Madonna and sexuality

American singer-songwriter Madonna has been considered a sexual icon. Many have considered Madonna's sexuality as one of the focal points of her career. The Oxford Dictionary of English (2010) even credited her image as a sex symbol as a source of her international stardom. Her sexual displays have drawn numerous analyses by scholars, sexologists, feminists, and other authors. Due to her constant usage of explicit sexual content, she faced censorship for her videos, stage performances and other projects.

The criticism of Madonna's overt sexuality would become a constant through her career. She decried a double-standard in some opportunities, for which commentators such as Lilly J. Goren, Alina Simone and David Gauntlett have supported some of her statements. She further polarized views about overtly sexuality in an aged woman in media. During the AIDS crisis, Madonna had also promoted safe sex as a means of inhibiting the spread of the virus, and she has advocated for women's sexuality.

Reviews transcended her own career, as her impact in the entertainment industry was documented by different publications and authors. Depending on the reviewer's point of view, she is credited to reinforce or open up a variety of things in mass media culture, both positive and negative. American historian Lilly J. Goren commented that Madonna perpetuated the public perception of women performers as feminine and sexual objects, but also found that industry exploited her concepts of using sexuality to "gain power" (empowerment) and sell more records. An editor defined that "her sexuality never rested on the idea of being attractive". Her influence on others was also quoted; the earliest reviewers noted an influence on her fandom, including the LGBT community and young female audiences, called Madonna wannabes. Another group explored her influence on other female artists, with feminist scholars Cheris Kramarae and Dale Spender describing her dominant influence by saying "she created an illusion of sexual availability that many female pop artists felt compelled to emulate".

Due to her mainstream sexual-brand, she was called variously. Named by an author in the mid-1990s as the "most arcane and sexually perverse female of the twentieth century", she was further negative called a Medusa, a succubus and a Whore of Babylon. She was both praised and criticized by some industry fellows, including Steve Allen and Morrissey, who both compared her to a prostitute. Both her impact and sex appeal were recognized in listicles, topping the lists of Toronto Sun's 50 Greatest Sex Symbols in history (2006) and VH1's 100 Sexiest Artists (2002).