I Made It Through the Wilderness: On Gay Fandom, and Growing Older with Madonna

As stereotypically gay music experiences go, you can’t go much gayer than attending the opening night of a Madonna tour. I say this fondly, and as a forty-something gay man who has seen lots of ostensibly very gay things, including but not limited to Kylie Minogue’s Fever tour, a semi-private Celine Dion concert in New York City, and multiple Erasure tours. Within the pantheon of music culture that gay men hold dear, Madonna has been serving as a defacto ambassador for nearly 30 years since. Admittedly, talking about gay diva worship in pop culture is to trade in both old stereotypes and terrible clichés, but standing outside Montreal’s Bell Centre Arena on the opening night of Madonna’s Rebel Heart tour, it’s hard not to ponder the connection, standing amid sea of excited gay men—most of them sporting Madonna shirts from previous tours, with a few of them dressed as Madge herself. A DJ outside the venue was spinning Madonna remixes and a pack of horned dancers provided "Living for Love" photo ops in front of a Rebel Heart backdrop. There were of course women, and perhaps a younger audience than expected, but Madonna’s audience of gay men is holding steady.