I think there's a great deal in what Bram Dijkstra says. But I wonder if he isn't drawing too stern and narrow a picture of the possibilities open to would-be female celebrities. His discussion of Madonna, for example, misses what makes her different from Janis Joplin or Tina Turner (besides her lack of actual musical talent, that is); she's bisexual, or pretends to be (remember her much publicized flirtation with Sandra Bernhard?); she's not looking for Mr. Right to rescue her; she manages her own career and makes a fortune; she dumped abusive Sean Penn and didn't look back (compare Tina Turner's long connection with violent and controlling Ike and Janis Joplin's fondness for masochistic love songs); she's had a baby as a single woman with a "partner" who is hardly an alpha male (it's her personal trainer); she's not addicted to drugs or alcohol; in fact, she's a fitness nut. I don't see Madonna playing Evita as the embrace of a new persona of "female martyr," but as part of her continuing fascination with female power, success and celebrity. (I really can't buy Evita as martyr, by the way. Martyrs are people who are unjustly put to death in a good cause; Evita was a fascist who died of cancer.) I don't think Dijkstra's way of seeing Madonna helps us understand why young girls and gays were so obsessed with her in the 80s -- which had to do with the ways in which she seemed to validate flamboyant sexual nonconformity and fluidity of identity without rejecting parents, boys, romance and fashion. Heterosexual men -- the people who if Dijkstra is right should be most interested in "owning," and toward whom her many personae should be directed -- have never been at the center of her fandom. In fact, you could say that the very fact that Madonna is a huge star shows that there are several different mass audiences, and a given performer may have a different iconic significance to each one.