Madonna at 60: A Career of Highlights and Controversies

"People say I'm controversial," Madonna, who turns 60 on Wednesday, told an audience of music-industry peers in 2016. "But I think the most controversial thing I have ever done is to stick around."

From a career spanning decades, these are just a few of her most inconic, her most controversial and her most inventive moments.

Battling ageism

Sexism was the demon that haunted Madonna's early career, but for two decades - maybe longer - it's had an equally unwelcome sibling: ageism.

Madonna was a pioneer of welding her voice to her image, and in a culture consumed with critiquing how women look, and controlling how they use their bodies, she's been on the front lines, a seductress and a battering ram. But as she's continued to be a force while she deigns to grow older, she's faced a new frontier of abuse. There has never been a pop star writing and performing at her level, and demanding a seat at the table, at her age. Why wouldn't Madonna demand it?

One of the great conundrums of the internet era is pop culture's short memory; the receipts are right there to be found, yet few bother to do the looking. But yes, in a career spanning four decades, Madonna made real cultural change, and caused a few cultural crises, over and over again. For all the criticism she's weathered during four decades in the spotlight, she deserves a birthday celebration. - Caryn Ganz

The wedding dress is sexy

If Madonna has been perpetually unapologetic (see: Human NatureUnapologetic Bitch), it is partly because she ignited so much controversy at the beginning of her career by barely striking a match. Basically, she wore a wedding dress, while singing about the joys of sex, on a song called Like a Virgin.

She...

Continue reading on: