-Michel had an easy time picking up the ladies.

Though going out with long time girlfriend, Suzanne Mallouk, Jean-Michel had a brief affair with Madonna in 1982. Once Suzanne found out about Jean-Michel's relationship with Madonna, Suzanne got in a physical brawl with Madonna at the Roxy. As Jean-Michel communicated everything he experienced through painting, he created a piece that showcased the infamous catfight, referring to Suzanne as Venus and crossing out Madonna's name in typical, Jean-Michel fashion.

Before Jean-Michel struck fame, he had run into Andy Warhol one or two times through incidents that left little impression on Andy. In fall of '82, Jean-Michel was brought to The Factory and introduced to Andy by German art dealer, Bruno Bischofberger. Bruno continually brought new artists to The Factory, a ritualized event where Andy created a portrait of the artist in exchange for a piece of their art. In this way, Andy maintained a connection with younger artists who kept him in touch with emerging trends and celebrity youth.

Using photos as base for his portraits, Andy shot Jean-Michel with his Polaroid camera, after which Jean-Michel asked if he could also take a photo of Andy. As customary in the ritual, Andy took Jean-Michel next door to enjoy a lunch buffet, but Jean-Michel hurriedly said good-bye and ran off without eating. About an hour and a half later when Andy and Bruno had hardly finished their lunch, Jean-Michel's assistant entered the restaurant with a 60"x60" canvas featuring a double portrait of Andy and Jean-Michel, the paint still wet. In reference to Jean-Michel's portrait Andy said, "I'm really jealous- he is faster than me."

Andy returned the gesture by silkscreening Jean-Michel's portrait on several equally large canvases, after which Jean-Michel produced another two portraits of Andy in '84, one of which depicted Andy as a banana.

"It was like some crazy-art world marriage and they were the odd couple. The relationship was symbiotic. Jean-Michel thought he needed Andy's fame, and Andy thought he needed Jean-Michel's new blood. Jean-Michel gave Andy a rebellious image again." said Ronny Cutrone. In fall of '83 Jean-Michel rented a loft at a property that Andy owned, creating a proximity which led to a close friendship and many talks of collaboration between the two. In '84 Jean-Michel and Andy created a collection of work that was curated in the Tony Sharfrazi gallery.

Together Andy and Jean-Michel created large paintings, generally painting over each other's work to produce diptych collages that represented their opposing styles. Though the collaboration created quite a stir, critics were less than impressed. The highly competitive Jean-Michel held bitterness towards Andy for the collection's unfavorable reviews, and he drew distant from Andy as result from a growing paranoia that people were beginning to view him as Andy's mascot.

From '81 onward Keith's career gained a lot of momentum, starting with a solo show in New York which led to international exhibitions, public murals, design collaborations, and an animated billboard in Times Square. Already established as a high demand artist, Keith was constantly producing more work with the intention of making his art easily available to the public.

Keith and Andy met at a gallery exhibition in '83 after which Andy became Keith's mentor and close friend. Keith and Andy were similar in many ways, both queer artists who embedded themselves in large circles of influential celebrity friends. Andy had founded Interview, a large format magazine that he originally circulated in '69 among the artsy, celebrity crowd that he ran with. Each issue featured newly emerging stars revealed through intimate conversations with artists, musicians, and other individuals who had a direct influence on pop culture.

Many of these influential celebrities came together at The Paradise Garage in '84 for Keith's 26th birthday party. With Andy in attendance, Keith's longtime friend, Madonna, got on stage and performed "Dress You Up" wearing a pink jacket covered in Keith's bold, black marker drawings. A year later in '85, Madonna married actor, Sean Penn, in a star studded wedding. Being a good friend of Madonna's, Keith was invited to the wedding and chose to bring Andy as his date. Keith and Andy collaborated on a paparazzi-inspired art piece for Madonna's wedding, and in the same year Andy put Madonna on the cover of Interview.

In February of '87 Andy developed a pain in his right side and subsequently went to the hospital for a gallbladder operation. To everyone's surprise, Andy died in the hospital the morning after his operation from an unexpected heart attack, unrelated to his surgery. Andy had helped dissuade Jean-Michel from his drug use, but when Andy died not only did Jean-Michel lack his positive influence but Jean-Michel also became extremely depressed dealing with the death of his close friend.

After Andy's death, Jean-Michel became quite reclusive, producing many paintings and using more heroin. "One knew from the start that he was going to live out his own time span," Henry Geldzahler said. "He lived very high, very fast, and he did a lot of great things." Only 27 years old, Jean-Michel died of a drug overdose in his Manhattan apartment in August of '88.

That same year, Keith was diagnosed with AIDS which led him to establish the Keith Haring Foundation in '89 to provide funding, imagery, and inspiration to AID's organizations and children's programs. Keith worked up until his death, showcasing his drawings to the public and speaking openly about his own illness to help bring activism and awareness to AIDS. A young artist who died at age 31, Keith participated in over 100 exhibitions throughout his career.

Source: Devonstonebrook

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Intersecting Icons: Keith Haring, Madonna, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol - Madonna Art Vision

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Keith Haring ventured to New York City in '78 to study at The School of Visual Arts where he formed a close group of friends who bonded through a shared untraditional, uninhibited lifestyle that thrived in the chaos of the city. The group consisted of...

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The past loves of the famous are always interesting, especially when the well-known forge picturesque and unexpected connections. The latest winner of the AnOther Loves vote depicts one such suprising coupling - that between Madonna and Jean-Michel Basquiat, who enjoyed a brief affair between 1982-3. This image of the pair, chosen by Pelican & Parrots co-proprietor Ochuko Ojiri, has captured the imagination of AnOther's Lovers, and sent us on the hunt for the full story.

Details about their meeting and the extent of their relationship are hazy, but it's clear is that their encounter dates from the moment when each was on the cusp of the extraordinary international fame that would turn Madonna into the definitive modern pop star and celebrate Basquiat as the progenitor of a vibrant, angry and invigorated art movement. At the point when this photo was taken - by the artist's former assistant Stephen Torton - Basquiat was an interesting name in the art world, gaining traction in part thanks to his friendship with Warhol. Madonna had just released her debut single Everybody, and was working on Lucky Star, the song that would catch America's attention. Brief their relationship might have been, but it is representative of a very special moment in time, where all the creative energy of the time seemed to be bubbling on the streets of downtown New York.

Reluctantly yanking ourselves back to the present, and the realities of January, we ask Ojiri why he chose this moment to remember a largely forgotten 80s tryst, and to name his favourite unexpected love affair from the past.

Why did you love this picture?
In the last few months, it kept occurring to me how Madonna's legacy has been cruelly neglected. She has influenced art, fashion and music for the last three decades. This picture for me is the beginning, when she was the apprentice.

Where would you keep it if you owned it?
Obviously in the boudoir.

Madonna or Basquiat - who would be your style inspiration?
It's a very difficult question, but if pushed I'd have to go with Basquiat. Paint splattered Armani suits, love it!

Who is your favourite odd/unexpected couple from history?
I think the love triangle between Eartha Kitt, James Dean and Paul Newman is pretty special.

Who would be your dream date from the past?
I would have to go with Eartha Kitt: beautiful and intriguing.

What is the highlight of your musical past?
When Public Enemy released their album It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back in the summer of 1988. It changed my life.

What are you looking forward to about 2014?
Looking forward to putting on a load more fabulous events in our secret rum bar " BELOW" underneath Pelicans & Parrots Black.

What is the last thing you bought?
The finest bag of fish and chips to be found in London from Micky's in Hackney.

Text by Tish Wrigley

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The past loves of the famous are always interesting, especially when the well-known forge picturesque and unexpected connections. The latest winner of the AnOther Loves vote depicts one such suprising coupling - that between Madonna and Jean-Michel Basquiat , who enjoyed a brief affair between 1982-3.

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Life is a mystery no more! let it all out inside the December 2014/January 2015 issue of Interview magazine, where she posed topless in a racy spread for legendary photographers Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott, and discussed her (short!) history with drugs, losing her mother at a young age, as well as her former relationships.

The pop superstar, 56, spoke candidly with magician David Blaine about dabbling in drugs in the past. "It's about how people take drugs to connect to God or to a higher level of consciousness," she mused. "I keep saying 'Plugging into the matrix.' If you get high, you can do that, which is why a lot of people drop acid or do drugs, because they want to get closer to God. But there's going to be a short circuit, and that's the illusion of drugs, because they give you the illusion of getting closer to God, but ultimately they kill you."

PHOTOS: Celebrity drug confessions

Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott

"I mean, I tried everything once," Madonna confessed. "But as soon as I was high, I spent my time drinking tons of water to get it out of my system. As soon as I was high, I was obsessed with flushing it out of me. I was like, Okay, I'm done now."

Madonna said she would rather just indulge a day of isolation and silence, especially as a mother of four. "I feel like people are always talking to me, at me, asking things, questioning me, wanting information, work, music, loud noises, children - it's endless," she shared. "So the idea of a whole day of silence sounds very seductive to me."

PHOTOS: Stars who've gone topless for magazines

Something else that was very alluring to the singer was the concept of death, especially after her mother passed away when Madonna was 6 years old. "I became very obsessed with death, and the idea that you never know when death will arrive," she confessed. "So one has to do as much as possible all the time to get the most out of life."

Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott

Maximizing her time included hanging out with those who pursued what they wanted in life. "I was attracted to creative people," she reflected of her relationships. "You don't want to be the smartest person in the room; you want to be the dumbest in the room. You want to be surrounded by other thinking people who are going to say something that makes you think, 'Oh, my God, that's an amazing idea. Why didn't I think of that.' And somehow we found each other in Manhattan. That's the crazy thing. We found each other and we connected to each other and we moved around the city together. They supported my shows. I supported their shows. We were a unit. And I don't even know how it happened. It just did."

PHOTOS: Madonna - how her face has changed

Part of Madonna's journey in music stems from her profound appreciation for art, which in turn, developed after dating famed artist Jean-Michel Basquiat in the very early '80s, when she was still a complete unknown trying to make it in downtown NYC.

"I remember having conversations with Keith [ Haring] and with Basquiat about the importance of your art being accessible to people," she recalled. "That was their big thing-it should be available to everyone. It was so important for Keith to be able to draw on subways and walls. And Basquiat used to say to me, 'You're so lucky that you make music, because music comes out of radios everywhere.' He thought that what I did was more pop, more connected to pop culture than what he did. Little did he know that his art would become pop culture. But it's not like we really had discussions about the meaning of art. I remember hearing them talk about those things."

PHOTOS: Madonna wannabes

Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott

Madonna spoke fondly about how she would watch Basquiat pour his heart into his work, and it lasted with her even after their relationship ended. "They were incredibly dedicated to their work," she claimed. "I mean, Basquiat was my boyfriend for a while, and I remember getting up in the middle of the night and he wouldn't be in bed lying next to me; he'd be standing, painting, at four in the morning, this close to the canvas, in a trance. I was blown away by that, that he worked when he felt moved. And they gave jobs to everyone. Keith would meet kids on the street and ask them to come stretch his canvases for him. Basquiat had every B-boy and every graffiti artist in his loft. He was constantly giving everything away. I think they felt guilty that they became successful and were surrounded by people who were penniless, so they shared what they had. They were incredibly generous people, and that rubbed off on me. You stay inspired that way."

PHOTOS: Madonna's craziest controversies

Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott

As for any artists that she appreciates today? "I like Banksy," Madonna mused of the British street graffiti artist whose identity remains concealed. "I think he's inspiring and he speaks to what's going on in the world, socially. I like JR. Like [Jean-Michael] Basquiat and Keith Haring, who both started off as graffiti artists - their art is on the street, available for anyone to see. It's not elitist."

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Madonna Poses Topless, Talks Drugs, Dating Basquiat and Death

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Life is a mystery no more! let it all out inside the December 2014/January 2015 issue of Interview magazine, where she posed topless in a racy spread for legendary photographers Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott, and discussed her (short!) history with drugs, losing her mother at a young age, as well as her former relationships.

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A former assistant to Jean-Michel Basquiat, Stephen Torton was able to capture the New York underground scene in the 80s. Featuring Madonna, Andy Warhol and Bianca Jagger, here are some of his best shots, alongside those of photographer and film-maker Edo Bertoglio ...

These photographs appear at the free Club 21: Remaking the Scene exhibition in London until 23 October

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Madonna, Basquiat and the New York 80s scene - in pictures

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A former assistant to Jean-Michel Basquiat, Stephen Torton was able to capture the New York underground scene in the 80s. Featuring Madonna, Andy Warhol and Bianca Jagger, here are some of his best shots, alongside those of photographer and film-maker Edo Bertoglio ...

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Madonna, queen of pop, has opened up about her early 1980s relationship with painter Jean-Michel Basquiat, and it would appear the two had a pretty ugly breakup.

Basquiat, who died in 1988 at the age of 27, went on to become a hugely successful artist, due in part to his close ties to Andy Warhol (see Basquiat's Mystique and Market Keep Rising). (An exhibition of Basquiat's notebooks goes on view at the Brooklyn Museum next month-see Brooklyn Museum to Exhibit Rare Basquiat Notebooks).

As for his time with Madonna, the pair dated when both were on the cusp of wider fame, when Madonna was at work on her eponymous debut album (see Madonna Memorabilia Heads to Auction). But when things ended, they ended badly (see Madonna's Wedding Dress Sells for $81 K).

"He wouldn't stop doing heroin. He was an amazing man and deeply talented, I loved him," said Madonna on a recent appearance on the Howard Stern Show (via Art Market Monitor). "When I broke up with him he made me give [the paintings he gave me] back to him. And then he painted over them black."

Even if she had been able to hold on to Basquiat's art, there's no guarantee the artist's family would have acknowledged the works were by his hand. Last year, Alexis Adler, another one of his ex-girlfriends, attempted to sell at Christie's a cache of artworks he had left her. Basquiat's sisters responded with a $1 million law suit (see Christie's Is Offering Fake Jean-Michel Basquiat Works, Artist's Sisters Claim).

Though Madonna's relationship with the painter was short-lived, Basquiat's artistic drive had a profound impact on her. For a recent article in magazine, the singer spoke with magician David Blaine about Basquiat's work ethic (see Paris Names Public Square After Basquiat).

"I remember getting up in the middle of the night and he wouldn't be in bed lying next to me; he'd be standing, painting, at four in the morning, this close to the canvas, in a trance. I was blown away by that, that he worked when he felt moved."

The singer recently included Basquiat's photo in a poorly received social media campaign for her upcoming album, Rebel Heart. Madonna recreated the cover, which depicts her face wrapped in bondage cords, with photos of Basquiat and other deceased celebrities and important figures including Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Jr., Bob Marley, Marilyn Monroe, Princess Diana, and John Lennon (see Madonna Posts Offensive 'Bondage' Images of Basquiat, Lennon, Princess Di).

As for what artists are currently inspiring her, Madonna is a fan of graffiti artists Banksy and JR because "their art is on the street, available for anyone to see. It's not elitist."

Madonna recently came under fire for refusing to loan a rare Frida Kahlo painting to the Detroit Institute of Arts (see Madonna Refused to Loan a Frida Kahlo Painting to Detroit Institute of Arts for Blockbuster Show).

For more on celebrity art collections, check out From Hollywood to the Art World, the New Celebrity Collectors, Take a Look Inside Leonardo DiCaprio's Growing Art Collection, and Sneak Peek at Beyoncé and Jay Z's Art Collection.

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Basquiat Took Back Paintings He Gave Madonna - artnet News

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Madonna, queen of pop, has opened up about her early 1980s relationship with painter Jean-Michel Basquiat, and it would appear the two had a pretty ugly breakup. Basquiat, who died in 1988 at the age of 27, went on to become a hugely successful artist, due in part to his close ties to Andy Warhol (see Basquiat's Mystique and Market Keep Rising).

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Intimate Snapshots of Madonna, Warhol and More

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Paige Powell, Interview magazine's former associate publisher and the ex-girlfriend of Jean-Michel Basquiat, shares photos from her personal archive.

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Italy has a heritage of breeding fashion eccentrics. There's Anna Dello Russo, the ritzy, glitzy, Italian-born doyenne of Vogue Japan, usually exiting or entering a fashion show in a barrage of flashbulbs clad in some form of reflective undergarment- as-outergarment.

Until recently, there was Anna Piaggi, a Vogue Italia front-row fixture who once pitched up to a Venetian-themed fancy-dress party dressed as a fish-wife with a basket of crabs balanced on her head, adorned with a brace of pigeon carcasses for good measure. She had to leave at midnight, like Cinderella, when the pigeons began to "mature" a little too much.

The original, however, came a clear hundred years earlier. Her full title was Luisa, Marquise Casati Stampa di Soncino, most commonly abbreviated to the Marchesa Casati - or simply La Casati, as you weren't likely to mistake her for anyone else.

Casati wore live snakes as jewellery, wandered around Venice and Paris naked under her fur coats and dyed her dogs, a pair of prize greyhounds, to match her outfits. She was obsessed with her luminous, oversized eyes, circling them with kohl, dilating them with belladonna droplets and even outlining them with adhesive tape. For daytime.

"I want to make of myself a living work of art," she stated, employing painters from Augustus John to Giovanni Boldini to immortalise her on canvas. Madonna has nothing on La Casati.

The climate-controlled Milanese apartment Anna Dello Russo maintains for her clothes pales next to Casati's eccentricities, including an albino peacock fed a constant supply of seed to keep it perfectly silhouetted against a window.

If her homes were stage sets, Casati saw her outfits as costumes for her multifaceted characters. She engaged Leon Bakst of the Ballets Russes to design her outré ensembles. Her most extravagant, however, "never quite came off", to borrow Cecil Beaton's phrase: La Casati commissioned Bakst to costume her as Saint Sebastian in armour pierced with hundreds of arrows sparkling with stars. Extra luminosity was intended to be added by a newfangled invention, electricity. Alas, when Casati was plugged in, her armour short-circuited and she was mildly electrocuted. Worst of all, she couldn't go to the ball.

Casati's couture capers sound like the perfect inspirational fodder for fashion designers: she became a muse, of sorts, as early as the 1930s, when a then-destitute Casati greeted the Italian couturier Elsa Schiaparelli in bed wearing a newspaper hat and scarf - Schiap quickly created her own printed silk versions.

In 1998, John Galliano staged a Dior haute couture collection in homage to Casati, taking over Paris' Opera Garnier for an exuberant fantasia of hoop-skirts, billowing bias-cut gowns and a flurry of tissue-paper butterflies released from the ceiling at the finale. There was even a suit of armour, albeit unplugged. Casati would have approved. And probably ordered half a dozen.
Alexander Fury is Fashion Editor of The Independent
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Move over Madge: 'La Casita' put style eccentrics such as Madonna in

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Italy has a heritage of breeding fashion eccentrics. There's Anna Dello Russo, the ritzy, glitzy, Italian-born doyenne of Vogue Japan, usually exiting or entering a fashion show in a barrage of flashbulbs clad in some form of reflective undergarment- as-outergarment.

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Meet the fashion extremists - Lady Gaga, Willow Smith, Anna Dello Russo, Anna Piaggi, Dita Von Teese, Bjork, Marina Diamandis, Cher, Daphne Guinness and more

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DO you have a Fashion-ology? If you did, you would know that last Friday the only place to be seen was at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Italian Vogue's iconic editor Anna Piaggi . With tickets selling out within eight minutes you had to be seriously on the pulse to get an invite - or know a milliner kind enough to get you in - alongside Suzy Menkes and Manolo Blahnik - heaven. "Hats are like a halo of happiness," Piaggi sighed - and indeed her entire relationship and friendship with Jones seems to be all about hats, hats, hats. "I was so proud of my hair in the Seventies," she says, and then, in 1982, she met Jones, chopped her hair short and became the canvas on which he could create. With Piaggi's keen eye, and Jones' imagination, they have created hundreds of hats. "I think better with a hat on," she says - and indeed has been known to phone her friend sometimes with only a few hours notice when she needs the next one; her exhibition at the V&A has already attracted a record 25,000 visitors. "At the airport I was in my Italian look, Missoni, and when he saw me, the man who stamps my passport said, 'finally a rainbow!'" Piaggi loves magical moments like that and sees style not as something just for special occasions. Like her exhibition, she is such an encyclopedia of style that it travels and evolves everywhere with her. For inspiration go and see her exhibition - fast, before she claims her hats back. "Oh, I miss them," she sighs in her hopelessly charming Italian accent. "I miss them so much" - as if she was visiting bambinos away at boarding school. A favourite? Oh no, no no, she can't possibly decide, or maybe she can - the Shadow of the Stephen Jones Top Hat - the Invisible hat - "It is just the soul - the to be or not to be?" And even not in her mother tongue... A lady who could be seen as eccentric in fact mesmerises her disciples - and then floats off for one more hat change en route to her Champagne reception, and with a tweak and an "ahh". Anna puts it on and another New Look is created. (April 3 2006, AM) Camilla Morton [b]Anna Piaggi Fashion-ology Admission charge applies. 2 February - 23 April 2006. Sponsored by Top Shop Admission (timed tickets are in operation) Advance telephone and online booking - 0870 906 3883 or www.vam.ac.uk

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DO you have a Fashion-ology? If you did, you would know that last Friday the only place to be seen was at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Italian Vogue's iconic editor Anna Piaggi .

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Art: Che Guevara: Revolutionary & Icon, Victoria & Albert Museum, London SW7

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How did a single image of Che Guevara come to sell sunglasses, ice-cream and even lip balm? Peter Preston finds out more at the Victoria & Albert Museum.

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Artist/Maker:

Ritts, Herb, born 1952 - died 2002 (photographer)
WEA Records Ltd. (record label)
Sire Records. (record label)

This poster advertises the album True Blue, a USA recording issued initially by Sire Records and distributed by Warner Chappell in July 1986. Image is of paramount importance to the singer and actress Madonna (born 1958), who has successfully 'reinvented' herself several times during her career. She oversees all aspects of her publicity and has developed a successful working relationship with the celebrated photographer Herb Ritts.

Physical description

Poster advertising the LP True Blue by Madonna. Showing the head and neck of Madonna in profile against a background in shades of blue, echoing the imagery of the LP.

Place of Origin

United States (manufactured)

Date

1986 (manufactured)

Artist/maker

Ritts, Herb, born 1952 - died 2002 (photographer)
WEA Records Ltd. (record label)
Sire Records. (record label)

Materials and Techniques

Colour offset lithography

Marks and inscriptions

MADONNA / true blue
Part of design.

Dimensions

Height: 152.3 cm, Width: 101.6 cm

Descriptive line

Poster advertising the LP 'True Blue' by Madonna. Showing the head and neck of Madonna in profile against a background in shades of blue. Colour offset lithography. Photograph by Herb Ritts. WEA/Sire Records. United States. 1986.

Bibliographic References (Citation, Note/Abstract, NAL no)

Edge, Kevin. The Art of Selling Songs : Graphics for the Music Business, 1690-1990. London : Futures Publications, 1991.

Techniques

Colour offset lithography

Subjects depicted

Woman

Categories

Entertainment & Leisure; Posters

Collection

Prints, Drawings & Paintings Collection

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Madonna True Blue | Ritts, Herb | V&A Search the Collections

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Artist/Maker: Ritts, Herb, born 1952 - died 2002 (photographer) WEA Records Ltd. (record label)Sire Records. (record label) This poster advertises the album True Blue, a USA recording issued initially by Sire Records and distributed by Warner Chappell in July 1986.

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Fashion in Motion is a series of live catwalk events presented at the V&A. Featuring some of the greatest designers of our time, Fashion in Motion brings catwalk couture to a wider audience by modelling it against the beautiful backdrop of the Museum.

Born in France in 1951, Christian Lacroix studied History of Art with plans to become a museum curator or costume designer and fell into fashion by chance. Lacroix was an assistant at Hermes, collaborated with the couturier of the Tokyo Imperial Court, and then in 1981 joined the House of Patou, where he learned the intricacies of Haute Couture. He went on to launch the Christian Lacroix House in 1987 and was appointed Artistic Director of the Italian fashion house Pucci from 2002 to 2005.

Lacroix, well known for defining the look of the 1980s, combining bright colours and extravagant embellishment, has also designed costumes for numerous stage productions, including a corset for Madonna's 2004 'Re-Invention World Tour'. His passion for theatre, opera and art have provided inspiration for many of his collections.

Lacroix's 2006/7 Autumn/Winter collection, inspired by the Renaissance, combines the opulent fabrics, colours and ornamental embroidery of that period with contemporary shapes, such as trench-coats and mini-dresses, to create a look that is glamorous and dramatic. The catwalk shows took place in the V&A's splendid Raphael Gallery displaying paintings by the Renaissance master and provided visitors with a unique opportunity to see Lacroix's theatrical new collection within this historical setting.

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The Christian Lacroix Fashion in Motion live catwalk event took place on October 31 2006. Lacroix, well known for defining the look of the 1980s, combining bright colours and extravagant embellishment, has also designed costumes for numerous stage productions. His passion for theatre, opera, and art have provided inspiration for many of his collections.

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And so, to Madonna on the cover of US Cosmopolitan's 50th anniversary issue. To mark this occasion, the 56-year-old Queen of Pop has delved into her fashion archive and gone for Desperately Seeking Susan with added face jewellery. I love the fact that Madonna has been around for as long as I have and is still going strong. I admire her success, her stamina, her four-decade career, but to be honest, I haven't always admired her wardrobe. As someone who prefers Boyfriend Chic to Matador Bondage, I have to admit I find the Rebel Heart singer's erotic stage persona a bit of a challenge.

Don't get me wrong, she is an amazing role model, and a cultural icon, and I love that Madonna is totally in control of her life. I just don't love all the look-at-me lingerie. I'd be more impressed if she was wearing a simple white vest and showing off her amazing physique (as on the 25 th anniversary Cosmo cover) instead.

Having said that, over the years, Madonna has taught me a thing or two about style:

Embrace necklace layering

Madonna on the cover of Like A Virgin.

I was 20 in 1984, when Like A Virginwas released. I was a student in Manchester, rocking a moody northern industrial vibe, when up popped Madonna - a thrown-together jumble of crucifixes, cropped tops and feisty New York attitude. It wasn't long before I was shuffling about at the Haçienda to Get into the Groove, in a biker jacket, skirt-over-leggings combo and Doc Martens. As the Wild Child Pop Star Costume is now available on Ebay for £19.99 - I would recommend just sticking with perennially chic necklace layering to perk up a plain outfit.

Wardrobe essentials never go out of style

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Madonna works a Breton top in Papa Don't Preach

The Breton top and Levi's in the Papa Don't Preach video, the biker jacket and ball gown for a night out with Sean Penn ... I'd argue that 1986 was Madonna's finest fashion year. For grownup wardrobe essentials, see also, the Ralph Lauren tuxedo chosen by her son David for the 56 th Annual Grammy Awards in 2014 (maybe she should employ him as a permanent wardrobe assistant?). The leopardprint top, fine-knit black cardigan and tweed pencil skirt in the 2015 Dolce & Gabbana "mamma" ads are quite lovely too. Though I can't help thinking of Cheryl whispering to her Kubelko Bondy babies in Miranda July's The First Bad Man: "Don't worry little fella, I'll sing you a lullaby." Yikes.

It's worth investing in a decent silk blouse

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Madonna at the 1995 MTV awards in Gucci. Photograph: Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

The disco-tastic Tom Ford at Gucci unbuttoned silk shirt, black velvet trousers and Belle du Jour hair worn at the MTV awards in 1995, is one of my favourite Madonna looks. And one I recreated, at the time, with a cheap slinky shirt and a pair of black needle-cord bootcut trousers. But now I'm a little older I've realised the error of my ways; the luxurious silk blouse is a grownup essential that is worth splashing out on. For work events or disco nights it's guaranteed to dress things up in a decadent fashion.

Fifty is the new 25

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Madonna in full matador chic at this year's Grammy awards. Photograph: Valerie Macon/AFP/Getty Images

And finally, to this year's Grammy's, where Madonna went full matador this being her favourite look at the moment. There is the argument that midlife has been completely reinvented by women like Madge, and this is what a fiftysomething performer looks like, today. And yet, and yet ... part of me can't help thinking how brilliant it would've been if Madonna had embraced the wrinkles (with those cheekbones she would look fantastic anyway) and been an age-positive pioneer. If anyone could stick two fingers up at the corporate music establishment, Madonna could, right? That's easy for me to say, I'm not living in her Material World, I'm not under intense facial scrutiny. As Madonna points out in Cosmopolitan" "Don't be fooled, not much has changed - certainly not for women. We still live in a very sexist society that wants to limit people ... For me, the fight has never ended."

To maintain her career and carry on performing in a sexist, ageist industry, Madonna has had to stay forever young. I'm not the Botox police, I understand that. I might not like the outfit, on myself or anyone, but Madonna is fifty-frickin-six and Cosmopolitan, a magazine aimed at women in their 20s and 30s, wants her on the cover. Now, to me, that is bloody brilliant.

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Why Madonna is still my style icon (despite the look-at-me lingerie)

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And so, to Madonna on the cover of US Cosmopolitan's 50th anniversary issue. To mark this occasion, the 56-year-old Queen of Pop has delved into her fashion archive and gone for Desperately Seeking Susan with added face jewellery. I love the fact that Madonna has been around for as long as I have and is still going strong.

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This interview originally appeared in two parts. The first part was published in Issue #606 of Rolling Stone on June 13th, 1991. The second part of the interview was published in Issue #607 on June 27, 1991. In the first part, Madonna and Carrie Fisher sat around talking about their shrink, the day they both got married and blow jobs. In the second of the two parts, they delve deeper into the meaning of death, ecstasy and spankings.

Madonna and I had met many times over the years, but we had never actually had a conversation. It took this interview to bring us together - she as icon, I as inquisitor of icon (after all, I have already distinguished myself as friend of icon, relative of icon and ex-wife of icon). I had never done an interview before, and I don't know that I will again. For me, this has all the makings of a waterloo.

The first of the two sessions for this interview took place in the restaurant of the four seasons hotel in Los Angeles. Madonna wore gold lamé; I probably wore black. The last sessions took place in the offices of her manager, Freddy DeMann. Madonna wore a negligee; I probably wore black. I was late for that first meeting because a friend who had AIDS and who was staying with me had suddenly developed a fever. I called Madonna to say I was on my way. "You're late," she informed me. I explained about my friend. "Well, OK, that's a good excuse," she said. By the time of our final meeting the following week, my friend had died. He had had been extremely courageous, fighting an unbelievable battle. I relate this because it factored somehow into our meetings, making them even more bizarre and certainly changing the tone of our conversation from time to time. Madonna has no equal at getting attention. She often seems to behave like someone who has been under severe restraint and can now say and do whatever she likes without fear of reprisal. She delights in being challenged, in telling more than she had planned, in going further that she had intended. And judging from her new film Truth or Dare, there is no "too far" for Madonna. She has quality that I've always enjoyed in some people, mainly public ones: she will answer any question because she is genuinely interested in her own reply. A conversation or an interview, then, can become an opportunity for self-discovery, or just discovery. It's a hearty mix of self-consciousness and self-confidence. It's a type of courage, a free fall into the perplexing public now.

I had heard a rumor that Norman Mailer was the first choice to do this interview but that it didn't work out. I'm sure he would have cost more than I. No doubt that Norman on Madonna would have been a historic piece. But this time around, history was not in the budget. Unfortunately or not, I was. So a lot of money was saved, and history was not made. Or made, at least, of cruder material. Discount history, at those low, low, no-mailer prices.

We have a lot in common. We go to the same shrink.
Yeah, everything I do is measured by what I think her reaction will be.

The choice is to be either her worst patient or her best patient, but to be distinct somehow.
I'm so worried about impressing her - not impressing her but being good - that when I know I'm fucking up-

She becomes the superego mommy conscience.
Absolutely. And so far she's disapproved of everything I've done since I've started seeing her. That's why I haven't gone lately.

We've also been married and divorced.
How many years were you and Paul [Simon] married?

We did a six-year stint on "not married," and then suddenly it was "Let's fix this relationship," or "We might as well be married." Then we were married for two years, and it was very on again, off again, as it was for the whole relationship over 13 years.
So nothing changed after you and Paul got married?

It got worse because it was supposed get better. Now I was supposed to be a better wife.
But you weren't.

No.
We also got married on August 16th.

The day Elvis died.
Is that why you got married on the 16th?

No. I don't remember why. Why did you? Because Elvis died? No, I know it was because that's also your birthday, and his [Sean Penn's] is the next day. Do you still speak to him?
I have been speaking to him recently. You know how it is. First it's like anything bad you can say comes out.

I never heard you slam him.
No, I never slammed him publicly. But I went through a hostile period. My heart was really broken. You can be a bitch until your heart's broken, and when your heart's broken, you're a superbitch about everything except that. You guard that closely. So, no, I never really slandered him. And then we went through a period where I never would have known I was even married to the guy. It was like that part of my life did not exist. Four years. The first year was good - sort of.

But you weren't together that long before you got married.
Seven months. It was really a romantic thing. We were madly in love with each other, and we decided quite soon after we started seeing each other that we were going to get married - and then we got married. He didn't get a tattoo on his arm.

You weren't like Cher and Josh [Donen]?
Or Winona or Johnny? Actually, Sean did get a tattoo but not until after we were married. It's my nickname on his toe. So none of his girlfriends can see it unless they're really inspecting him.

Which I should think they would.
Yes, at this point. It's Daisy.

Your nickname is Daisy?
It was when I was with him. No one calls me Daisy now. Now it's Dita, from Dita Parlo, an actress from the Thirties. She did a lot of silent movies.

And who gave you that one.
Actually, I gave it to myself, but everyone thought it was very fitting, so it just stuck. You know how you have to pick names when you stay in hotels. After Daisy there was Lulu.

Why were you named Daisy? For Daisy Buchanan, Daisy Miller?
Daisy Miller. There are a lot of good Daisys.

Mostly high-strung.
Yeah. And then there was Lulu because I was worshiping Louise Brooks. My name was Lulu Smith.

Why did you worship Louise Brooks?
Because she was hyperactive, she didn't mince words, and she was a rebel - at least from what I've read. I thought she was a fab girl.

Who else do you like who doesn't mince words?
Bette Davis. Oh, everybody I like is dead. The next name, while I was on tour for six months, was Kit Moresby from [the book] The Sheltering Skyline. She's fairly high-strung but not exactly my personality.

She was a lesbian and insane. Kit was based on the writer Jane Bowles.
So they say. Anyways, I loved the book, but after I saw the movie, I didn't want to be Kit Moresby anymore, because it was so disappointing. I didn't want people to think that I was Debra Winger.

So we're staying with Dita until further notice.
Until I find somebody else to be enamored of.

Someone from the past who's dead. Dorothy Parker?
She's good, but I don't like the name Dorothy.

Dotty. She wore those little puffy dresses and was apparently a really mean drunk.
Well, you know what we have to say about mean drunks.

What? Oh, that's your ex.
Shhhh.

Yeah, it's a really big secret. Nobody knows.
OK, so back to things we have in common. Let me ask you something: Did you fuck Warren?

No.
You didn't?

I'm one of the few. I could have.
OK, but we both made a movie with him, so we both could have fucked him.

At the time, I was 17 and making Shampoo. He offered to relieve me of the huge burden of my virginity. Four times. That was the big offer. I decided against it. I decided for reality over anecdote.
Next, we're both fag hags.

I prefer "fag moll."
Next, we both have a hostility toward men, which rears its ugly head often on our work.

I guess so.
I'm not saying it's bad. I think it's good to work it out. Which leads me to the next common thing - our work tends to be confessional and semi-autobiographical.

But yours hasn't been so autobiographical until lately. Truth or Dare is wildly so.
I finally decided that it was OK. That's the most interesting thing to talk about. I couldn't go on pretending that everything was peachy keen.

They always say, "Write about the truest thing you know."
Exactly. And another thing in common, last but not least - mother complex.

And probably father complex.
For different reasons.

Well, you didn't have a mother. How old were you when she died?
Six.

And did you have a stepmother?
Yeah, my father remarried three years later. So that's a lot we have in common. And - we both have the same shrink.

And also a lot of your humor is not dissimilar to something that I do. It is shock over wit. I've read interviews in which you say things like, "Look how big his dick is!"
It's a kind of vulgarity.

It's funny to me that you do it, because sometimes it seems like you have the attention of the world and sometimes you behave as though you don't. It's like you haven't caught up with the reality. It would be a very abstract reality to get behind.
It's not something I sit around and think about. It's rather unconscious. I just sort of naturally say things to shock, not necessarily to offend. It's like pulling the tablecloth off the table to disarm everybody.

You enjoy being controversial. That used to mean talking about things that were never talked about. Now, it seems controversy is just a diluted form of pornography or obscenity. I'm not suggesting that you do pornography, but you do obscenity.
You want to be more specific about that?

You express yourself in crass language. Like the women in your documentary that you say finger fucked you when you were schoolmates.
But that's really what happened!

Well, she denied it in the film. But I wanted to ask about that. Who is that girl?
She was a girl that I grew up with when I was little. She lives in North Carolina now; she moved there with her family. She recently had a baby and named it after me. I have spoken to her and written to her since then. To me, a lot of obscene things happen to people in their lives. I just didn't happen to cut it out of my movie.

I don't think it's obscene, actually, it's personal. The language you use to talk about it can be obscene.
Yeah, but I ended up making a personal movie. To me it was like, "Where do I draw the line?" Should I cut this out? If I cut out that, then why aren't I cutting out this?

And you have total say over what you can cut and what you can't?
In the end, Alek [Keshishian], the director, has final cut, but we never disagree on anything.

And he was there for how long?
He was there through the whole rehearsal period, which was a couple of months. He didn't start filming until we got on the road. In total, he was with us for about seven months.

So you were constantly being observed anyways, so the experience was probably just heightened.
Yeah, I didn't really know Alek that well. I was a bit wary of him in the beginning, and I didn't set out to make such a personal movie. I wanted to document the show because I thought it was really theatrical and I wanted it to be a film. But before we even got on the road, I started developing a relationship with my dancers. I was so fascinated with them that I thought: "No, I don't want to make a movie about us, about our life." I thought they were amusing and inspiring.

Why inspiring? Because they worked hard?
They were hard workers, extremely talented, and I didn't think they were jaded. They hadn't been on tour with other people and hadn't traveled. They hadn't been associated with - I hate to say the word - "celebrity." Everything was completely new to them.

You could trade on their innocence a little bit.
Absolutely. And I could show them things and be a mother to them. Take care of them. Assuage my guilt for having so much money by taking them shopping at Chanel and buying them everything their hearts desired.

That handles your guilt?
It makes me feel better for a while.

I've always felt that the nice thing about having a lot of work is that you feel required and essential to the process. Does your work use you up well enough?
Yeah, I think it does. It has to, because I ultimately end up making my own work. I don't sit around waiting for other people to give it to me. I've had to do this to ensure myself constant employment. I honestly don't think I could just announce to Hollywood, "OK, now I want to be an actress," and then wait for people to give me movies. I also couldn't be just a recording artist who puts out a record once a year. I have to keep finding things for myself to do.

Like producing films? What do you do? Do you option books, or have writers come in and pitched ideas?
It's almost never ideas people pitch. One film I want to do is the Frida Kahlo story, which I got interested in because I love her paintings. I started collecting her artwork, and all of a sudden everybody loved Frida.

She's one of the dead people you admire.
Absolutely. I'd never call myself Frida, though. Now I hear that there are a million people who are all doing Frida projects, but I don't give a shit.

Wasn't she supposed to be an unattractive woman?
I don't think so.

Actually, I have a pin of her that looks likes you.
In self-portrait she kind of over-exaggerated her facial hair. Her eyebrows didn't actually meet together, but she painted them to meet together. And she had dark hair on her upper lip because she was Latin American. And she overemphasized that in her paintings, which made her masculine and hard looking. In later years, she had health problems. She started taking some kind of medication like steroids and her facial hair got really thick. She had almost a beard; she had to shave practically.

How do you shave practically?
You know what I mean. And I'm just starting to develop Martha Graham's life story.

So you're doing a lot of women.
I couldn't do any men.

As a producer you could.
That's true, but I'm not interested in doing things that I'm not in. Although by the time one of these things comes along, maybe I'll be too old for it, and then I'll just direct it.

You want to direct?
Definitely. After I made this documentary and having gone through the step by step process of making movies, definitely.

I'd like to do it eventually too. At my height, I'd like to boss a group of men around. How tall are you?
Five-four-and-a-half.

I'm five one and a half, and it's incredibly important to me. Except that I stoop, which is attractive. I have one of those dowager's humps; it's from reading when I was a kid. For some reason, I don't bring the book up, I bring my head down, like it's a feed bag. So I read like a horse.
Short people try harder.

I'm compensating for it. What are you compensating for? Didn't you think you were attractive?
When I was little, absolutely not.

So when did you?
When did I think I was attractive? When I started hearing it from my ballet teacher at about 16.

But by then you had solidified the impression that you were not attractive.
I thought I was a dog from hell.

You certainly carry yourself as though -
I'm a dog from hell?

No, quite the opposite. I remember when we were at Ron Silver's Seder together and I had the impression that you were in a documentary, waving. You looked like you were moving through warm, thick liquid. It was very slow and -
Maybe it's because I was drunk.

You were drunk? You get drunk in a very, very graceful way, then.
I was so out of my element there.

Who wasn't? Excuse me!
Ron was out of his mind.

Screaming at his mother.
I'm not even Jewish. It was very strange. So if I was moving like I was going through warm liquid, it's because I felt like I was.

That was just my impression. I usually watch people and decide that they're just a lot more comfortable with how they're coming off than I am.
Did I look like I was comfortable?

You always look like you're comfortable. My impression of you is, arm's length. I've always felt that you were abrupt toward me, not impolite but close to it. You're not an ingratiating personality.
With you?

It's actually gotten better over time, but you've always been like [blasé]: "Hi, Carrie."
I know. I think you probably intimated me.

If so, then it seemed like you were working at intimidating me or removing me from the scene.
I do that all the people to people that I'm afraid of.

In your documentary, you come across more girl-like, whereas I've always experienced you as, I don't know, a commando. I never understood why you felt the need to attack when you've certainly won the battle, if not the war, in your mind.
Well, that's all part of how I'm going to conquer the world: conquer my loneliness.

But the impression I got from the movie was more girlish.
Yeah, because those are people who I really trusted and I spent a lot of time with, so it was very easy for me to be that way.

I saw you with them when I went backstage after I saw your show with Penny Marshall. We stood where the short people stand - sort of in the corner.
That's the funny thing about you in my life, Carrie. I see you in a lot of places, and you know a lot of people that I know, but for some reason I always feel like whenever I see you, I see you unexpectedly. In other words, no one ever tells me that you're coming or they're bringing you. So I feel like if I knew, then I would be ready.

I like the idea of preparing for me, like getting cookbooks or something.
Exactly. But I always see you and go, "Oh!" You seem to always kind of be -

Around.
You're on the periphery, but you have a very commanding personality. Maybe I see some of myself in you and I can't deal with that.

I offend you greatly. My line is that too many village idiots spoil the village. So if you're in the room, it's your village, man, and you be the idiot. I would certainly take a back seat to your drive. You're what I would call a focus puller. You would have been a star in any incarnation.
You mean whatever I chose to do?

But you could not have chosen to do anything but what you do, could you? Did you ever want to do anything else?
No.

Like John Lennon once told Paul [Simon] that he wanted to be a hairdresser. Yeah, right.
Well, I wanted to be a nun. I saw nuns as superstars.

How could you have wanted to be a nun, given your attitude? Sister Mary Blowjob?
Sister Mary Fellatio. When I was growing up I went to a Catholic school, and the nuns, to me, were these superhuman, beautiful, fantastic people. To me, that was as close as I was going to get to celebrities. I thought they were really elegant. They wore these long gowns, they seemed to glide on the floor, everyone said that they were married to Jesus. I thought they were superhuman and fabulous.

So you grew up believing in God.
I still believe in God.

Do you go to church?
I don't like to have to visit God in a specific area. I like him to be everywhere.

Here with us now.
Part of my air.

Well, I like the idea. My doubt is heavier.
You probably weren't raised with a devoutly religious parent. It sort of rubs off on you.

So your father is devoutly religious?
Absolutely.

Does he go to church still?
Every Sunday.

So your big thing is probably rebelling against the church. I'm going to figure you out yet.
Rebelling against the church and rebelling against the laws decreed by my father, which were dictated through the church, I suppose.

Do you believe in the afterlife?
Oh, I believe in everything. That's what Catholicism teaches you.

So you go to confession? I'd love to be there.
I don't now, but I did.

You don't even go to your shrink.
But mind you, when I did go to confession, I never told the priest what I thought I'd really done wrong. I'd make up other, small crimes. I thought, look, if I think I've done something wrong, I have a private line to God, and I'll just tell him in my bedroom.

Do you still think you have a private line to God? "Hello, God, it's Madonna." No, not even Madonna, just say, "God, it's me."
He knows my voice by now. I suppose I still pray.

Well, you do before your shows, as we see in your film. I was impressed. My brother is a born-again Christian, and though we fought over it, I always sort of envied his ability to suspend doubt.
It's not that my doubt have been suspended, it's just that if something's really horrible and I say enough prayers, it will get better.

I believe in God in strong air turbulence.
God seems to be there whenever things are really horrible. I do try to remind myself - I know this sounds corny - to be thankful for things when they're good, to be conscious of God.

Even during your masturbation reenactments onstage?
Well, I don't practice Catholicism now. The Catholic Church completely frowns on sex.

Sex is OK for procreation.
But only for procreation and not for enjoyment.

Men have to have an orgasm in order to procreate, while we certainly don't.
Right, that's another thing - Catholicism is extremely sexist.

Thank God.
For what?

That we don't have to have an orgasm in order to procreate.
Yeah, it sort of takes the pressure off of us.

Who told you about sex, your father?
Who did tell me? My stepmother told me, and I remember I was horrified. I was 10 and had just started my period. It was like, "OK, we better tell her." I remember my stepmother was in the kitchen, and I was washing dishes. Every time she said the word penis, I'd turn the water on really hard so it would drown out what she said. I thought what she was telling me was horrifying, absolutely horrifying. And I hated the word. I just hated the whole thing.

You certainly had a lot of brothers, so you must have seen theirs.
I did, and I thought they were disgusting.

I saw my stepfather's - which was alarming - from the back.
I never saw my father naked, and I really thought about that.

So, what did your stepmother tell you?
I don't remember the exact words, but just that a man has a penis and a woman has a vagina.

You didn't mind the word "vagina" as much?
No, because I have one, so I can relate to it. I can barely relate to a dick now; I couldn't at all then.

Would you like to have one, every now and again?
Yeah, I'd like to know what it feels like to go in and out of somebody.

Enter Laughing.
It's enough having my breasts as an appendage. When you jump up and down, or dance, or run, or whatever, they're there. I can't imagine having a third thing hanging off my body. How dreadful!

I think I'd like to wake up with an erection, even if it was just not to not like it.
Yeah, I'd like to know what those things are like. I'd really like to pee standing up.

The way to do that is to go to Africa. When you really have to go, you go in the bush. All you think is that a snake is going to come and bite something - hopefully your ass.
That's what makes women vulnerable, that extra hole.

But men are vulnerable because their genitals are hanging outside and could be lopped off. Ours have been lopped off.
Yeah, but we have a big orifice that insects can crawl inside of.

Have you had that experience?
No, thank God. But I think I probably had that fear when I was little. Whenever I was out in the woods, I'd sit on my hands to make sure that no bugs could permeate my underpants and go up inside my crotch.

They'd have to be pretty small bugs, I guess, depending on what kind of underwear you wore. If you were Catholic, you probably weren't wearing lace at that point. You didn't get into really elaborate underwear until recently, I imagine.
Not until I had money, really.

How long have you had money? Eight years? I can figure it out because you were becoming famous when I was in the drug clinic. The videos used to be on. The drug addicts only wanted to watch Star Trek, MTV or The Twilight Zone. You were part of my recovery, dancing and writhing on the floor.
In my lace underwear.

Speaking of that, how is your personal life now? You're not with that guy anymore.
I'm in a state of limbo. I find myself singing "Mister Sandman" every night before I go to bed.

So, do you want me to set you up with some people?
Excellent.

Is there something particular that you're looking for at this juncture?
Intelligence would be good.

As you get older, the pickings get slimmer, but the people sure don't.
I'll take a slightly overweight guy if he's smart.

You can work him out.
Yeah, I'll put him through a training regime. But what can you do to somebody's brain? The die is cast.

You don't want to put him through Boyfriend University?
Oh, God, I'm so tired of that. I'm waiting for the perfect man.

That's going to be tough. I always thought that I wanted to form an alliance rather than have a relationship - find someone who you fancy as your counterpart. But a counterpart you go to war with, a complement you live with. So this is my new theory.
I've found counterparts, and I've worked with them.

That almost killed me.
I have not found a complement.

I would have thought your last boyfriend [model Tony Ward] was a complement.
He was a complement, but I insist that whoever complements me has his own identity. Meanwhile, let's skip right to the thing men really enjoy.

Let's get to the real servicing thing. The quickest way to a man's heart is not through his stomach, it's through blow jobs.
I don't like blow jobs.

What do you like?
Getting head?

For how long?
A day and a half [laughs].

So why don't you go out with women? I have the answer from my end.
Because after they give head, I want them to stick it inside of me.

My answer is, because there's no payoff.
Although, I guess a woman could strap on a dildo.

Not really. There's no way to look at somebody who has strapped on a dildo and still think that they're a human. Their dignity levels are frighteningly low.
I've never had one inside of me, but for a joke I asked a friend of mine to put one on. I just couldn't stop laughing, so I didn't see how anyone could look at them with a straight face.

That's what you can do at your level of power: Insist that someone strap on a dildo.
She was happy to do it.

I bet! Good anecdote, bad reality. Mike Nichols once said that in relationships there should be a flower and a gardener, and that was the problem with you and Sean: Two flowers, no gardener to nurture. Who's going to mind the relationship?
That's exactly it. Who's taking care of things? "We both need a wife," is what Sean was always saying. We're supposed to be the good wife.

Breadwinner and bread maker. When you win as much bread as you do, your bread-baking skills are going to go down and it's going to be harder to have a relationship. You have to figure out different compromises. Most men don't want to compromise.
I have to figure out what I can do good for a guy that will take care of the fact that I'm not going to be doing the cooking.

What can you do well? I'm desperate to hear this stuff. You are very attractive.
That's not doing something good.

Well, for guys it is.
I would never be a financial burden to anyone [laughs]. I think I have a terrific sense of humor.

You can joke about the things that they're not getting.
Exactly. I'm a good kisser. I know that.

How do you know?
Because everyone says so. They don't tell me I give good head, believe me, because I don't give it.

Ever?
They just tell me I'm a savage bitch. Who wants to choke? That's the bottom line. I contend that that's part of the whole humiliation thing of men with women. Women cannot choke a guy.

Some would argue.
Yeah, but still, it doesn't go down into their throat and move their epiglottis around.

So you're a good kisser, you have a good sense of humor, and you're not a financial burden. I think we have to find some more stuff.
OK. I can carry my own suitcases.

Are you supportive or nurturing?
I can be [laughs]. I'm tempted to say it's not my nature, but on the other hand I know that I am nurturing.

Do you remember to ask how their day was?
I do, but only because -

You've been tortured about not doing it.
Exactly. I'm getting better at that. Inevitably, what they did bores me.

But you know how I've heard boredom described? Unenthusiastic hostility.
That's good.

Do you want to have children?
Yeah.

When?
As soon as I find Mr. Right. No, a soon as I just finish one more project!

But I don't think there is Mr. Right.
OK, there isn't Mr. Right.

I think we have to modify that idea.
Expectations, absolutely.

Especially when you're such a piece of work. You'll forgive me, but most men - I was told this by a shrink - will not want to take on a person in your position. He didn't speak specifically of you but of people with large careers.
I'm sure of that. That's why so many young guys go after me. For me it's either older guys or younger guys. Old guys have already achieved success. They know who they are and generally they have money, one would hope, so they're not about to be that competitive with you. They're in a certain place; they're in the twilight. And then there are the really younger ones, and nothing is expected of them yet.

And there's also that horrible thing when you go on dates after you're thirty: Everyone's already experienced a bad relationship, so you're living in the blowout of that horror. You have to put up with the ghosts that both of you carry around. A younger guy doesn't have as many ghosts, so you can scribble on their clean slate. You can be their first bad experience.
And I usually am.

You can initiate them into the world of dysfunctional relationships.
I can walk away and say, "Well, that'll really make a man out of him."

That's right, they've had their Madonna experience. That's what wrecked me for dating guys after I turned 20. I didn't want to give anyone the opportunity to say that they had fucked Princess Leia.
Laid Princess Leia.

I think you should put an ad in some very, very high-level newspaper.
Like what, the Wall Street Journal?

So how are you going to meet guys, go to bars?
No.

The bummer about being a celebrity is that guys already know so much about you, which you either have to undo or redo.
You can always say, "You can't believe anything you've read."

"I'm really very sweet, and I only showed how to give a blow job in that movie because I was stressed out. That's not really how I do it, this is how I do it."
I guess it is strange. It's kind of hard to date when you're a celebrity because you can't walk unknown into a place and present yourself to somebody. It's like everybody knows you already. Or here's a good barometer: If you can watch my documentary and not be completely repulsed - not repulsed, but shocked - by me. That weeds them out.

That's what I think you like to do. You like to test your parameters by exceeding them.
That's it, absolutely. You got it.

I was going to ask if you were going to keep topping yourself in each of your videos. Could we expect one of your male dancers to pull a tampon out of with his teeth? But I don't want to give you any ideas.
I don't like blood, so you won't see that.

It could be during the off period, during ovulation.
I haven't thought of that one. I don't think I would, though, because I don't think any of my dancers want to go anywhere near my pussy.

They like to go near your breasts, though.
But that's just a leftover thing with their moms.

You've been photographed kissing women. Do they kiss the same as men?
Sometimes better. I've kissed girls that are horrible kissers. I've only kissed women, though.

Well, you've done the finger fucking thing.
OK, OK.
"True Confessions: The Rolling Stone Interview with Madonna, (Part Two)"
But that's it.
Let me put it this way: I've certainly had had fantasies of fucking women, but I am not a lesbian.

You never took drugs?
Not really.

You seem like you're too in control. I like to regain control.
After you've lost it? No, I never like to relinquish it. I went through a real short period where I very begrudgingly tried a few drugs.

LSD ever?
I didn't really enjoy it. I enjoyed ecstasy.

There's a nickname for ecstasy: St. Joseph baby acid.
What I like about it was that it took my edge off. I'm a naturally suspicious person, and all of a sudden I didn't see everyone as my enemy. I was really nice to people.

So next time I want you to be really nice to me, I'll put some ecstasy in your water.
It was enjoyable a couple of times. But I would feel violently ill after I did it. I'd be bedridden for days, so it wasn't worth it. Good anecdote, bad reality.

It sounds like it's a good anecdote, bad subsequent reality - which I always used to feel was worth it.
I never really enjoyed coke because it made me more of a nervous wreck than I am.

So, if you are a nervous wreck, why wouldn't you have gotten into painkillers?
They weren't available. I didn't know anybody who did them. I was trying drugs before I had money, and the people I knew were only into ups. Everybody was into coke and crystal meth - stuff that made you chew on the side of your mouth after you took it. If I needed anything, I needed something to calm me down - and nobody seemed to have that.

Then you're lucky. Also you're not addictive, just compulsive.
I'm definitely compulsive, but I'm compulsive about being in control.

I'm addictive-compulsive, and I would have been a drug addict no matter what. The great philosophy of painkillers is that they make you feel better. Well, if you don't feel bad already, that's great; but if you do, that's better still.
My treatment for feeling bad was not to make myself feel better but to flagellate myself in other ways.

That's Catholic. What's your mother complex?
That I don't have one, so I'm always looking for someone to fill up my hole - no pun intended.

So, then, you're looking for someone to be your mother?
Yeah. She's gone, so I've turned my need on to the world and said, "OK, I don't have a mother to love me, I'm going to make the world love me."

Now that you've gotten the attention and you've gotten a certain amount of respect -
But it's not enough.

No. Well, when is enough? David Mamet has a Pulitzer Prize and still doesn't feel like a real writer. I mean, I don't know anybody at any level who goes, "Ahhh!"
That's good to know. I wonder if there are people walking around who are happy with what they've accomplished? I don't know anyone who's happy.

Not anybody in this business -
Which is full of unhappy people -

And children of alcoholics. You don't have that problem.
There's alcoholism in my family. My father wasn't an alcoholic, but his parents were. And some of the people in my mother's family are alcoholics.

You're lucky you're aware of that because it makes it a lot easier to handle.
Absolutely. I guess some people would say that my father's behavior was alcoholic behavior.

It would have to be if he's a child of one. Children of alcoholics don't manifest the alcoholism, but they do the behavior. Does your father give you advice?
No.

Never? I bet he did. You're rebelling against somebody.
My father didn't give me advice, he just gave orders.

Well, that's advice.
"Do this or else."

What's the "or else"?
I was always grounded or had to do chores or was forced to stay at home for the summer.

No hitting?
My father never hit me. My stepmother slapped me a lot, and she gave me a bloody nose once. I was thrilled about it because my nose bled all over an outfit that she made me for Easter. I really hated it, and I didn't want to wear it to church.

How old were you?
About 12. We had a very large family and my stepmother was trying to make ends meet, so often she would go to Kmart and buy big bolts of fabric that were on sale. She would sew the exact same McCall's dress pattern for me and my three sisters. I detested that - looking like my sisters. I wanted to be my own person.

You've succeeded in that.
I know, I know. Anyway, she made us these horrible lime green dresses.

It must have looked nice with blood on it.
What happened was that we got into the car to go to church and I was disgusted that I had to wear this lime green dress with white stripes on it. I had on white ankle socks and white shoes. I thought I looked hideous. I got into the front seat of the station wagon next to my stepmother. The car was completely filled up with all my brothers and sisters. I mumbled something about this horrible ugly dress I was wearing, and my stepmother just went BAM! I always got nosebleeds when I was little and my nose bled very easily. Even though I was in agony, I couldn't have been more thrilled. Not only did I not have to wear the dress, but I didn't have to go to church. My nose wouldn't stop bleeding, so everyone left and I got to stay home.

So you were supposed to be a good little girl. Were you supposed to be a virgin when you got married?
Yes. And my stepmother told me I wasn't allowed to wear tampons until I got married. Can you imagine? That's why my friend Moira had to teach me how to wear a tampon. I'm telling you, I put it in sideways and was walking around paralyzed one day. It pinched a nerve or something.

And you were rebelling by putting it in at all.
Yes, but I wanted to go swimming. It was during the summer, and who can go swimming with a Kotex on?

Probably someone.
Probably Mormons or something. No, you just don't go swimming - just like you don't fuck when you're Catholic if you don't want to get pregnant. There are all these stupid rules.

My favorite Polish joke is the one where the Polish people have fifty dollars and they go to New York. They're sent out to find something to do. One of them goes out and comes back later with a carton of Tampax. They go, "What is this?" He says: "Look! You can go swimming, you can go horseback riding, you can go sky diving."
That's cute.

When did you lose your virginity?
When I was 14.

So you got into rebelling.
Right away.

Did they know?
Nooo. Oh, no.

And when did they find out that you had?
They didn't.

They'll find out through this article.
I've never really talked about sex with my father. My parents were virgins when they got married. My mother was very religious, too. I think my father realized I was having sex once I married Sean [Penn]. Before then I don't think he did. I never brought any guys around because my parents lived in Michigan and I lived in New York at the time.

When did you move away from home?
When I was 17. But I never brought anybody home. Oh, once I brought Jellybean [Benitez] home, but we had to sleep in separate bedrooms.

Did you sneak?
No, because my father's bedroom was in between.

In Truth or Dare when your father came to your show, was that the first time he had seen you simulate masturbation and be so explicit about everything?
I don't know if he's seen all the other things I've done. I'm sure when the nude pictures in Playboy and the album Like a Virgin came out he went through a period of extreme shock.

Did he ever say anything?
No.

That's nice - I guess.
I'm not sure. I haven't decided. When I go home, my father absolutely does not acknowledge that I'm famous, or a star, or a celebrity, or that I've made it in any way. He doesn't talk about it so I can fit in and not feel the scorn of my brothers and sisters. I'm not sure that I like that.

That must be complicated if you go out to dinner.
I never go out to dinner when I go home.

So you don't want to make him confront your celebrity.
No, I would like it if he talked about it, actually, but he never does. Maybe I want him to recognize it so that finally I'll have his approval.

To not have his disapproval-
Is better than nothing.

But it would be nice to have a conversation with him about what you do. You would probably have to assume that - given your upbringing - he would object to it.
My father's not incredibly confrontational about things like that.

He gave you loud advice. He gave you orders.
My father has had a lot of tragedies in his life. I have some very crazy brothers who really keep my father busy

So you're a success story, despite the fact that some of what you do flies in the face of his religion.
Absolutely.

At least you're not in rehab.
I'm not in rehab, and he's not still supporting me.

Is he still supporting them?
Well, if they could spend a couple of months out of rehab they could get jobs.

How many of them are doing that?
There are two of them that sort of go in and out. They have problems. One's just an older version of the other.

And one of them was in Truth or Dare.
Yeah.

Do you get along with him?
Yeah, I do.

Has he seen the movie?
No, he hasn't. I know he's looking forward to it because he really wants to be a star in his own right.

A star at what?
Anything. He's a real con artist. He's got this great deep voice, so for a while he was a disc jockey for black radio stations. He thinks he's a black person, I think. He's hysterically funny.

It's that gallows humor. You better be funny if you're going to be a big problem.
Oh, he is funny. That boy can make you laugh. I'd like to see him have a stable life.

Do you get along with your brother Christopher?
I get along with him fabulously, famously.

And he works.
Many of my brothers and sisters work. It's just that Christopher really understands what happens to me in my life from day to day.

He's the only family member who has that experience.
Yeah.

[My friend Julian died of AIDS on Saturday at 4:45 p.m. in Sherman Oaks Hospital, in Los Angeles. He had been staying with me for a month. Madonna and I resumed this interview on Tuesday evening. I described some of the particulars of his death to her off the record. I tend to joke about things that are awkward or painful for me. So if some of what follows seems offhand or flippant in any way, I apologize.

Being with someone while they die is a very intense and inspiring process. It hardly seems like something to cover in a Madonna interview. After all, we were there to shed some light on a glaringly illuminated individual and to talk about her new film. Death is intimate. Real. Big Real. This interview worked out to be a kind of truth or death for me. But as they say, the truth will out, or "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I found myself humming 'Vogue.'"]

I heard your friend died, and I can't believe you'd even want to do an interview today. I don't want the gory details, but what happened? Was it sudden?

Yeah. He went to the emergency room Friday morning, and he died Saturday. I got the 'Vanity Fair' with the story about you when I was at the hospital, so he saw your pictures. He wanted me to hold them up. He liked them very much.
Oh, that breaks my heart. How old was he?

Thirty-one. I'd never seen anything like that.
It's a very cruel, gruesome death.

He was a real shtarker about it. "This is so silly" and "My slippers are under the bed" were, I believe, his last complete phrases. He was delirious at the end.
It's confusing to talk about other people dying.

But when you see somebody doing it, they're very busy doing it-so it's not as bad as you think. He was Catholic.
I didn't have such a pleasant experience. It was the ugliest, most horrible thing I've ever seen. I was in the room with my best friend when he died. I was absolutely, positively horrified. He didn't have the same sense of humor your friend had. I wish he would have. It was very "Why me?" He felt persecuted to the end.

Everybody has their own idea about death. Do you have any death thoughts that you'd like to share with the group?
Death thoughts. That's funny because I was thinking about dying the other day. You get so preoccupied with thinking about being eternally youthful, but every once in a while a death thought comes upon you.

That's what is so scary about being a woman in this business. Not only can you not age gracefully, you can't age at all.
Yeah. The death thought came while I was sitting on my toilet peeing - that's where I have my most contemplative moments. I like sitting on the toilet, period - number one or number two. I was thinking about dying. I'm obsessed with it because my mother died of breast cancer when she was thirty.

So you check all that regularly.
Yes, I go to the mammogram vault on a regular basis. It's the most horrifying thing in the world. You go in and you feel like you're getting your death sentence. First of all it's painful because they smash your breasts into this thing. Then you put a robe on and go into this room where everybody scatters because of the radiation. You're lying alone on this table and the radiation is coming in and you're thinking, "Well, they're giving me cancer while they're looking for cancer." You just feel really creepy. My mother was a radiation technologist - I always thought maybe they didn't make her wear lead aprons. Anyway, I turned thirty and didn't die, so I felt really good about that.

Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
I don't think I'll be dead.

But in terms of your career, won't you have to stop being as sexual at a certain point before it becomes weird?
Why?

That's the law. Not at 42.
Sexy in what way? Marlene Dietrich is still sexy.

My father slept with her.
Really? I wish I had slept with her.

With her?
Yeah, she's gorgeous. She had a very masculine thing about her, but I think she maintained a sexual allure. You just do it in a different way. I'm absolutely not afraid of whether I'll find work or not in ten years. What is going to be tougher for me, I'm sure, is just the emotional idea of being older.

Marilyn Monroe died at 36, before she had to deal with all that.
I think it would have been pretty tough on her.

There aren't that many women who were sex objects who have survived. There are a couple of them, but when you see them interviewed, they don't look very good.
Why do you think that is? Is it just a state of mind?

I think when you're valued for something that you didn't have much business in acquiring - like your looks - you're more out of control. As your looks diminish with age, you feel your value is diminishing and you get afraid.
But do you think that I'm valued for my looks?

Partly.
Because I have never considered myself a conventionally pretty person. I look at girls and go, "They're perfect." I have to work at it.

But your beauty is part of your impact - like Marilyn and Jayne Mansfield. And there's one whose name I can't remember-
Mamie Van Doren?

That's the one. She's alive.
But they didn't cultivate anything else.

And you are creatively involved in your career. It's not simply your looks, although they help. You do get very involved in keeping yourself attractive. But you're not as self-destructive as Marilyn. She was very male identified; she went from one male to the next and was constantly disappointed.
I know that feeling.

It's interesting that you identify with Marilyn, because she's somebody who didn't survive the fire.
I identify with her to a certain extent, but then I have to draw the line. I mean, I don't look at her and go, "Ooh, her life is just like mine." No way.

That's why I think it's better to focus on a part of your image that you have more control over - which would be your songwriting or producing - and get involved in a way that you don't have to be young and beautiful forever.
You won't hear me disagreeing with you on that.

What about your whole spanking thing? I don't get that.
It's a joke. I despise being spanked. I absolutely detest it. It's play. I say I want to be spanked, but it's like "Try it and I'll knock your fucking head off." It's a joke!

But I saw you on Arsenio and you said-
I was just playing with Arsenio.

This is a very important piece of news.
I certainly punish myself in lots of ways but not by having people hit me. I hate it. And if someone tries to spank me, like before sex or something -

But if kids hear some of that stuff and think it's cute, it could be misinterpreted.
I suppose so.

You could be a little bit clearer about that, to my mind.
I thought it would be obvious - because of my image as a person who wants to be domineering and take charge - that there was no way I would actually want somebody to spank me.

I didn't get it or that stiff on the "Express Yourself" video with you in a dog collar.
But it's all the same thing. These are traditional roles that women play, and here I am doing them, but that's not really what I'm doing.

I thought perhaps you felt that you had so much control that you had some berserk fantasy about having some of it removed.
I didn't mean it that way. I think it was just my sick little sense of humor, or not-so-little sense of humor. The spanking thing started because I believed that my character in Dick Tracy liked to get smacked around and that's why she hung around with people like Al Pacino's character. Warren [Beatty] asked me to write some songs, and one of them - the hanky-panky song - was about that. I say in the song, "Nothing like a good spanky," and in the middle I say, "Ooh, my bottom hurts just thinking about it." When it came out, everybody started asking, "Do you like to get spanked?" and I said: "Yeah. Yeah, I do."

And on Nightline you talked about putting a dog collar on yourself and all. I thought, "Well, why would somebody in her position choose to put a collar on herself?" So I thought maybe it was a way to punish yourself for all the rewards you had gotten.
It is, I'm sure. I can't entirely explain it. It's just an image I thought was powerful, and I chose to use it in my video. It showed an extreme. First you see me chained to a bed, then you see me on top of a stairway with these working men below, and I'm wearing a suit and grabbing my crotch. Extreme images of women: One is in charge, in control, dominating; the other is chained to a bed, taking care of the procreation responsibilities.

You're more known through your videos and songs, so perhaps your sense of humor isn't as obvious to people.
It will be soon, though.

If you do a lot of press and people understand that you're kidding -
Then the real me will be revealed.

I don't think there's any such thing.
No, I'm being sarcastic.

What would be a good way for someone to woo you?
If I knew, I'd call them right away and tell them.

No, I think you should leave that to me. I think it would be better if I told them and they approached you. It would be bad if you just thought they were following your instructions.
I like letters.

So, you'd like to go out with a writer.
Oh, God, I would love to.

I'm telling you, I can set you up with one! He has tattoos and a brain.
That's worth at least a hard-on.

And what else?
I like it if I haven't seen somebody in a while and he remembers my favorite thing to eat or my favorite flower.

You like someone to be considerate.
Yeah. A considerate good writer.

Good-looking is not essential? It seems to have been a factor. The last one was a model.
Yeah, but you haven't seen everybody I've gone out with.

How do you know? Do you think I'm too busy to follow you around and know all about your life?
I suppose looks are important, but I've certainly found myself attracted to men who aren't conventionally attractive. Painters are good, too. There are two things that I can't do and wish that I could - write and paint.

But you do write.
I know, but to sit down and write a novel is mind-boggling to me. I just can't imagine sitting down and applying yourself to that much paper. How do you sit still for so long? My attention span isn't that long.

I read you write songs in 15 minutes.
Yeah, but pop songs are really easy to write. Michael Jackson's been working on his album for something like three years. I can't imagine doing that! I'd go insane.

Has anyone written a song about you?
Pat Leonard, this guy that I write music with, wrote a song about me called "Queen of Misery."

Are you like that? Do you get depressed?
I have been. I write all my sad songs with Pat.

What are your sad songs?
You want me to name all of them?

No, just a smattering.
"Live to Tell," "Oh Father," "Promise to Try."

Do you play any instrument?
No. When I was really little I played piano and then decided I didn't want to. Then in New York, after I decided that dancing was a big waste of time as a career, I asked this guy to teach me to play the guitar. I started writing immediately. For a couple years I practiced the guitar two hours a day and the drums four hours a day. But as I got more involved in the things you have to do to make records and videos and go on tour, I just stopped playing. On my first album, I wrote almost every song myself. Then I guess I got lazy.

I would hardly characterize you as lazy. What's the song you're proudest of?
That's like saying which child do I like best in my large family. There are different things that are great about each one. There are certainly plenty that I don't really give a shit about. I don't like listening to my music. I listen to all those weird tapes you get at Bodhi Tree [a New Age bookstore in Los Angeles]. Chimes. My masseuse has one amazing tape that just keeps playing Pachelbel's Canon over and over.

Do you write when you're upset?
Yeah, a lot. Words just come spewing forth. I've written my best things when I'm upset, but then who hasn't? What's the point of sitting down and notating your happiness?

No, generally you don't have that kind of concentration. And it's not that interesting unless it's psychotic. When it's a manic high you can have a skewed sensibility. Someone told me it's called dysphoria - elation with a limit. You become aware of the limit, and you're notating it before it ends.
I've never done that, I don't think. No, I have written songs in that state.

"Cherish."
Yeah, in a super-hyper-positive state of mind that I knew was not going to last.

Do you like gifts? What's the best gift you're ever gotten?
Letters. And I've gotten some really beautiful jewelry from Warren. He has excellent taste in jewelry: necklaces, rings, earrings, bracelets, pins, beautiful brooches - antique stuff. It's rare that a guy will give you really good jewelry. I was shocked, pleasantly. Most people just go out and use their own bad taste.

Do you get gifts for men?
Oh, yeah. My gift giving comes in the first few weeks of dating.

That's when you give head.
They're not getting head from me, they're getting gifts from Maxfield.

I want to go back to your perfect date. This is your version of an ad. What's the ideal? We know about letters and a good memory.
Gotta smell good.

Their own body smell or do you like a particular after-shave?
I'm not crazy about colognes. Some people just smell good, and it doesn't have anything to do with something they put on. Smell good and be clean, those are really important things. Another essential thing about a guy is that he's got to be able to pay his own rent. Not the rent on my house, just his own rent.

What's a good date - movies, dinner?
Both. Dinner is really good.

What kind of restaurant?
Where they have good margaritas.

So a Mexican restaurant.
No, I hate Mexican food. But Muse [in L.A.] has great margaritas. The lighting is really good there; you can't see the zits that I always have.

I don't see them.
I'm dying to meet someone who knows more than me. I keep meeting guys who know less.

It's not going to be easy to find somebody who knows more than you and is more powerful. In every situation you have to compromise. What are you willing to compromise?
OK, he doesn't have to have a good memory.

So you'd rather go for smarter.
Smarter over sweeter. When you have a conversation and then a week later you say, "You said you were going to do this," and the other person says, "I never said that" - that drives me crazy.

Do you get to say everything that you want to say when you get in those arguments?
Yes, because I always go: "Shut up! Just shut up! Let me say what I have to say!" And they shut up.

I let mine build up, and then I come out with this hairball of observation.
And it's so forceful that whoever is standing in the room has to shut up. I save up lines. I save up what I consider to be really incredible things to say to somebody to really wound them.

And does it?
Yeah.

Do you imagine getting married again like you got married before?
No, Carrie, no, no. You don't make those kind of mistakes twice.

So, next time you'll just do it off to one side, like a salad?
Yeah, it'll be a side-dish kind of thing.

Just do it and get it over with, and it'll be like something that just happened. "Oh, by the way - I got married."
No, I don't want to do it like that. I wouldn't want to treat it like coleslaw or anything. I guess I'd just like to think of it as spa cuisine versus a full 12-course meal.

Would you have to be with someone who you couldn't ask for a prenuptial agreement?
No, I'd have to be with somebody who I could ask for one. They'd have to be not insulted if I asked for one - bottom line.

So you just have to have someone who is really confident.
Confident, smells good, smart.

Is that the order?
No. Smart, confident, smells good, sense of humor, likes to write letters, likes antique jewelry. The three toppers are smart, smells good, confident.

Sense of humor - can't take that out.
Carrie, do you have anything really important left to ask me?

No, I think we've covered it. We talked about your movie.
I explained the spanking issue.

That was very good for me.
We discussed growing old, having children, getting married and what I'm going to do with my life.
We just have to get that information for the blind date. Muse, margaritas, letters. I think we're done. 'Star Wars' star Carrie Fisher talks about getting older and fearing dying. Watch here.

And breast cancer and skin.
What else is there?

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True Confessions: Carrie Fisher Interviews Madonna

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This interview originally appeared in two parts. The first part was published in Issue #606 of Rolling Stone on June 13th, 1991. The second part of the interview was published in Issue #607 on June 27, 1991. In the first part, Madonna and Carrie Fisher sat around talking about their shrink, the day they both got married and blow jobs.

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Scrapes with capes aside, Madonna - the long-reigning queen of reinvention and image-driven pop - has a well-documented history of stealing the limelight, as somebody who's always had an innate understanding of the marketing power of character dressing. No-one who grew up in the '80s can have failed to observe the atomic impact each new incarnation had on youth culture, as the singer's attire (and attitude) fearlessly challenged long-held conventions regarding sexuality, gender, religion and, of late, age-appropriateness.

As a child, Madonna wanted to be either a film star or a nun when she grew up. She's extensively explored both roles through clothes ever since, with both Marilyn Monroe and Catholic iconography being key inspirations behind her expansive back catalogue of looks, from 1950s glamour girl (Material Girl) to penitent sinner (Like a Prayer) and spiritual entity (Ray of Light). The most defining image of her career arguably remains the wedding dress worn on the cover of second album Like a Virgin, with its white bustier, long lace gloves, crucifix jewellery and Boy Toy belt. Madonna's long-time personal stylist, Arianne Phillips, described the bright-white bridal juxtaposition as "one of the most shocking, liberating and influential moments in pop culture/fashion history", adding that "fashion has never been the same".

Madonna Louise Ciccone saw clothes as a tool of rebellion from early on. The impact of losing her mother to breast cancer when she was only five years old is well-known; in an interview with Vanity Fair she once described her younger self as a "lonely girl who was searching for something". In Madonna: A Biography, author Mary Cross describes how the eldest daughter in a brood of eight refused to wear the identical outfits in which housekeeper-turned-stepmother Joan Gustafson liked to dress the Ciccone girls, so she "deliberately wore mismatched socks and clothes". Of her teenage phase, she insists "I wasn't rebellious in a certain way. I cared about being good at something. I didn't shave my underarms and I didn't wear make-up like normal girls do. But I studied and I got good grades... I wanted to be somebody." As a dance major at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance in the 1970s, the Bay City native showed up for class wearing torn tights held together with safety pins and "cultivated that deliberate déshabillé look", according to Cross.

Combining crop-tops, mini-skirts over Capri pants, punk-rock studded cuffs and belts with fishnets, the young Madonna formulated a street-meets-flea market vibe with now iconic, then edgy accessories like lace gloves, tangles of pearls and rosary beads, stacked rubber bracelets and crucifix jewellery by cult NYC-based French designer, stylist and artist Maripol. (In an interview with The New York Times, the singer's publicist Liz Rosenberg recalled Madonna first walking into her office in 1983, an unknown singer and 'dance artist' from the Lower East Side club scene who'd been signed by Warner Brothers for two singles, in "a black outfit with a hundred rubber bracelets on each wrist".) Crowning the deceptively complex look were ribbons tied in roughly bleached blonde hair and strong make-up: bushy eyebrows, heavily defined eyes, a Marilyn-style beauty mark and a bold lip shade.
Agent provocateur
When it comes to her image, Madonna has always been well supported, with fellow provocateur Jean Paul Gaultier the brains behind the bras on her 1990 Blond Ambition world tour. "The quintessential rock star-fashion designer relationship is Madonna and Jean Paul Gaultier... a mutually beneficial connection, I think they understood each other brilliantly," said Tim Blanks, Editor at Large of Style.com, in a video about the singer's turn on Gaultier's Spring 1995 catwalk, pushing a puppy in a pram. "He gave her a look which people will always associate with her and she gave him a profile which he's never ever lost. When you think about the '90s, Madonna in her Gaultier cone bra is one of the most unforgettable images of the entire decade." Gaultier was also behind the Memoirs of a Geisha-inspired kimono costumes featured in the Nothing Really Matters video and Drowned World tour, and worn by the singer at the 1999 Grammys, where Ray of Light won four awards.

Red-carpet theatrics are a popular sport for Madonna, who likes to part the sea of ubiquitous mermaid gowns with attention-grabbing ensembles. She wore a sari with bare feet to collect the first ever Versace Award at the VH1 Fashion Awards in 1998. "She's outrageous, she's provocative, she's inscrutable and over the years we've all been witness to her evolution from street-smart kid sister to virgin bride, from a sex goddess to yogini," said Sting, who co-presented the award with Donatella Versace. "Her mind is as celebrated as her body, she's as feared as she is desired. She leads while others follow." The most recent Grammy Awards saw her sporting thigh boots and a matador-inspired Givenchy Couture bodysuit, cheekily flipping its jet-encrusted skirt to bare her fishnetted derriere to the paps. "Be perfectly content to be who you are, someone unique and rare and fearless," she announced before her performance of new single Living For Love.
Rebel heart
Despite now being in her sixth decade, the provocateur queen of pop - whose latest album, Rebel Heart, is released this month, its cover showing Madonna's face lashed with S&M-style black cords - hasn't kicked her habit of exposing body parts. She first posed nude as an unknown, then in her all-star Sex book and on Gaultier's catwalk in 1992. The button-pushing performer showed a nipple during a concert in Istanbul on her 2012 MDNA world tour, days later flashing her bottom at a concert in Rome. Commentators have thus become more concerned with the age-appropriateness of her actions and garb than any political correctness. "She looks like she's done 10th grade 48 times," quipped the late Joan Rivers apropos her cheerleader-style Super Bowl half-time show outfit on a 2012 episode of Fashion Police. "(Her ever-youthful style has always been fodder for comics, with Jennifer Saunders notably spoofing the singer's Hung Up combination of retro leotard and Farrah Fawcett hair flicks.)

"Is there a rule? Are people just supposed to die when they're 40?" she asked in a 1992 interview with Jonathan Ross at the tender age of 34. In a recent Q&A with Rolling Stone, for whose cover she struck a Marilyn pin-up pose, she takes on ageism in pop culture and beyond. "It's still the one area where you can totally discriminate against somebody," she notes. "[Regarding] my age - anybody and everybody would say something degrading to me. And I always think to myself, why is that accepted? What's the difference between that and racism, or any discrimination? They're judging me by my age. I don't understand. I'm trying to get my head around it. Because women, generally, when they reach a certain age, have accepted that they're not allowed to behave a certain way. But I don't follow the rules. I never did, and I'm not going to start."

"When I did my Sex book, it wasn't the average," she adds. "When I performed Like a Virgin on the MTV Awards and my dress went up and my ass was showing, it was considered a total scandal. It was never the average, and now it's the average. When I did Truth or Dare [aka In Bed with Madonna] and the cameras followed me around, it was not the average. So if I have to be the person who opens the door for women to believe and understand and embrace the idea that they can be sexual and look good and be as relevant in their fifties or their sixties or whatever as they were in their twenties, then so be it."

Yet for all her own rule-flouting, she's surprisingly conservative when it comes to her elder daughter's outfits. "I always have two reactions when Lola comes into my room with an outfit on. One is, 'Oh my god, she looks amazing, what incredible style' and then my second reaction is, 'She's dressed completely inappropriately for school'," she said during a presentation of her Material Girl line for Macy's. "I have to think with two brains. I usually tell her to take off her three-inch or six-inch platforms and pull her skirt down just a little bit, and take off some of the black eye make-up from around her eyes... I am the typical mother where I say, 'Oh my god, you can't go to school dressed like that'."

But Lola (born Lourdes in 1996) gives as good as she gets. During a Rebel Heart special, Madonna tells Jonathan Ross that "If no-one's around she will definitely give me the once over and say, 'Oh, mum, you are not leaving the house like that!'" And as for the Grammy flash? "She did take a picture of my butt sticking out and sent it back to me and said, 'Mom, really?' and I said 'It was a wardrobe malfunction. I swear'." It wasn't her first and it's hard to believe it'll be her last.
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Scrapes with capes aside, Madonna - the long-reigning queen of reinvention and image-driven pop - has a well-documented history of stealing the limelight, as somebody who's always had an innate understanding of the marketing power of character dressing.

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A Companion to Popular Culture is a landmark survey of contemporary research in popular culture studies that offers a comprehensive and engaging introduction to the field.

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If there's one thing Madonna knows, it's the power of a good costume. Some of the most iconic stage outfits of all time have been sported by none other than the Queen of Pop.

Ahead of her upcoming Rebel Heart tour it's been revealed which designers have the privilege of dressing the star, and the list is an eclectic one.

A collaboration with Jeremy Scott for Moschino is no surprise given the pair have worked together numerous times including at this year's Met Gala and in the recent "Bitch I'm Madonna" music video.

Fausto Puglisi is another designer who has a history of collaborations with the star creating numerous costumes for her.

More surprising is that Gucci's Alessandro Michele is included on that list. Michele's quieter take on luxury has transformed the house but whether it's a match for the big, brash stage presence of Madge is another question entirely.

Madonna has already let her followers in on a sneak peek of what's to come from a Gucci costume, sharing an image of a multi-colour gown being fitted.

The list of designers goes on with Alexander Wang and Prada both also set to dress the 56 year old star.

Absent from the list is Armani, who famously made her on-stage costume for the Brit awards in which a costume malfunction meant she was pulled backwards.

Let's just hope for the sake of this new set of designers that there are no capes involved.....

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No capes please....Madonna's tour costume designers revealed

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If there's one thing Madonna knows, it's the power of a good costume. Some of the most iconic stage outfits of all time have been sported by none other than the Queen of Pop. Ahead of her upcoming Rebel Heart tour it's been revealed which designers have the privilege of dressing the star, and the list is an eclectic one.

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From Jean-Paul Gaultier corsets to Prada tea dresses, VOGUE.COM charts the many fashion faces of Madonna

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AN EXHIBITION dedicated to the work of Jean Paul Gaultier is coming to London. The display will be held at the Barbican in April 2014 as part of an international tour.

Madonna's now iconic conical corset - as worn on stage during her 1990 Blonde Ambition tour - will feature, alongside three other costumes designed exclusively for the singer. Pieces worn by Kylie Minogue and Dita Von Teese will also go on display.

"The English were the first ones to come to my shows and appreciate my fashion," said Gaultier. "I am super excited that the show is coming to London. If there is one place other than Paris that I should like to live in, it is London."

The exhibition, The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From The Sidewalk To The Catwalk, will feature over 140 couture and ready-to-wear pieces from throughout the designer's extensive career - most of which come from his personal collection. Described as a "dynamic installation", it will also include footage of catwalk shows, music videos and films - including clips from his late-night television show, Eurotrash.

"I didn't want the show to be something like a funeral, because for me, to be in a museum, it is for people who are dead," he added. "I am still alive!"

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Jean Paul Gaultier Exhibition Comes To London

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AN EXHIBITION dedicated to the work of Jean Paul Gaultier is coming to London. The display will be held at the Barbican in April 2014 as part of an international tour. Madonna's now iconic conical corset - as worn on stage during her 1990 Blonde Ambition tour - will feature, alongside three other costumes designed exclusively for the singer.

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What does that mean? Women who openly display their power, knowledge, and skill, receiving public recognition and honor. But also females who manage to wield power in societies that try to limit it or decree female submission; where their leadership is stigmatized and their creativity disdained. And women who resist and overthrow oppressive traditions and regimes. Who break The Rules in defiance of unjust legal and religious "authorities." Who pursue their vision in spite of the personal cost.

Women have determined the course of events and the forms of human culture. We originated, founded, governed, prophesied, created great art, fought for our rights, and for our peoples. These are the women edited out of history, their stories omitted, distorted, and replaced with an endless litany of men (and the occasional queen or meddling concubine). Our ignorance of these women is greatly compounded by the omission of information on societies which accorded females power in public life, diplomacy, religion, medicine, the arts as well as family structure and inheritance. Both racism and sexism are implicated in these silences and gaps.

So we need a remedial history that reconstructs the female dimensions of human experience and achievement, and recovers the distorted and obliterated past of Africa, the Americas, and all other regions neglected by the standard textbooks and mass media. This will be a provisional history, because all the facts are not in yet, and previous interpretations are being reevaluated for gender, race, and colonial bias. More importantly, the indigenous oral histories have only barely begun to be integrated into mainstream narratives.

Women have often been relegated to the footnotes of history, and even those are highly selective. As Sandra Cisneros wrote of her search for Latina sheroes, "We are the footnotes of the footnotes." Yet the heritages of women of color, especially the indigenous cultures, supply the most dramatic examples in recent history of open embrace of female power. But even Europe looks different when we look at the common women and encompass places like Bulgaria, Estonia, Corsica, or Iberian Galicia.

Women's history demands a global perspective. There's far more to it than Queen Elizabeth I or Susan B. Anthony. We need to refocus historical attention from the school of "famous women" (often royal females) to encompass broader groupings of women with power: clan mothers and female elders; priestesses, diviners, medicine women and healers; market women, weavers, and other female arts and professions. These "female spheres of power," as I call them, vary greatly from culture to culture. Some of them, particularly the spiritual callings, retain aspects of women's self- determination even in societies that insist on formal subordination of female to male in private and public space.

There's a striking interplay between women's spiritual and political leadership, especially in many indigenous societies. I'm thinking of of the Evenki shaman Olga who was both chieftain and religious leader of her Siberian village about a century ago, and the machis of Chile, shamans who are deeply involved in the Mapuche sovereignty effort. But this overlap occurs even in imperial contexts, as when the aged mikogami Pimiko was chosen as ruler to save Japan from a chaotic struggle for power in its early history. Another example would be the important role the Candomblé maes de santo have played in the African-Brazilian community since early modern times.

Priestesses or diviners have often led liberation movements: Nehanda Nyakasikana in the Shona revolt against English colonization of Zimbabwe; María Candelaria in the Maya uprising against the Spanish; and Toypurina in the Gabrieleño revolt in southern California. In 1791, the old priestess Cécile Fatiman inaugurated the Haitian revolution against slavery in a Vodun ceremony in the Bois Caiman. Even earlier, the seeress Veleda was the guiding force behind the Batavian insurrection of tribal Europeans against Rome, and Dahia al-Kahina ("the priestess") led Berber resistance to the Arab conquest of North Africa. And Gudit Isat (Judith the Fire) who overthrew the Axumite empire in 10th century Ethiopia was remembered as a religious leader as well.

Often this female leadership does not rely on institutionalized authority, but on recognized personal power. The Apache seer and warrior woman Lozen is remembered for her acts of bravery and her clairvoyant ability to guide her people away from danger as they fled Anglo settler armies in Arizona and into Mexico. Granuaile Ní Mhaille (Grainne O' Mailley) surmounted the absolute masculine monopoly of military and seafaring enterprise to become, through her pirate fleet, the uncrowned "She-King" of the Connemara coast of Ireland, and the scourge of the British Navy in the 1500s.

Female boldness has in many societies been required simply to defend personal liberty and self-determination, carving out space to act in spite of patriarchal constraints, to become what the English called "a woman at her own commandment." Agodice practiced medicine in classical Athens disguised as a man, risking the death penalty then in force against female physicians. About two thousand years later, Miranda Stuart used the same strategy to get her M.D. As Dr. James Barry, she became Chief Surgeon for the British Navy. Her subterfuge was not discovered until her death, although she came close after being wounded in a duel.

This route of adopting a cloak of male privilege was followed by countless female adventurers, including Carmen Robles who became a colonel in the Mexican Revolutionary Army, and Elvira Cespedes, who practiced medicine and married a woman in 16th-century Spain -- until she was denounced to the Inquisition and sentenced to a long term confinement and forced labor.

Female mavericks were also active in the arts and sciences. The renegade nun Okuni originated the Kabuki theater, from which women were soon banned. In Moorish Spain, the poet Walladah bint-al-Mustakfi rejected the veil and marriage, preferring to host intellectual salons and take female as well as male lovers. Around 975, her counterpart Aisa bint Ahmad declined a proposal by a poet she disliked with a defiant stance: "I am a lioness/ And will never consent to let/ My body be the stopping place for anyone/ But should I choose that/ I would not hearken to a dog/ And how many lions have I turned down."

The most courageous women challenged oppression. The famous Swahili singer Siti Binti Saad rose from the oppressed classes to make taarabu music her vehicle calling for social justice in what is now Tanzania. She protested class oppression and men's abuse of women; her song "The police have stopped" sharply criticized a judge who let a rich wife-murderer go free. She seemed unafraid even of the sultan. The battle leadership of a Pawnee elder saved a village from atttackers, and so she was named "Old Lady Grieves the Enemy." Afterward, she taunted wife-beaters, telling them to go after the Poncas who came to burn up the village, and leave the women, who do no harm, alone.

There are many historical accounts of women warriors, and women often fought to defend their homes, their people and their country. However, although it is hard for many people today to conceive of such broad female authority, in some societies women had the formal power to veto the decision to go to war. The Cherokee Beloved Woman, in her capacity of representing the women at the men's council, possessed this authority, and so did the Gantowisas (Matrons) of the Six Nations (Iroquois). It was the women who supplied warriors with dried food and other necessities, and they suffered the consequences of war as well. There was a saying, "Before the men can go to war, the women must make their moccasins." (See Moccasin Makers and War Breakers, below.)

The Lisu people of Yunnan (southwest China) once had a tradition that fighting had to stop if a woman of either side waved her skirt to call for an armistice. Often this would be a highly-regarded elder. The skirt, imbued with the woman's mana, symbolized the life-giver's power. A woman taking off her outer skirt was also the signal for war or peace in the Pacific island Vanatinai, where women were also the traditional protectors of prisoners of war.

Copyright 2000 Max Dashu
Moccasin Makers and War Breakers:
A Call to Action by the Women of the World by Kahn-Tineta Horn, Kahente Horn-Miller, and other Mohawk women

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What does that mean? Women who openly display their power, knowledge, and skill, receiving public recognition and honor. But also females who manage to wield power in societies that try to limit it or decree female submission; where their leadership is stigmatized and their creativity disdained.

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Who are the world's most powerful women this year? They are the smartest and toughest female business leaders, entrepreneurs, investors, scientists, philanthropists and CEOs making their mark in the world today.

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Forbes' definitive ranking of the most powerful women in the world. Inside this list you'll meet the extraordinary entrepreneurs and visionary CEOS, celebrity role models and billionaire activists, foremost heads of state and pioneer philanthropists who are transforming the world - all ranked by dollars, media presence and impact.

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Part of the Management - Culture - Interpretation book series (MCI)

Abstract

The potential of clothing and fashion is rarely appreciated in mainstream academic literature; often it is relegated to the margins with labels such as 'ephemeral' or 'frivolous'. Yet, clothing (and fashion in particular) provides one of the most explicit examples of global consumerism. The significance of this form of consumerism can be amplified through the writings of German philosopher Hans Jonas in his discussion of metabolism of life (Jonas 1992). This concept explores the temporal means of replenishing people's desire to resist decay and death by means other than food, drink, sleep, etc. These claims are situated further in my second section where I introduce aesthetics.

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References

Entwistle, J. (2000): The Fashioned Body: Fashion, Dress and Modern Social Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press in association with Blackwell. Fashion United. http://www.fashionunited.com/global-fashion-industry-statistics-international-apparel , 29.06.2014.

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Fashion and the Mobile Body: The Value of Clothing and Fashion for Merleau-Ponty's Concept of Chiasm

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Part of the Management - Culture - Interpretation book series (MCI) The potential of clothing and fashion is rarely appreciated in mainstream academic literature; often it is relegated to the margins with labels such as 'ephemeral' or 'frivolous'. Yet, clothing (and fashion in particular) provides one of the most explicit examples of global consumerism.

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What do our clothes say about who we are or who we think we are? How does the way we dress communicate messages about our identity? Is the desire to be "in fashion" universal, or is it unique to Western culture? How do fashions change?

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symbols in action: ethnoarchaeological studies of material culture (new studies in archaeology)

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Symbols in Action: Ethnoarchaeological Studies of Material Culture (New Studies in Archaeology)

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Buy Symbols in Action: Ethnoarchaeological Studies of Material Culture (New Studies in Archaeology) Reissue by Ian Hodder (ISBN: 9780521105088) from Amazon's Book Store. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders.

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Gendering the Body: Clothes Maketh the (Wo)Man

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In the Hebrew Bible various types of dress and adornments are described as worn by men and women on different occasions and for different activities. Some adornments celebrate the excellence of the person adorned; others, however, may be seen as

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the social psychology of clothing and personal adornment

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The Social Psychology of Clothing and Personal Adornment

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The general purpose of this book is to acquaint the reader with the importance of clothing and appearance in social interactions. Clothing and appearance are visible symbols that affect our interactions with others. This book will strive to increase the reader's awareness of the role of dress in ...

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SAGE Journals: Your gateway to world-class journal research

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Subscription and open access journals from SAGE Publishing, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

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Buy Dressed to Kill: Sex, Power and Clothes THE FIRST EDITION by Colin McDowell (ISBN: 9780091744649) from Amazon's Book Store. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders.

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What is fashion? What is style? What, if anything, is the relationship between them? What sort of society generates one or the other?

These are some of the key questions which I've been trying to chip away at for more then 35 years. My first published attempt was Fashion & Anti-fashion which appeared (from Thames & Hudson, London) in 1978. I had begun writing it while a graduate student at University College, London under the tutelage of Professor Mary Douglas. Although famous (and rightly so) for books such as Purity and Danger and Natural Symbols which boldly applied anthropological thinking to the human body - its beauty, health, symbolic resonances, right down to its cleanliness and waste products - even Professor Douglas was clearly disappointed whenever I raised the subject of fashion or the bubbling subcultural streetstyle caldron of London in the 70s which had just seen Glam come and go and could just about make out the harrowing shape of Punk on the horizon.

For the vast majority of anthropologists at that time anything to do with body decoration, adornment, streetstyle, visual communication - and most certainly fashion - was simply not a subject to be taken seriously. Perhaps this bias stems from the early days when anthropologists and explorers before them shocked the world with tales, drawings and then photos of Amazonian natives with lip plugs the size of CDs or the gorier details of African scarification - the days when, at least in the popular imagination, anthropology seemed to be about little other than mind-boggling 'deformations' of the body.

Or perhaps it was simply the inability of anthropology to burst the boundaries of its roots in the West where, historically, the word has long been seen as more civilized and sophisticated than the image; where the body is a mere housing for the all important soul; where science fiction and even some actual scientists yearned for the day when a naked brain could happily bubble away in a vat of chemicals without the encumbrance of a body. Whatever the reason, in the years ahead, as I found work opportunities which allowed me to further my investigations into fashion, body decoration, streetstyle, etc., I steadily exiled myself from academic anthropology. (Which is ironic when you consider how many anthropology students today are writing a thesis on subjects like Japanese streetstyle, body piercing or representations of the body in computer games. The hazards of being ahead of one's time, etc.)

This presumption on the part of an older generation of anthropologists that the body and its adornment, modification and clothing is somehow a frivolous, tangential, insignificant subject has always pissed me off. Recent excavations at the Blombos Cave in South Africa have found pieces of bright orange/red ochre which it is thought were used used for body painting and shell necklaces which are between 70,000 and 100,000 years old. As well as doubling or tripling the starting point of 'modern human behaviour' (and placing it in Africa rather than Europe), these Blombos finds are so exciting because they demonstrate once and for all that the deliberate transformation and decoration of the body has always been a cornerstone of what it means to be human - to be the one and only decorated ape.

Ironically, over the years since Fashion & Anti-fashion was written, operating more often than not from (sort of) within the fashion industry, what pisses me off is exactly the same thing as I found long ago amongst academic anthropologists: a disinclination to take fashion seriously. In particular, a disinclination to think seriously about what fashion is, what it isn't and what its functions are.

When Fashion & Anti-fashion was first written in the late 70s we had already seen profound changes in the fashion system - changes not only between this look or that look but, more significantly, internally, within the mechanisms, the guts, the processes and the objectives of the 'fashion industry'. Yet, how rarely, even now, are these changes explicitly acknowledged as fashion journalists, marketing gurus and 'cool hunters' (god help us) frantically search out that singular, consistent 'direction' - that 'Next Big Thing' - which the fashion system of old delivered like clockwork but which our delightfully chaotic, diversified, independent creative consumer post-modern world seems incapable or unwilling to conform to. The writing is not only on the wall but it is, moreover, writ large and most exciting: there will never ever again be a single Next Big Thing. The elephant is in the room and crapping all over the old models, mechanisms and functions of that kind of fashion which once ruled the world but has now apparently gone out of fashion. A revolution has taken place but most prefer to act like it's still 1947, Dior's 'New Look' has just been unveiled and all the world's customers have meekly fallen into line and are patiently waiting for it to 'tickle down' to a shop they can afford. Not.

And this toppling of fashion's capacity to dictate a singular 'direction' is only part of its structural makeover. In the same year that Dior so successfully launched his 'New Look' - 1947 - there were Bikers in California who would become the model for The Wild One, goateed Hipster beboppers in smoky clubs in NYC and Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassidy somewhere in between, On the Road, modelling a new denim workwear/ sports casual style which, in time, would become the world's favourite. Was Monsieur Dior worried by this stylish competition? Not on your nellie: for fashion was still fashion and what went on on the 'street', on 'the wrong side of the tracks' and amongst the plebs was most certainly of no interest to a fashion industry which knew full well that it alone (and Paris alone) had the monopoly on taste and style. Yet, as we now know, this too would change - and do so with breathtaking speed and global impact.

Despite even the extraterrestrial, mind-boggling possibilities which the Punks brought to the streets of London in 1976 (and which I was fortunate enough to view at close hand), it never occurred to anyone, including myself, that within a decade or two it would become impossible to delineate where fashion ended and anti-fashion (what I would now call style) began. And that moment came only a few years later in the 80s when suddenly to describe someone was 'trendy' went from a compliment to a put-down and when suddenly the greatest sin was to be a pathetic 'fashion victim'. When lots of different designers with lots of different styles in lots of different countries carried on side by side and when, instead of here-today-gone-tomorrow throw away fashion, more and more people opted for 'timeless classics' - be it a little black cocktail dress, a 'Perfecto' black leather motorcycle jacket or a tattoo.

Yet to an extraordinary extent the fashion industry carried on (and still carries on to this day) as if none of this has happened - as if the fashion industry was still successfully dictating a single 'New Look' which one and all would passively, sheep-like adopt in due course; as if these consumers would always hunger for instant novelty and always shun classic style; as if everyone still accepted that only fashion professionals know how to 'coordinate' to achieve an aesthetically acceptable, designer approved 'total look'. Except that they didn't and they don't and we now reside in what I have elsewhere termed 'The Supermarket of Style' - a post-modern world where anything goes and new style inspirations get mixed and matched by a new breed of creative consumers who do their own thing and a fashion industry where diversity refuses to be squeezed into a single 'direction' even in the pages of Vogue let alone on the street.

In this sense everything I wrote in Fashion & Anti-fashion is completely out of date. Arguably, the true fashion and the true anti-fashion costume/streetstyle as identified in this late 70s text simply no longer exist in the 21 st century. As apparently happens when matter and anti-matter come into contact with each other, when, from the late 70s onwards, fashion and style began getting off with each other, both simply annihilated each other. But even if this is the case, it seems helpful to return to that last moment when fashion and style each had distinctive structures, identities, functions and constituencies - if only to appreciate just how extraordinary it is that in only a few decades these two distinctive, long established approaches to decorating, modifying and clothing the human body should have produced such a strange mutant offspring. What is clear in 2011 is that nothing is clear. Perhaps, just perhaps, by tracking back to a time when fashion was fashion and style was style we can make a little more sense of our delightfully confusing post-modern situation.

Or, perhaps, alternatively, by tracking back to the late 70s we can appreciate that it isn't fashion and style which have changed but rather their geography. Paris may still be the foremost centre of fashion but consider how few of its catwalk shows now display the work of French designers. And will the Internet now make possible a truly global age when new designers, new looks and new inspirations bubble up from anywhere and everywhere?

Additionally, while America and Britain bred decades of in-your-face subcultural streetstyle - streetstyle which swept around the world - now it is Japan and South America (and who knows where tomorrow) which point the way forward for anti-fashion. And to flip the fashion/anti-fashion coin over: while I may or may not be right that the 'West' (whatever that means nowadays) is post-fashion, we can see that precisely that socio-economic mobility and modernist, ever optimistic, things-can-only-get-better worldview which I identify in Fashion & Anti-fashion as the breeding ground of ever-changing, 'new look', 'directional' fashion are present in China, India, Brazil and elsewhere in the 'emerging world' today. So, as I say, it may be that fashion is still fashion and style is still style - but just not here in the soon to be past its sell by date 'West'.

When Fashion & Anti-fashion first appeared in 1978, published by Thames & Hudson, it was subtitled 'an anthropology of clothing and adornment', co-authored with Lynn Procter and most of its pages were taken up with pictures organized around specific themes such as 'Adornment as personal expression', 'The permanent body arts', 'Fashion as change' and 'Anti-fashion as utopia'. The text which is reproduced here in this e-book constituted an unillustrated introductory section (which, unlike the rest of the book which was highly dependent on her contribution, had little direct input from Lynn Procter - who has kindly given permission for this introductory text to appear here under only my own name). In going over this text in preparation for this e-book I couldn't help myself from reorganizing, revising and in a few instances rewriting bits of the original text in the interests of clarity. But, like any responsible time traveller, I have held myself back from correcting or altering that which can only be known with the benefit of 30+ years of hindsight - including the final paragraph ending which blatantly and embarrassingly fails to predict the future which was just around the corner.

Soon after its publication, Fashion & Anti-fashion was review by Angela Carter in the (now, like Angela, sadly departed) New Society magazine. (Yes, that Angela Carter but before she became known as a writer of wondrous fiction.) She begins:

There's a 'Compare and contrast' pair of photographs in this delicious book. One is of real Ozark hillbillies, mostly barefoot, in ragged, faded yet touchingly well laundered workclothes, the garb of decent, hard working poverty. The other is of fake or cosmeticised or 'fashionalised' hillbillies, models demonstrating the 'Hillbilly Look' of circa 1975, crisp, print skirts and natty overalls, the fashion industry's tribute to the Simple Life, the garb of chic down-dressing.

Yes, dear reader, a 'delicious book'! Thirty-five plus years of writing later I can't recall a nicer, more welcome comment from a critic (and this from a writer who, as well as her subsequent accomplishments in fiction, was herself a formidable pioneer in the discovery of just how much can be gleaned about our world in the deepest sense from the seemingly frivolous sheen of popular culture). And she also provides a succinct summary of Lynn Procter's and my intent: 'This is the main thesis of the book; sartorial style and its relation to social function is what Fashion and Anti-Fashion is about'.

And, as if Angela Carter could look into the future to see this present, 21 st century moment when I would republish the introductory text of Fashion & Anti-fashion as an e-book, she advises 'It would be a pity if the pages of introductory text were skipped; they present a most cogent argument for the seriousness of the study of fashion . . .' But she goes on '. . . even if, after a brisk semiological run around, the authors finally settle for a definition of fashion as ''a grand illusion.'' Which, after raising so many questions in the reader's mind, is a bit like saying: ''Well, you can wake up, now; it was all a dream, really'.' And, in retrospect, I have to admit that she was as right in her criticism as her complements - the text ending in a fluffy pastry signifying nothing much at all. And even getting that wrong. For by suggesting in the final sentence that the fashion system would forever be 'to be continued' I completely failed to consider the possibility that that great glistening, gleaming machine of perpetual motion and 'direction' was about to splutter and hiss and clank to a halt. Or, at the very least, to evolve into a very different beast indeed (as will be considered in the postscript to this edition).

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What is fashion? What is style? What, if anything, is the relationship between them? What sort of society generates one or the other? These are some of the key questions which I've been trying to chip away at for more then 35 years.

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Buy Pop Styles by Ted Polhemus, Lynn Procter (ISBN: 9780091558017) from Amazon's Book Store. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders.

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Subscription and open access journals from SAGE Publishing, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

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Fashion and the Fleshy Body: Dress as Embodied Practice

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Many of women's everyday experiences are tied up inextricably with consumption. In consumer culture research, it tends to be the activities and interests of women which take center stage. This collection provides a wide range of different perspectives on women as consumers, focusing on popular culture, including examinations of popular media and their targeting of female audiences.

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SAGE Journals: Your gateway to world-class journal research

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Subscription and open access journals from SAGE Publishing, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

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- Document - Women MPs and the media: representing the body politic

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Parliamentary Affairs, vol. 49, no. 1, 1996, p. 103+. Academic OneFile, Accessed 29 Sept. 2017.

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page 19 power

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First published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

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In her bestselling book The Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf sought to change the way in which women see themselves in relation to their bodies. Now she focuses on how they see themselves in relation to power.

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The date on your computer is in the past. If your computer's clock shows a date before 1 Jan 1970, the browser will automatically forget the cookie. To fix this, set the correct time and date on your computer.

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Women Power Dressing Expressed in Recent Fashion - With Reference to the Female Yuppie Style of the 80s - | Korea Science

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Women Power Dressing Expressed in Recent Fashion - With Reference to the Female Yuppie Style of the 80s - - Yuppie;power dressing;sports mania;conspicuous consumption;

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Women, Power and Subversion (Routledge Revivals)

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First published in 1981, this book explores the reactions of some female writers to the social effects of industrial capitalism between 1778 and 1860. The period set in motion a crisis over the status of middle-class women that culminated in the constructed idea of "women's proper sphere".

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Many of women's everyday experiences are tied up inextricably with consumption. In consumer culture research, it tends to be the activities and interests of women which take center stage. This collection provides a wide range of different perspectives on women as consumers, focusing on popular culture, including examinations of popular media and their targeting of female audiences.

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Where are the women in tech? Right here, says Forbes, whose annual power list is published today. For the second year running, 'tech' has its own category on the magazine's World's Most Powerful Women list - and it's a category growing from strength to strength.

Sure, the famous and regular tech names are in there, from Google's Susan Wojcicki to Yahoo!'s Marissa Mayerand Xerox's Ursula Burns. What's interesting is that all but three of the 15 names that featured on the tech list last year have gone up in the world.

Sheryl Sandberg, of Facebook and Lean In fame, has climbed from 10th place last year to sixth this year. She is the highest-ranking tech lady. Elsewhere, Meg Whitman,CEO of Hewlett-Packard, is this year's Forbes cover girl, ranking 15th, three places up from last year.

Virginia Rometty, IBM's chief, is in 12th place, up from 15th, while Safra Catz, the CEO of Oracle has practically doubled her 'score', moving from 48th place in 2012 to 23rd this year.

There's also one newcomer this year, Amy Hood, chief financial officer at Microsoft, making 16 female tech gurus in total.

Today's list demonstrates that what defines 'power' is changing. It sends a pretty powerful message that power is something that can be achieved in life, rather than simply being born into it.

The exact definition of power in the Oxford dictionary is the "capacity or ability to direct or influence the behaviour of others or the course of events".

Super geeks Sheryl Sandberg, Virginia Rometty, Ursula Burns and Meg Whitman rank higher than the Queen (40) and even the most influential celebrities: Beyoncé is in 17th place this year, ahead of Lady Gaga (45) and Angelina Jolie (37).

The notable omission from the list of the Duchess of Cambridge (who last year was branded a Forbes One to Watch) is telling: you don't have to be one of society's elite to be the most influential.

If Kate Middleton, the country's chief child bearer, doesn't make it onto a list of top 100 powerful women, then there is hope yet for our young generation of women to rise up and take a place at the top table.

And tech seems to be the place to do it. The digital economy now accounts for 8pc of GDP and female business leaders writing for Telegraph Wonder women have recently urged young women to consider technical careers and acquire the right, digital skills to stay relevant - and take advantage of growth.

So good for the female super geeks who have earned their place on the Power List - and pave the way for more digitally savvy entrepreneurs and business women to do so.

It's also worth reflecting that a "remarkable" number of women on the top 100 Power List list this year are also founders or owners of their own enterprises, not a few of whose eponymous companies are synonymous with high fashion. To name drop a few, Miuccia Prada (58) and Zara founder Rosalia Mera (66) feature, as do Tory Burch (69) and Diane von Furstenberg (74).

Other self-made starters include Oprah Winfrey (13), Chinese real estate tycoon Zhang Xin (50) and Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, India's first biotech entrepreneur, at number 85.

You don't need to be born with a silver spoon in your mouth, or hit it big in the pop charts, to make your mark on the world. The world is there for the taking, if you just go and get it.

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Forbes Most Powerful Women 2013: The rise of the female super geek

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Where are the women in tech? Right here, says Forbes, whose annual power list is published today. For the second year running, 'tech' has its own category on the magazine's World's Most Powerful Women list - and it's a category growing from strength to strength.

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This post contains frank discussion of Season 6, Episode 10 "The Winds of Winter." If you are not caught with the season finale, now is the time to leave.

Ever since the first episode of this season, Game of Thrones has made it clear that it intended to flip the script on gender roles in Westeros. Co-creator David Benioff has said that this theme coursing through the season has nothing to do with the controversy over Sansa Stark's sexual assault last year, which got so much traction that a U.S. Senator called it out. "The thing that's slightly frustrating," Benioff said, "Is the idea that we're responding to criticism from last year, so therefore we're going to beef up the female roles-that's blatantly untrue."

But regardless of why it happened, there's no denying that the female roles have been beefed up this season. With Cersei's ominous coronation, we now have women ruling in King's Landing, Dorne, Highgarden (RIP, most of the Tyrells) and Daenerys and Yara coming for the Iron Islands and the rest of Westeros. Sure, Jon is King in the North, but it was ferocious Lyanna Mormont-shaming a room full of grown-ass men-who put him there. (More on Sansa and her role in all that later.) In order to get there, Weiss and Benioff had to ignore the technical rules of succession in Westeros. But, you can't say they didn't warn you that might happen.

Beyond ruling, we've had women violently take revenge on their aggressors all season. Yara stealing her uncle's fleet out from under him may be low on the list when compared to Daenerys burning Dothraki rapists to the ground, Sansa feeding her rapist to the dogs, and Cersei flambé-ing everyone who stripped her down and humiliated her last season. But perhaps the most outrageous victory belongs to Arya Stark, who got to pick up a much-beloved book plot. In George R.R. Martin's novels it's Wyman Manderly, a portly Northern lord who makes a show appearance during Jon's coronation, who feeds Walder Frey's sons to him in pie form. It's much more narratively satisfying to give that job to Arya. Even if we also have to wonder what poor serving girl she had to kill to get that face.

But for all the gender-reversal satisfaction there is to be mined in the rise of women this season, we're only six seasons into what will, presumably, be an eight season series. As Daenerys will tell you, it's nearly impossible to stay on top of the wheel of power. And as David Benioff said in the post-episode interview on HBOGo, Arya's dark path is a "worrisome narrative." Watching Arya's smiling face standing over Walder Frey's dead body, Benioff said, "If you love Arya you have to be worried about where she goes from there."

We should probably adopt that same attitude about Sansa, then, and her dark little smile last week as Ramsay Bolton went to the dogs. She had her moments of true strength in this episode, apologizing to Jon and calling him her true brother and brushing off Littlefinger's creepy proposition...

...but it's clear that both Ramsay and Littlefinger have done a number on her and the trust issues and occasional bursts of power cravings in her will probably lead to a rift between Sansa and her brother ( cousin!) down the road.

And speaking of sibling rivalry, it looks like the death of Tommen may be what finally drives a wedge between Cersei and Jaime. In the novels, there's a prophecy (that the show has ignored) that Cersei will be murdered by her little brother. Cersei believed her whole life it would be Tyrion, but Jaime is technically younger than her. Will he be the one to do her in? Those certainly weren't looks of love he was throwing her way.

Thus far the likeliest female power contingent in the Seven Kingdoms to hang on their power is the bloc involving Dany, Yara, Olenna, and the Sand Snakes (with Tyrion and Varys in key advisory positions). Those women, who promise vengeance for their fallen families and to build a better world than their fathers did, are coming to Westeros to clean house. And, as Daenerys pointed out, she has no intention of climbing the ladder the old-fashioned way. Cooly ditching her side-piece Daario, she says she's not sure she has to marry in order to consolidate her power base.

But, yes, the women of Westeros are still very vulnerable to quirks of fate and military upsets that bedevil the men, but they're no longer chattel, abuse victims, or prizes to be won. It may not be, as Benioff claims, a direct reaction to the Sansa controversy from last season, but it certainly is a welcome change.

Get Vanity Fair's HWD Newsletter

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Game of Thrones: How Women Went from Victims to Conquerors

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This post contains frank discussion of Season 6, Episode 10 "The Winds of Winter." If you are not caught with the season finale, now is the time to leave. Ever since the first episode of this season, Game of Thrones has made it clear that it intended to flip the script on gender roles in Westeros.

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DISGRUNTLED to read the news regarding my alma mater (NUST) which reported 'girls fined for wearing jeans', I was tossed up to pen down my opinion on the issue. However, instead of debating on the issue, let's assess how the women in the world are rising up as a flamboyant force that is ready to lead in the coming years.

The opening of discussion takes me to Europe, where Angela Merkel has recently been elected as Chancellor of Germany, third time in a row, with an 'absolute majority.' Widely acclaimed as 'the most powerful woman' of the world, the Germans reposed full confidence in her 'safe pair of hands.'

In spite of the Euro crisis that led to the loss of offices to most of the leaders of Ireland, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain and France, Angie rules firm in her offices because of her 'austerity' measures, that were acclaimed not only at home but also in entire Europe.

When the rest of Europe struggled with the economic crunch, loss of jobs to millions and rising financial strain, her economic policy provided stability to Germany even in such a burgeoning crisis. That's the reason that when 'she speaks, the whole Europe listens' and that's the reason that people have put full confidence in her, and she's all set to gain the title of the 'Longest serving female leader', overtaking Margaret Thatcher in Europe, provided she stays till 2016, which is very likely in the prevailing circumstances.

Another woman, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, has shown excessive courage while addressing the UN Assembly. She bluntly attacked the US National Security Agency on the floor of the Assembly for espionage charges.

The NSA has come under severe criticism throughout the world, after the revelations by its ex-security expert Snowden, who revealed the worldwide surveillance programme of the US.

According to his 'leaked' reports, the US has been collecting not only the personal information of citizens, but also actively monitoring their commercial giants, notwithstanding the eavesdropping of their personal email account.

In the wake of these events, the woman, not taking US economic or political powers into consideration, launched a blistering attack against the US in the General Assembly. Not to forget that she has already put on hold her meeting with President Obama later in October for the aforementioned strife. True, our strong countrymen need wide courage and boldness to act like she did.

The two incidents mentioned above are the epoch of the rising trend that I have witnessed in recent years. Not to forget here the rise of women in Pakistan: for I've personally seen our women much more courageous, much more hard-working, focused and sincere in their jobs than their male counterpart in my alma-matter.

I personally feel that if placed higher in hierarchy, the women are bound to perform much better than men. But that can only be proved by evidence once experimented.

We're not far away when the sole superpower will be led by a woman: Hilary Clinton's willingness and Michelle Obama's remark earlier in the year that America is ready for a 'female president' would certainly be the dawn of a new era, the world led by a woman.

On a lighter note, Obama's recent conviction that he quit smoking because he 'is scared of his wife' does affirm the fact that even today it's being led by a woman?

MUHAMMAD HARIS
Islamabad

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DISGRUNTLED to read the news regarding my alma mater (NUST) which reported 'girls fined for wearing jeans', I was tossed up to pen down my opinion on the issue. However, instead of debating on the issue, let's assess how the women in the world are rising up as a flamboyant force that is ready to lead in the coming years.

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In a recent lecture the Cambridge classicist Mary Beard cogently argued that public attitudes to women in power have altered frighteningly little over the centuries. Even though there has been a shift as a minority of women have climbed to positions of greater public and corporate influence over the past few decades, the hostile treatment meted out to figures as diverse as Hillary Clinton and Caroline Criado-Perez would be familiar to the creators of Medea, Clytemnestra and Antigone. But this depressing lack of change now needs to be set against the astonishing rise of new forms of female protest, with millions of women galvanised globally to rise up against the new misogyny and the old injustices.

The obvious challenge is how to channel this explosion of popular feminist energy in order to defeat the burgeoning forces of populism decisively. The worry is that feminist protest will be self-limiting, drawing its life force from women's deep, almost instinctive familiarity with outsiderness: the same "exteriority" to power (stemming from both outer hostility and inner reluctance) that Beard sees running throughout history. It could be, she suggested, that women today are already exercising a novel, network-based, collaborative form of power, one that relies less on individual notoriety and risk.

Such themes lie at the heart of these four books, all very different from each other, published to coincide with International Women's Day - proof at least of the presumed commercial buoyancy of the new feminism. Each tackles the question of power: how and why women lack it, how they might take it, how to personalise it and even, in one case, how to refuse it. What fresh insights and resources of hope do they offer? Quite a lot, I think, and often within a tough, but refreshingly realist frame.

Everywoman announces itself, like its author, the Labour MP Jess Phillips, in a blast of "no-nonsense" noisiness on the cover. There's loud black and red lettering, and a picture of Phillips in an arms-crossed, lips-pursed pose of bemused self-defence. The book, we are assured, is all about trusting her to tell us the "truth". This, after all, is the woman bold enough to tell Diane Abbott to "f**k off" and Jeremy Corbyn that if he failed to keep his promises she would stab him in the front, not the back: a warning somewhat mitigated by attacks on Corbyn now being something of a national sport.

Wisely, Phillips - an MP only since 2015 - puts Labour divisions largely to one side. In fast, furious and often funny prose ( Everywoman really does read as Phillips speaks), she recalls her own unusual journey from wayward Birmingham teenager to domestic violence campaigner to parliamentary champion, particularly of women's interests. She paints a vivid picture of the price of public life for women, from "paternalistic shushing" and constant anxiety/abuse about our appearance ("I urge you to think about the men and boys you know. Are they knockouts?") to multiple online threats of rape and mutilation and, in Phillips's case, an understandable nervousness about conducting constituency surgeries after the murder of her friend and fellow MP Jo Cox.

For all that, Phillips is determined to encourage women to stand up and stand for office - and even to "relish your unpopularity". If we really want politicians that look like "us", she writes, then the public has to accept that it won't be getting perfect people. She writes honestly about her brother Luke's drug problems and her own screw-ups, in and out of politics, and in one lovely passage she anatomises human imperfection in general: "Everyone I know has something dark in their lives or in their family history . . . Our lives are full to the brim of stuff we wish we hadn't done and people we really wish we could forget. It shouldn't control our futures; it should only enhance them." Amen to that, especially if it encourages even one reluctant woman to try her hand at public life.

Catherine Mayer has gone a step further than most women fed up with the "skewed" status quo. She started her own political party as a kind of dare after a debate held during the 2015 election campaign. The Women's Equality Party (WEP) draws its populist power in part from its media connections (Sandi Toskvig, its highest-profile supporter, occupies a position close to that of national treasure), the continuing frustration of millions of women at the failure of mainstream politics to address their concerns - and now Trump terror.

Attack of the Fifty-Foot Women is a companion piece to the WEP agenda: its aim is to sketch out Equalia, as Mayer calls her promised utopia. An engaging and sharp journalist, she updates the case for equality with fresh research and insights into the sexual politics of everything from domestic life and new technology to cinema and the boardroom. She also gives us a candid insight into the WEP's attempts to make itself a truly intersectional party, as well as its internal debates on transgender questions, pornography and prostitution.

But who exactly, I wonder, is this weighty book aimed at? Won't those who are drawn to Mayer and the WEP already have a good grasp of the issues and be perhaps more interested in activism than in a broad roll-call of gender injustice? Mayer has an answer to this, too, which she elaborates in one of her later chapters, on Iceland. This small nation is, in its own way, a pioneer of gender equality, a movement kick-started by the extraordinary "women's day off" in October 1975, when Iceland's women downed domestic tools and showed, in 24 hours, how much the country depended on the hitherto invisible labour of women. The WEP is planning a similar Women's Day Off strike for the UK in 2018, a brilliant idea for an action that someone should have organised years ago.

I suspect that Jessa Crispin would give short shrift to Phillips or Mayer, with their belief in working inside the system and making men partners in change. But then Why I Am Not a Feminist is a provocation, a hand grenade of a publication, as its opening epigraph makes clear: "A book should open old wounds, even inflict new ones. A book should be a danger."

Crispin takes as her role models second-wave feminist outliers such as Shulamith Firestone and Andrea Dworkin (the often reviled and long-neglected Dworkin has become a heroine for a new generation) and targets what she calls "universal feminism", from consumerist to corporate variants. But the book was presumably written before the definitive rise of Trump, and so Crispin's hostility to shiny, successful, insider feminism already feels like a tussle with a disappearing past. Naming no names, she reviles women who "line up behind female politicians, their support thrown behind them almost solely because they share a gender":

Despite a long history of supporting military intervention, I watch women talk about these politicians' natural diplomacy and how they'll keep us out of war . . . Despite a long history of money grabbing and corruption, I watch women talk about these politicians' sense of fairness and economic justice.

In Crispin's world-view, women who take political power are bound to corrupt their own ideals, taint their own principles. Perhaps this is part of the answer to the eternal puzzle of why conservatives are more successful in promoting female leaders. Women on the right, with their belief in the power of capital, monarchy, nation and authority, have fewer internal ethical barriers to breach in order to exercise power, at least as it exists today.

Crispin has acute insight into the narcissism of so much "self-empowerment" guff and the blind alleys of "outrage feminism", on and offline. But there remain odd notes in her provocation, such as her refusal to name names or make specific references, leaving her lurching from one generalised complaint to the next, like a tipsy bar bore. Very occasionally, she touches on a real-world example, as when she rightly criticises the summary hounding out of Professor Tim Hunt from University College London after he made a series of ordinarily silly remarks about women in science.

There is also something unsettling about Crispin's tone in the chapter "Men Are Not Our Problem", where she tells her potential male readership: "I don't give a f**k about your response to this book. Do not email me, do not get in touch. Deal with your own shit for once." Yet later, in that same chapter, she avers that "softness, vulnerability, nuance, compassion and care . . . are absolutely vital qualities that [women] should not be ashamed of".

What does Crispin ultimately demand? Inasmuch as she spells out what she stands for, as opposed to what she abhors, it is a form of communitarian solidarity, a concern for peace and justice and fairness for all, a refusal to worship at the shrine of money. I may be wrong but I think we used to call this "socialist feminism".

If we are to believe a recent Vogue profile of the novelist, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie might be just the kind of feminist of whom Crispin disapproves. Her high-fashion collaboration with Dior on the creation of a "We Should All Be Feminists" T-shirt was much paraded during Paris Fashion Week 2016. Did this project represent selling out or reaching out? Unsurprisingly, Adichie robustly claims the latter.

And now here comes another attractive, marketable commodity from Adichie - the slight but beautifully produced Dear Ijeawele, a succinct and lyrical manifesto for the next generation embodied in 15 (very pragmatic) "suggestions", addressed at different points to Chizalum Adaora, the baby daughter of her close friend Ijeawele, or to those who are raising her.

In some ways, Adichie, a Nigerian writer who divides her time between the United States and West Africa, embodies the intersectionality and inclusiveness of modern feminism. Her critique of Igbo traditions and other Nigerian customs has not a whiff of apology about it, at the same time hinting at some startling differences in class relations, as when she urges her friend to teach her daughter that "the household help is human just like her" and that she should "always greet the driver".

Dear Ijeawele reminds us that, in the history of feminist writing, it is often the personal and epistolary voice that carries the political story most powerfully - think of Sheila Rowbotham's groundbreaking Woman's Consciousness, Man's World of 1973, or Oriana Fallaci's Letter to a Child Never Born (1975). It also reminds us that not much is new. Adichie touches on many of the enduring maxims of women's liberation, mingling this with a more contemporary, tough-it-out realism. Marriage, she urges, should never be presented as an achievement for a girl (but "romance will happen, so be on board"); gender roles should always be questioned; language matters; difference should be respected; sex should be discussed, often. And, in a direct echo of Phillips, she warns that women must firmly reject the snares of likeability.

For me, the most powerful sentence in the book is its simplest, and comes in only the third paragraph. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie urges Ijeawele to remember to transmit to her daughter "the solid unbending belief that you start off with . . . Your feminist premise should be: I matter. I matter equally. Not 'if only'. Not 'as long as'. I matter equally. Full stop."

Such an assertion does not directly answer the problem Mary Beard posits about women and power. Yet there is no doubt that if we raised all of our daughters to believe completely that they "matter equally", to trust what they feel and think and to worry less about how they look and come across, we would soon find new ways to challenge the multiple injustices and indignities that still limit, and even wreck, so many women's lives.

Jess Phillips and Catherine Mayer will be in conversation with Helen Lewis at the Cambridge Literary Festival on 23 April

Everywoman: One Woman's Truth About Speaking the Truth by Jess Phillips is published by Hutchinson (242pp, £14.99)

Why I Am Not a Feminist: A Feminist Manifesto by Jessa Crispin is published by Melville House (153pp, £12.99)

Attack of the Fifty-Foot Women: How Gender Equality Can Save the World! by Catherine Mayer is published by HQ (352pp, £20)

Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is published by Fourth Estate (66pp, £10)

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A new wave of feminist manifestos address women and power

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In a recent lecture the Cambridge classicist Mary Beard cogently argued that public ­attitudes to women in power have altered frighteningly little over the centuries.

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We're holding power up to the light to see just how it works-its neuropsychology, its femininity, and even what it wears to Paris. Come along for an authentically O power trip.

The Final Frontier

Women and power: Is there a more incendiary combination of words in the English language? Drinking and driving? Teenagers and sex? A woman can never be too rich or too thin, but until very, very recently, she could be too powerful, for which-if she wasn't smart enough to camouflage herself-she generally paid the price. Sometimes she got burned at the stake. Sometimes she got run out of town. Sometimes she simply got sexualized, which has been the easiest way to neutralize, if not destroy, an accomplished woman.

Of course, women have long exercised influence behind the scenes. A few thousand years ago this drove Aristotle to distraction: "What difference does it make whether women rule or the rulers are ruled by women? The result is the same." Especially on the domestic front, women are acknowledged to be experts at a tensile brand of quiet authority: The old adage has it that an American woman rises to a crisis, but that a Frenchwoman sees to it that a crisis never arises. And no one with a mother can deny that she wields-without lifting a finger and by virtue of her sheer existence-an outsize, open-ended, irrevocable influence on a life.

For the most part, though, history acknowledges a different, more disarming brand of power: a woman's ability to unmake a man. In a first-century B.C. marriage contract, a bride promised to be faithful and affectionate. She also vowed not to add love potions to her husband's food or drink. For the several thousands of years before they became firefighters and physicians, women were sirens, enchantresses, snares. At times it seems as if female powerlessness is male self-preservation in disguise. And for millennia, this has made for a zero-sum game: A woman's intelligence was a man's deception.

The accepted wisdom is that women have made the longest strides toward independence, toward authority and opportunity, in periods of great dislocation. If that is so, we must be living in the most fractured, befuddled, out-of-joint age ever, as we live-for the first time-in a world of female taxi drivers and Supreme Court justices, fighter pilots and four-star generals. For the second time we have a woman in the White House who might just as well have landed there on her own. We even live in an age when what have traditionally been considered female traits-strong communication skills, a collaborative instinct, a gift for juggling, emotional intelligence-are hailed as desirable leadership qualities. For a few thousand years women had no history. Marriage was our calling, and meekness our virtue. Over the last century, in stuttering succession, we have gained a voice, a vote, a room, a playing field of our own. Decorously or defiantly, we now approach what surely qualifies as the final frontier.

Which raises a question of the hour. Is it possible for a woman to wield power without reference to her gender? Can she prove herself competent, effective, articulate without being dismissed as either a bitch or a bimbo, until recently her only career choices? Power has for so long been a male construct that it distorted the shape of the first women who tried it on, only to find themselves in a sort of straitjacket. Powerful women were caricatures of their male colleagues. They had no feelings. They didn't like to talk about shoes. No wonder early feminists hoped the concept of power would vanish entirely when women ran the world.

Instead it seems that women have begun to transform, to broaden and deepen, the whole idea of power. A woman no longer has to leave off being a woman to embrace it. (Ego trips are not a male preserve.) Nor does anyone have to sit in the vicinity of a corner office; power has many addresses. One can wield it without a suit and tie, just as one can do so without a paycheck, a portfolio, a job. Having been for so many years defined by our bodies, we have no particular desire to be defined by our business cards.

Across the board, we're separating success from purpose, focusing less on title, career, status, more on accomplishment, influence, responsibility to ourselves and to our world. Those are not only equal-opportunity employers but also self-employers. They're bestowed from the bottom up rather than from the top down. They can't be forcibly removed. As the feminist scholar Carolyn Heilbrun defined it, "Power is the ability to take one's place in whatever discourse is essential to action and the right to have one's part matter." That is no less true on the playground than at the Pentagon. At issue are self-mastery and self-esteem rather than title and totem pole; we're overhauling the very concepts of influence, leadership, clout, control. There may be no single better definition of power.
- Stacy Schiff ( Find out where Stacy discovers power in her own life)

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We're holding power up to the light to see just how it works-its neuropsychology, its femininity, and even what it wears to Paris. Come along for an authentically O power trip. The Final Frontier Women and power: Is there a more incendiary combination of words in the English language?

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Sexual Power | The Critical Media Project

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the conflation of sex and power is nothing new. We can go as far back as biblical narratives, and think of Eve's role as temptress. The temptress or seductress, in fact, is a historical staple in visual and literary arts.

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Kasia Uscinska is the Nasty Women UK Co-Director and Producer, organizer of the Nasty Women UK Art Exhibition, which took place in the Stour Space, Hackney Wick, over the weekend.

Talks, comedy, spoken word, live music, and workshops, together with art installations, sculptures, crafts and all sorts of art form were designed to empower women and raise their voices.

Nasty Women UK is part of a global art movement that brings together people of all genders, races, faiths and LGBTQIA identities through art, from poetry to film, fine art, drama, dance and music in support of women's rights.

"We organized this event to give a platform for female artists to show their work because it is much harder for women to be represented in galleries," asserted Kasia, who also revealed that 65% of art graduates are females but only 33% of those represented in galleries are women.

The movement was founded in New York in January 2017 in reaction to the misogyny and intolerance towards minorities, which has seen a terrifying growth in recent times, not only in the reign of Donald Trump but also in the UK.

"From the 'Legs-it' tabloid headline following Brexit talks between Theresa May and Nicola Sturgeon to bosses forcing female staff to wear high heels to work or the Conservative government partnering up with the self-proclaimed anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ DUP party, hatred and intolerance have been on the rise and civil rights that generations of men and women have campaigned for are being threatened," affirmed Kasia.

The event in the Stour Space was the first one of this kind in the UK and has been organized in conjunction with End Violence Against Women, which will receive 100% of the profits made by the artwork sale and donations.

EVAW is a coalition of women's charities, researchers, activists, survivors and NGOs who works to improve local and government policies in response to violence against women and girls and to enhance public awareness about it.

Antonia Kimbell, co-director and curator, explained that the exhibition aimed to inspire and provoke whilst providing a platform for discussion on gender equality and equity, as well as being a celebration of the diverse talents and skills of women.

"We have received a phenomenal response to our call for submissions from over 100 artists," she said.

Every piece on display has been donated by the artists themselves and some of them came all the way from America, Turkey, and even Syria.

A lot of the art was quite personal and dealt with people's personal stories of abuse.

For example, one of the artworks was made by a woman who discovered that a male co-worker was filming her through a hole in the toilet. The piece is about reclaiming her space, which had been strongly violated.

Another one was made by the great-great-grand-daughter of Emmeline Pankhurst, one of the key suffragettes that helped women get the right to vote in the UK. The work features a letter written by Emmeline from the Holloway prison, where she was confined.

The opening night featured Joelle Taylor, an award-winning poet, playwright and founder of SLAMbassador UK, the ex-Royal Ballet dancer Vanessa Helen Fenton, the experimental a capella group Florence Lawrence Chorus, musicians Bishi and IMAN and DJs Bonnie Reilly and the Rhythm Sister Collective.

Women power was soaking the space and hung on the walls. Strong statements in form of creative expression were on display and the organizers were thrilled about the great public response received in support of the Nasty Women's cause.

As you can read on the Nasty Women official page, "this is a time to stand up and be counted, to speak out against intolerance in all its forms and to amplify the voices of those that go unheard. This is the time to proclaim that you too are a 'Nasty Woman' and create powerful, positive identities."

To contribute with a donation to End Violence Against Women, click here.

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Nasty Women UK Art Exhibition - Made in Shoreditch

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Kasia Uscinska is the Nasty Women UK Co-Director and Producer, organizer of the Nasty Women UK Art Exhibition, which took place in the Stour Space, Hackney Wick, over the weekend. Talks, comedy, spoken word, live music, and workshops, together with art installations, sculptures, crafts and all sorts of art form were designed to empower women and raise their voices.

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and power: how women's sexuality shaped human evolution

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psychology/human sexuality (see also social science - human sexuality)

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social science/women's studies - general

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Sex, Time, and Power: How Women's Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution

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Sex, Time and Power Shlain offers carefully reasoned and certain-to-be-controversial discussions on subjects such as menses, orgasm, masturbation, menopause, circumcision, male aggression, the evolution of language, homosexuality, and the origin of marriage. Full description

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From Theresa May's don't-mess-with-me chain necklaces to Coco Chanel's soft power pearls, statement necklaces have an impressive history as a power prop

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We are on the brink of seeing three of the world's richest democracies be led by women. This is a moment to take stock, to measure how attitudes have changed to women in power, and what that means for the licence that they now have to define themselves.

It is always harder on the way to power: Clinton's battles with how to present herself as a woman aspiring to be commander in chief - strong or compliant, outspoken or measured - have threaded through the presidential campaign. In office, it would be what she does that counts. Long ago, Angela Merkel became the most powerful politician in Europe, a standing that made a virtue out of ordinariness. It is Theresa May who seems most interesting, and interested, in how she can use her personal brand to sell a political message.

May has an acute sense of how to manage her public image. Track her trajectory to the top and you track what is acceptable to mainstream opinion, or sometimes what is only just acceptable - one of her skills is her judgment of where people are, and how far it is possible to shift them in her direction, or at least enough of them for her to win the argument. She often does it in policy development: she has been ahead of Conservative opinion on matters ranging from the pressing need to recruit more female MPs, domestic violence and female genital mutilation to the conduct of the police and the need for a full investigation into the Hillsborough disaster.

May is hardly a slave to fashion. But as a Tory MP and now leader and prime minister, she embodies it. What she wears embodies what she wants the party to be. Her wardrobe is an object lesson in brand management.

May was first elected as an MP in 1997, the year of the Labour landslide, the year when there were 101 Labour female MPs. That year, precisely 13 Conservative women were elected. And, in an 1998 interview after she became one of the first new MPs to be given a frontbench job, she was confident that gender was irrelevant. How she has changed.

Back then, the Tories were in shock and in decline after 18 years in power. Recovery seemed distant. Yet, for Conservatives, office is always the principle ambition, and that means it often makes a very unconservative accommodation with social trends. After the 1997 defeat, powerful figures in the party grasped that appearing more female-friendly would be at the heart of modernisation. Soon, May was speaking on women's issues. In 2002, after the second election defeat, she became the first woman to chair the party. That was the year she described the Tories as the "nasty party". It was the year she wore kitten heels.

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May dons a colour-block coat on her first day as prime minister. Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA

The kitten heels gave May an identity that was separate from her politics. In popular imagination, they were so ... well, unTory. They were a little quirky. They were almost cheeky. They were animal print, for heaven's sake! It was as if every other woman in the party was still in shiny leather brogues. What May said about herself with those shoes, she came also to say about the party. The shoes helped to identify where the change in public perception had to come; they began to lay the ground for a party leader who really was modernising. Only it was David Cameron who capitalised on it, not May.

Fashion writers applaud May as a woman who treats the frontbench in the Commons like the front row at a fashion show. It's much more than that - since that day at the 2002 party conference, May has never stopped using how she looks to indicate what she is thinking.

She dresses strikingly when she intends to make a striking intervention; as emphasis, not distraction. Last autumn, at the first party conference after the 2015 election victory, May made a deeply controversial speech about immigration in a zip-backed black Roland Mouret dress. A few years earlier, she had been equally provocative about the Human Rights Act in another party conference speech, in a waisted navy jacket and a dress with an asymmetric hemline. During what turned out to be George Osborne's last budget in March, she sat beside the chancellor in a scarlet dress. Soon afterwards, she had a dramatic haircut, following Clinton, Nicola Sturgeon and Merkel with the power bob ( AKA the Pob). At that point, it occurred to me she thought the Brexit vote might not go the government's way and that, if so, it would be her chance for the top. She was not going to lose out to the Camerons again. Picture the tortoise sturdily marching past the snoozing hare. Then remember last July's steps-of-Downing-Street colour-blocked coat and skirt by Amanda Wakeley, and read the wardrobe of triumph.

May can do this because wearing interesting clothes is at last a legitimate - maybe even a desirable - attribute for women in power, and she can take some of the credit for that. When she began her career in Westminster 20 years ago, an interest in fashion was taken as an indication of a woman who can read nothing more challenging than the captions to magazine fashion shoots. Labour women who took part in photo shoots soon after the election in 1997 were told they had destroyed their political credibility. When Sturgeon did the same thing in September last year, even the Daily Mail let it pass.

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At the 2015 Conservative party conference. Photograph: Ray Tang/REX Shutterstock

May has played a part in making style a legitimate part of a political personality. She uses what she wears to underline her wider message: every public appearance announces that she is in touch with a reality outside Westminster (even if it is limited to prosperous southern England), and that she shares ordinary people's - or at least well-off people's - interests in the quotidian concerns of life. But her appearance says something else about her, too. From statement haircut to shiny toe cap, her appearance represents her freedom from anxiety about what other people think - a quality that, May's friends say, is one of her defining characteristics.

May pushes boundaries with clothes as well as policies. Female MPs who reveal that, in fact, they - along with other women - do have breasts still get trolled on Twitter (when Alison McGovern wore a low-cut dress on Channel 4 News last year, she was accused of deliberately trying to distract male viewers from the interview). When May wore that red dress behind Osborne, I'm not sure she thought she was reclaiming breasts from sexploitation. But she was saying that she will wear exactly what she likes.

Contrast this with the Thatcher era. Margaret Thatcher made a Thatcher-shaped hole in the glass ceiling. Apart from the significant fact of being there, she did nothing to make it different for women. Her lack of interest in feminist revolution was exemplified by many things she did, and also by her outfits.

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May's 2011 waisted jacket and dress. Photograph: Toby Melville/REUTERS

Thatcher wore clothes to make her look less threatening than she was: her attitude to gender was far more fully described by her wardrobe than anything that she said ( a speech to the 1969 party conference archly quoting Socrates - "when woman is made equal to man she becomes his superior, and I would not dissent from anyone as wise as Socrates" - may be the best indication of her fey approach). In Thatcher's view, women could share power only if they let men think that they were still making the tea.

One of the more odd developments in feminist politics is the motherhood divide. In last year's Labour leadership contest, Helen Goodman suggested Yvette Cooper's experience as a mother made her the best candidate. It is a terrifying thought that if Andrea Leadsom, a mother, had not tried the same line against the childless May, Leadsom might now be prime minister.

But it has become much more likely that men will face similar random tests of their familiarity with voters' experiences. Women are no longer obliged to pretend to be domestic goddesses. It's hard to imagine May bothering to perpetuate the myth that she cooks for Philip every night the way Thatcher apparently cooked for Denis. Mr May has already been objectified as Maidenhead man, and his choice of outfits is almost as scrutinised as hers.

May says her heroine is Elizabeth I: head of a buccaneering nation; queen of Galleon Britain. And a woman with a fine appreciation for the power of a good frock.

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Theresa May's wardrobe: decoding her brand management

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We are on the brink of seeing three of the world's richest democracies be led by women. This is a moment to take stock, to measure how attitudes have changed to women in power, and what that means for the licence that they now have to define themselves.

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Royal Academy, London Until December 10
Rating:
In discussions about who is the world's greatest living painter, three names seem to crop up regularly: David Hockney, Gerhard Richter and Jasper Johns. All are now in their 80s.

Unlike the Yorkshireman and German, however, who've - broadly speaking - maintained a consistent excellence across the decades, Johns is often said to have scaled stunning heights between the mid-Fifties and mid-Sixties but been in steady decline ever since.

A career-spanning retrospective at the Royal Academy now allows us to judge for ourselves. Born in Georgia in 1930, Johns moved to New York in his 20s and found huge success with paintings of numbers, maps, target roundels and the American flag. In finding a place in high art for everyday subjects, he was one of the godfathers of Pop art.

As Johns himself saw it, he was asking viewers to query what 'the mind already knows'. He painted more than 40 variations on the US flag, for instance, from ones in assorted shades of white, to others set against an orange background.

Painted in the midst of the Cold War and McCarthy-era witch-hunts, they left the viewer pondering what - and whom - the flag represented.

These works still have resonance today - while 1963's Map has even more. It's a grisaille map of the United States and northern Mexico, in which it would be hard to tell where's where, but for Johns's naming each state in capital letters.

Interestingly, the border between the two countries - such a contested issue during Donald Trump's election campaign - isn't even visible.

In the Sixties, Johns turned to making 3D paintings, in which he affixed brushes, paint cups, rulers and other tools of his trade to his canvases. Paving the way for Conceptual art, the point was to convey how much more went into making a painting than ultimately meets the eye.

Sadly, Johns lost his Midas touch after that, and it hasn't really returned. Edging closer and closer to abstraction, his imagery has become increasingly opaque - at times, indecipherable.

We're told his influences range from Ludwig Wittgenstein to John Cage. Very few are artists - and it shows. Johns's recent works are less pictures than riddles in visual form. What to make, for example, of the mixture of fieldstone patterns, crosshatch motifs and the artist's handprints in Celine? Heaven only knows. Likewise the 'green angel' figure, which appears in many works.

Forever cool and detached, Johns gives away precious little about himself in his paintings. Not every artist is into candid, Rembrandt-style self-scrutiny, of course. But, I'd still expect to get some sense of the person behind 60 years' worth of art.

Johns has said he isn't 'interested in things which... express the personality'.

The result is a retrospective that's arid and frustrating - of paintings made with too much brain, and too little heart and soul.

Basquiat: Boom For Real Barbican, London Until Jan 28
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Earlier this year, a painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat fetched $110.5 million at Sotheby's, the fifth-highest price ever paid for an art work at auction. It confirmed that - though he died of a drug overdose in 1988 - the New Yorker is the hottest name in art right now.

His works are collected by Leonardo DiCaprio and Tommy Hilfiger, among others. Jay-Z has rapped about him. The clothing brand Uniqlo has even reproduced Basquiat's imagery on trainers and T-shirts.

The British, though, have remained largely resistant to his charms: there's not a single Basquiat in a UK public collection. Until this week, he'd also never had a large-scale retrospective. Now, finally, is our chance to see what all the fuss is about.

Creditably, the curators steer clear of the posthumous myth that has built up around Basquiat - that of the self-taught genius who shot to stardom, dated Madonna, painted in Armani suits, and succumbed to the excesses of fame aged 27. They focus instead on his artistic progress, from his early days in Lower Manhattan making street art to the Neo-Expressionist paintings with which he wowed New York.

Basquiat retained a raw, street aesthetic throughout, packing his canvases with so many words, symbols and separate incidents they might better be called collages than paintings. In Glenn, a whole universe is disgorged from a masked shaman's mouth. In Dos Cabezas, a double portrait of himself and Andy Warhol, Basquiat's dreadlocks are a work of art in their own right.

This show is a revelation. The only thing lacking is a look at how and why Basquiat has become such a huge, cultural phenomenon in the 21st century. But that's not something I thought about once in the exhibition itself. The art was too engrossing.

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Jasper Johns at The Royal Academy: Misses the target

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Royal Academy, London Until December 10 Rating: In discussions about who is the world's greatest living painter, three names seem to crop up regularly: David Hockney, Gerhard Richter and Jasper Johns. All are now in their 80s.