Madonna fandom

She produced consecutive successful singles in various major music markets, established numerous international records and impacted the fashion industry.

Author and scholar Lisa Lewis believes she is "one of the first women to attract the kind of devotion of young female fans normally associated with male rock stars".

[4] Andrew Morton stated that around these years, the singer "reached a natural constituency with her fan base among young women, gays and blacks".

[7] In 1987, Russell Baker observed the case of United Kingdom where media reports from London documented that the arrival of Madonna and its Madonnamania, "agitated" her young fans so "severely".

[8] At this point, Nick Robertshaw from Billboard commented that the arrival of Madonna at London's Heathrow Airport was a "fan hysteria on a scale rarely seen since the days of the Osmonds".

[13] In the 1990s, the term continued to be used by media, including for her 1993 tour Girlie Show due to her fatest-selling gigs in the UK and Australia,[14][15] or during the releases of her 1991 documentary Truth or Dare,[16] and her first book, Sex in 1992.

Stephen Brown of Ulster University, felt that although Madonnamania "has slackened somewhat since the heady days of 1984, her staying power is as remarkable as her dramatic ascent".

Madonna has zealous fans who are young and old, straight and gay, educated and unschooled, First and Third World, black, white, brown, and yellow, and of every sexual preference, demografic category, and lifestyle imaginable.

[45] Authors of The Italian 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Cultural, Scientific, and Political Figures, Past and Present (1998) reported that "some fans become so obsessive about Madonna that they will endure hours in the rain or the cold just to get a glimpse of her".

[50][51] In her career, some other fanzines have been created, including Dare Star (previously Madonna Magazine), edited both in France and Spain, and also Justify My Life.

[60] Material Pipol a 2009 documentary made by official Chilean club, MadonnaChile was well-received and gained attention of national media publications, including a cover in La Cuarta.

[65][66][67] In Representing Gender in Cultures (2004), Elżbieta H. Oleksy and Joanna Rydzewska wrote that there is literally "hundreds of webpages and newsgroups devoted exclusively to Madonna".

[83] Divina Madonna Party, organized by her Spaniard official club, is an annual event which takes place in different cities of Spain.

[87] Bedtime Stories, originally released in 1994, became the subject of a fan-led social media campaign amid the COVID-19 pandemic, promoted with hashtag #JusticeForBedtimeStories.

Nancy Jo Sales echoed in an article published for The Guardian in 2023, that "stories about fan 'concern' over Madonna's 'bizarre' behavior have abounded [...]" forcing her to ask to retire.

[145] In 2012, professor of forensic psychology Katherine Ramsland discussed his case and concluded that "Madonna's obsessive fan reflects our celebrity-centered culture".

[153] In 2015, after an international investigation assisted by the FBI, Adi Lederman from Israel was jailed for 14 months in Tel Aviv for hacking Madonna's computer and leaking her album Rebel Heart.

Professors Gail Dines and Jean M. Humez, cited that "the most visible and most scrutinized Madonna fans [were] the wannabe's adolescent white girls".

[157] Similarly, Graham Cray concurred that she provided a "vehicle for escape" for the majority of her fans, saying that "she erects a screen on which the public can project their own fantasies".

In 1990, professors Jane Brown, Anne Barton White and Laurie Schulze, presented the videos of "Papa Don't Preach" and "Open Your Heart" in three different universities and used a newspaper poll to set college student responses toward Madonna.

[159][20][160] Another student's reaction was conducted by Thomas K. Nakayama and Lisa N. Peñaloza in 1993; Canadian professor Karlene Faith argues that such studies "give indicators that Madonna's fans as much as her detractors, bring a multicity of interpretations to her work".

In her research, Wasserlein denotes: "[...] Madonna's fans, an interestingly international lot, have put literally billions of bytes on web sites all over the world.

For example, when she released "Papa Don't Preach" in 1986, American journalist Vanessa Grigoriadis explained she attracted a lot of criticism about corrupting her little girls fans or "encouraging teenage pregnancy".

[167] Biographer Adam Sexton also wrote that for her critics, there is no shortage of evidence to support this view: Madonna's videos exploit the sexuality of her face and body.

Historian and journalist Garry Wills commented in Certain Trumpets: The Nature of Leadership (2013): "Madonna fans have not acted on the subversive values scholars find in their idol.

[180] Kim Knight, in an article titled The Madonna Complex for The New Zealand Herald in 2016, also explored the anti-Madonna fan material from publications to social media groups and websites.

But a trip to a Madonna concert yielded a cornucopia of women (and men) dressed like the Queen of Pop [...] Today it's common to see audiences draped in their favorite star's garb from album covers, videos and photo shoots.

[184] Jonathan Borge from InStyle believes that "before stars could easily take to social media to instantly share a behind the scenes glimpse of their lives", Madonna pioneered a relationship with her fans in Truth or Dare.

[185] In 1990, Lisa Lewis wrote that Madonna "was one of the first women to attract the kind of devotion of young female fans normally associated with male rock stars".

[189] Mary Cross wrote in Madonna: A Biography (2007) her "over-whelming success of her music, videos/DVDS, concert tours, and sales speaks volumes" about both her popularity and fan base.