Reading Response: Software Femininity: The Many Faces of Madonna

The many different roles Madonna embodies has an interesting appeal in her rise to stardom. Hooks argument demonstrates his anger for her rise to fame through the appropriation of black culture. Hook believes that she does this through coming at it subjectively from a white elitist lens. Although what Hook argues is true to an extent, Madonna attempts to break free of female oppression by using an example of endurance—through the embodiment of black femininity and masculinity, the ultimate symbol of strength during a time of cruel and unwarranted punishment. 

Madonna took on the “blondes have more fun” image to supersede the controversy and issues of race when taking on roles associated with black culture. By hyper-sexualizing black femininity, Hook argues that she fails to look at black pleasure properly because she never experienced black pain. Her inflation of black sexuality is interesting in her attempt to make her own image controversial and shocking. 

What is more interesting, is that Madonna embodies black masculinity in her initial couch grabbing, most recently and her upstaging as sort of a head honcho. By taking on the role of the black male, she sticks it to the white male class as a female, using the black male as a method to identify her strength as a female. In her attempt to break free of the societal standards set for women, she helps aid in the further oppression of another class that is already struggling with the set bounds of their race, African Americans. Her exertion of power is meant to speak to woman who want to break free of the societal constraints, making it known that her image was one that was worked hard for and that her fame was never organic. This makes sense why her fandom also is heavily homosexual and black, because they can relate to her attempts to break free of cultural blockades. However, Hook argues that the way in which she does it is in inappropriate and has never truly been recognized by critiques because of the fact that she masks her controversies with being a blonde white woman.