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Imagine this: Arriving in New York City at the young age of eighteen in 1976 with only $35 in your pocket. This was reality for one of the most famous pop icons in today’s culture. Eight years later, this young aspiring performer broke the box office record at Radio City Music Hall with the fastest sellout of any concert ever. This record was made by the one and only Madonna with 17,622 tickets sold in 34 minutes. That tour was to promote her album ‘Like a Virgin’ and covered 27 cities throughout the US. The entire tour sold out in only two hours. (4)
She has had nine number one singles, 26 top fives, and eight number one albums. Her run of sixteen consecutive top fives in the American charts broke the record held previously by the Beatles. She has sold over 85 million albums worldwide, more than any other female singer in history. Her personal fortune is well over $70 million and she was paid $5 million for a single advert by Pepsi. (4) At present time, she is under contract to Time Warner and the value of that contract is estimated at around $60 million. It is true that her popularity has grew in the past few years, but she dominated the eighties and the early part of the nineties and is still very much around in the 2000s.

So many people live out their lives through the image world of the media, through TV, and through soap operas. Many join various subcultures where they take on the image of that group or scene. Gangs like punks or skins are an extreme, but there are other kinds of sub-cultural scenes ravers, travelers, clubbers, skateboarders, cyberpunks, grunge, techno and so on - where the individual is submerged in the collective image. The things that you say and do are all external, but the real you is lost. Life becomes virtual. Like Madonna, you just live in the image.
There is another important aspect to Madonna's use of image and that is the constant change. She is always changing her image, whether...