Within the machinery of the entertainment industry, the female body has never been just a body. For decades, it has also been a product, a marketing strategy, a fantasy, a bargaining chip, and an object of desire.
Female singers learned that early, to occupy a stage, they also had to learn how to occupy the imagination of those watching them. And, often, that imagination was constructed far from them. An artist’s sexuality could be sold, but it did not always belong to her.
It was on this ground that some women began doing something that seemed simple, but it actually wasn’t: deciding how they wanted to be seen. It was not simply about wearing provocative clothes or embracing daring choreography. It was about transforming their own image into a language and, above all, choosing what that language would mean.
Few understood this as early as Madonna.
the bride outside the altar
In September 1984, at the first MTV Video Music Awards, Madonna emerged from a wedding cake to perform “Like a Virgin.” Dressed in white, covered in tulle and wearing a belt emblazoned with the words “Boy Toy,” she seemed to play with everything the wedding dress represented: Purity. Marriage. Femininity. Desire.
Then, in the middle of the performance, Madonna threw herself onto the floor.
The scene caused a shock. The tights, garter belt, and provocative movements transformed that bride into something difficult to define. Madonna did not seem interested in portraying a desirable woman in the traditional way. She seemed interested in deciding, on her own terms, what to do with her own desire.
That same year, in an interview with MTV, when asked about the sexuality present in her performances, Madonna responded: “I’m a sexual person, and it comes out in my performances.” At the same time, she made an important distinction: she said she did not want to be seen merely as a sex object or a symbol, but as a person free to express herself through music and dance.
Rather than simply provoking, Madonna was testing the limits of the character she had created. Her body, on that stage, was not merely something to be observed. It was part of the performance and was under the command of the person who carried it.
Decades later, Madonna herself would sum up this relationship with provocation in a different way. In 2016, when receiving Billboard’s Woman of the Year award, she recalled the criticism surrounding her sexuality and said: “I’m a different kind of feminist. A bad feminist.” In the same speech, she stated that the most controversial thing she had done throughout her career was simply “stick around.”
From that point on, female sexuality in pop music would gain new possibilities, not always free of contradictions, but each time more difficult to be controlled exclusively by the men who ran the industry.
when the stage stops being a competition
There is another battle that runs through the history of women in music: the idea that they have to compete for the same space.
For a long time, pop culture treated its stars as if there were room for only one woman at the top. One replaced another. One was the new sensation while the previous one began to be treated as part of the past. Youth appeared as a kind of expiration date.
Madonna would also experience this logic throughout her career. In 2011, speaking about the way women and sexuality were perceived, she stated that “the world is not comfortable with female sexuality” and observed that, often, that sexuality was still interpreted from a male point of view.
That is why, when women from different generations share a stage, the gesture can carry a meaning that goes beyond music.
The veteran is no longer simply a reminder of another era. The younger artist no longer appears as someone who has arrived to take the place of the woman who came before her. Between the two, a sense of continuity has been established.
There is not necessarily a crown being passed from one head to another. Perhaps there is something more interesting: the realization that the crown never needed to belong to a single woman.
sabrinawood
In 2024, Sabrina Carpenter had already offered a small glimpse of this conversation between generations. On the VMA red carpet, she appeared wearing the iconic white Bob Mackie dress that Madonna had worn at the 1991 Oscars. The dress carried a history of its own. By wearing it again under the camera flashes, Sabrina was also placing her own body within that history.
Two years later, the reference would become more than just a dress.
At Coachella 2026, Sabrina transformed the main stage into “Sabrinawood,” a visual universe built around the aesthetic that has become her signature: corsets, bows, lace, delicate silhouettes, and an almost caricature-like femininity.
At first glance, it could have seemed like nothing more than an elaborate aesthetic. But there was a contradiction at its center.
Behind the image of the delicate girl were sexual lyrics, humor, and a character who seemed to know exactly how she was being watched. Sabrina played with the expectation that a woman who looks sweet should also be well-behaved.
And then Madonna appeared.
The encounter between the two condensed, in a few minutes, a conversation that had begun decades earlier. Madonna’s appearance alongside Sabrina, with their collaboration “Bring Your Love”, followed by “Vogue” and “Like a Prayer,” placed two artists separated by generations side by side, yet brought together by the understanding that image can also be political discourse.
On one side, the woman who, in 1984, transformed a wedding dress into provocation. On the other, an artist who built a deliberately feminine and delicate persona, often using it to make fun of what people expect a woman to be.
On stage, the two did not need to compete for space.
what remains?
Madonna did not need to prove that she was still the woman who had shocked television in the 1980s. Sabrina, in turn, did not need to erase the generation that came before her in order to build her own space.
They could simply be there, together.
In 2017, Madonna publicly questioned the rules imposed on women: “You are allowed to be pretty and cute and sexy. But don’t act too smart. Don’t have an opinion that is outside of the norm.” She then went on to say that women were allowed to be sexualized, but not necessarily to take ownership of their own sexuality.
Almost a decade later, in 2026, the provocation took a different form. Speaking to the Interview Magazine, Madonna discussed about her own relationship with nudity and explained, with the humor that has accompanied her persona for decades: “Now I don’t want to be naked because everyone’s naked.” According to her, she now wants to do precisely what others are not doing: “think and wear clothes.”
The sentence seems simple, almost like a joke. But it reflects something that has runs throughout Madonna’s entire career: the refusal to remain exactly where others expect her to be.
For years, women in music were often positioned as competitors: the younger artist replacing the older one, the new star compared to the previous one, as if one woman’s success meant another had to lose her space. When two generations choose to share the stage, that logic begins to lose its strength.
Fashion ceases to be just clothing. Sexuality ceases to be merely a sales strategy. And reference ceases to mean imitation.
Madonna opened some doors. Sabrina walked through others. Between the two are decades, changes happened in the industry, new ways of consuming music and new ways of building a public persona were developed. But there is also a thread that remains: the possibility of a woman looking at her own image and saying “this story is mine, and I am the one who should write it”.
Perhaps the true passing of the torch does not lie in one artist giving her place to another. Perhaps it lies in realizing that, after so many decades, they can finally walk across the same stage without having to compete over who deserves to be at its center.
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The article above was edited by Júlia Batista.
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