Sex

On October 21, 1992, Madonna’s notorious book, Sex, was published by Time-Warner. When the book finally appeared — after months of speculation and hype — the public discovered that Madonna’s foray into the publishing world would be in the form of an oversized and overpriced ($49.95), 128-page volume, spiral-bound between embossed stainless-steel covers, aptly titled, simply, Sex. As if to make certain that the public fully recognized the controversial nature of this publishing endeavor, the book arrived in book shops wrapped in silver Mylar (which also ensured that only paying customers were privy to what lay between its covers). Also included was a CD of Madonna’s new song, “Erotica,” in a silver Mylar Ziplock bag. “Warner Books is shitting in their pants about it,” said Freddy DeMann in assessing the publishing company’s nervousness about distributing such a work.

Some might say that the genesis of Madonna’s Sex shows a typical side of her character and the way that she, as she has put it in the past, “takes a little of this and that and turns it into my own.” Earlier, in the fall of 1990, Judith Regan, then an editor of Simon & Schuster Pocket Books, had an idea for a book of erotica and sexual fantasies which she felt would be ideal for Madonna. “I felt that it was right in line with what she was all about at that time,” says Regan. “So I sent a box of material to her manager’s office, which included erotic photos that I thought would interest her, as well as the kind of text I thought would be appropriate. It was colorful and imaginative, if I do say so myself. I was happy with it, anyway. As it turned out, she, too, was impressed and thought it would be a good idea. The next thing I knew I was in Los Angeles sitting with her and her manager Freddy DeMann. I was pregnant at the time, and the first thing Madonna said to me was, ‘Well, you know, I don’t have any children.’ It seemed odd that she would think that I wouldn’t know such a thing about her, one of the most famous women in the world.”

“I just want you to know that I won’t even think of doing this thing if you’ve offered it to even one other celebrity,” Madonna cautioned Judith Regan during their meeting.

“Why is that?” Judith asked. Of course, she knew the answer, but still wanted to hear it from the woman herself.

“Because it has to be unique to me,” Madonna said, predictably. “It has to be for me, and for me alone.”

“Well, I started at the top. With you,” Judith assured her. “If you’re not interested, then I’ll go elsewhere. But I hope that you will be interested. I think this could really work for you.”

Madonna seemed satisfied. During the rest of the meeting, she made it clear that she would only do such a project if she could exert complete control over it. “She has amazing instincts, I learned that right away about her,” says Regan. “She knew just what she wanted to do, and how to do it. She asked intelligent questions about publishing. Not surprisingly, I found her to be very eager, very smart. Shrewd.”

Perhaps Madonna was even shrewder than Judith realized. By the end of the meeting, she had agreed “in principal” says Judith, “to do a book we would call Madonna’s Book of Erotica and Sexual Fantasies. She said that her manager would call me and we would work out the details. I never heard from her, and decided that she just didn’t want to do it. Then, six months later, I learned that she was doing the project for Warner Books [an arm of Time-Warner, which owns Warner Bros. Records, and now distributes Madonna’s record label, Maverick]. She had obviously taken my concept, my photos and ideas and used it as a proposal to secure a deal with another publisher. I never heard from her, not a word of gratitude, or an apology, or anything,” concludes Judith Regan. “Frankly, I thought it was in poor taste.”

The contents of Sex, when finally published, consisted of visual and verbal essays by Madonna (as herself but also in the role of a character named Dita, borrowed from screen goddess Dita Parlo of the thirties) regarding her personal, sexual fantasies — or, at least, what she wanted the public to believe were her sexual fantasies. “This book does not condone unsafe sex,” she hastened to add in one of her missives to the reader. “These are fantasies I have dreamed up. Like most human beings, when I let my mind wander, I rarely think of condoms.”

Photographed beautifully in black and white by Steven Meisel — who has photographed her throughout much of her career — Madonna was seen hitchhiking in the nude, posing lasciviously while clad in leather S&M outfits, brutally dominating a pair of butch lesbians, happily sucking somebody’s toe, brazenly shaving someone else’s pubic area, receiving oral sex from a biker, being viciously raped by skin-heads (while dressed as a schoolgirl). She is at least partially nude in most of the photographs, and completely nude in many of them. In one, she is posed in a sexually suggestive position with a dog. “It turned out to be a lot more salacious, I think, than what I would have wanted to publish,” says Judith Regan. “She went over the top with it. I wanted it to be imaginative, erotic . . . but not quite so prurient.”

Indeed, much of the book reads like a letter to a pornographic magazine: “I love my pussy, it is the complete summation of my life,” Madonna wrote. “My pussy is the temple of learning.” A lot of attention is also paid to the joy of anal sex, “the most pleasurable way to [have sex], and it hurts the most, too.” Many graphic paragraphs are devoted to the ways she enjoys making love, each position described in vivid detail, a great deal of it having to do with sadomasochism. She also waxes rhapsodic about the first time she masturbated.

Much of Sex is surprising, if not shocking. Rather than an “adult” book, it is really childish and impetuous. Though Madonna insisted that she was trying to demystify sexuality in all its many faces, knowing who she was and how she operated made it clear to any keen observer that what she was really just trying to get away with was as much naughty-girl text and as many pornographic photographs as she could get away with because . . . well, because she could get away with it. She was being a brat, not a revolutionary. That much is clear if one reads between the lines in an interview she gave to MTV in 1998. “I thought, ‘You know what, I’m going to be sexually provocative, I’m going to be ironic, and I’m going to prove that I can get everybody’s attention and that everyone’s going to be interested in it . . . and still be freaked out about it.’” One might ask: Why? Hadn’t she already proved her ability to be sexually provocative, ironic and attention-getting?

Those who knew Madonna well knew what was really going on with her at this time: the Sex book — and the outrageous antics that preceded it and would follow it — was really just something she used as a barrier between her and the rest of the world.

For years, it had seemed to Madonna that every moment of her life had been exposed to the world, her every word and mood flashed across the newspapers for comment, often biting and critical. She felt hunted, even though it was she who had started the hunt. By her own doing, she had become one of the most watched and most criticized women in the world. She had never let her public down, always at the ready with a provocative comment, a salacious anecdote, a shocking photograph. Now, because she was just who she had created, she was having trouble relating to “normal” people. She felt that they didn’t understand her. And she certainly didn’t understand them. She seemed to have lost herself somewhere in all the headlines. Terrible isolation was her ironic fate, isolation that came from being such a sensational public figure. Her relationships with men had been abysmal. Was some of that also due to her fame?

To prevent herself from having to be a part of the masses, either consciously or subconsciously — and only she would know which — Madonna created a persona that no one could begin to understand . . . one so outrageous as to defy explanation, one found objectionable by most people (at least those who were not pornographers). “She was losing touch,” said one of her public relations handlers. “The barrier she put up between herself and the rest of the world was the notion of crazy, wild sex — pure and simple — and trashy and controversial sex.”

Most mental health professionals are of the opinion that, in the human condition, there are two ways of being antisocial. In a man it can take the form of aggressive, hostile behavior. In a woman it can be presented as being sexually provocative and outrageous. In other words, when little boys are angry, they have fights. When little girls are angry, they show their panties. Some of us don’t grow out of that behavior; it would seem that Madonna was “showing her panties” just because she was vexed by the intense scrutiny her personal life had generated over the years. In her view, she had no other way of fighting back.

Tony Ward, Naomi Campbell, Isabella Rosellini and rappers Big Daddy Kane and Vanilla Ice all made guest appearances in the Sex book in photographs which showed them in various stages of undress.

The photographs were taken during the eight-month period during which Madonna and Vanilla Ice (real name Rob Van Winkle) were romantically involved. Ice, whose song “Ice Ice Baby” was, in 1990, the first rap song to top the Billboard charts, says that the relationship with Madonna was difficult, “because she would change personalities a lot.” He also says that he now regrets having posed with her for the book. “It kind of cheeses me out,” he says. “It makes me look like I’m like all the other people in there, a bunch of freaks. I’m no freak.”

Also prominently featured was Madonna’s friend Ingrid Casares, who would later complain that her participation in the project would fuel years of far-fetched gossip about her own sex life. “I’m actually quite conservative,” Casares states flatly. Casares and Madonna were photographed in male drag, kissing passionately.

Though initial fascination for the book pushed it to Number on The New York Times best-seller list, the reviews were generally negative. Richard Harrington of the Washington Post called it “an oversized, overpriced coffee-table book of hard-core sexual fantasies sure to separate the wanna-bes from the wanna-be-far-aways. Is Sex shocking? Not really. Mostly because it’s Madonna, and in a way we’ve come to expect this from her. Is Sex boring? Actually, yes.”

With all the sexual posturing, it was ironic that in the summer of 1992 Madonna was seen in Penny Marshall’s light comedy romp, A League of Their Own, about a women’s baseball league in 1943. As part of an all-star cast including Geena Davis, Tom Hanks and Rosie O’Donnell, Madonna would again not have the burden of carrying an entire film on her shoulders. The movie was top-grossing in the summer of 1992, an added bonus for Madonna’s acting résumé — though she was only fair in the role and most don’t consider it memorable. However, any observer who thought that the movie would mark the emergence of a tamer Madonna knew he was wrong as soon as Sex was published. (Prior to this film, she was seen making a brief appearance in Woody Allen’s black comedy, Shadows and Fog, a box-office failure that quickly disappeared from cinemas.)