How do bad girls get away with it? How did Madonna, subject of public outcry for her controversial performances and her book Sex, become a superstar of pop culture and a role model for teenage girls? Why now, as star of Evita and a new mother, is she becoming a mainstream hero?

Karlene Faith says that Madonna signifies the times we live in. We are, in a sense, all responsible for who Madonna is. As fans, moral critics, media journalists, or university scholars, we mediate what she means to our society. And Madonna, as a shrewd career woman, has known how to exploit our attentions with her multiple talents. Her representation of sexual practices and values has not taken place in a political or social vacuum. She has counted on our readiness to witness the smashing of cultural taboos. Feminist reactions to Madonna have been divided. In her early career Madonna was a teenage role model, applauded as a liberated sex crusader. Later, she raised eyebrows by portraying cynical sex with multiple partners across identity boundaries and by capitalizing on sadomasochistic imagery.

Madonna, Bawdy & Soul is a celebration and critical analysis of Madonna from a feminist perspective. It will, like Madonna, provoke controversy among fans, critics, and scholars. The book includes a comprehensive listing of songs, videos, tours, films, stage roles, and Internet sites.

Karlene Faith is Professor Emerita with the School of Criminology and an associate faculty member with Women’s Studies at Simon Fraser University. She is the author of many articles and books, including Unruly Women: The Politics of Confinement & Resistance, which won the VanCity Book Prize in 1994. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Karlene Faith's profile page

'This book will be better at getting Much TV students to successfully learn about academic feminism that the usual dead-dry fare. In her discussion of the meaning of Madonna, Faith pulls in all the big guns of feminist theory and aims them at a living post-modern Bitch, rather than the pale and quite ghosts of writers life Woolf and Austen.'

The Vancouver Sun