Text is presented alongside the images in varying forms, including poems, stories, and seemingly, a
letter to a pornographic magazine. Through this, Madonna expressed her own sexuality, embracing it
in a way which even now would be considered liberal and controversial: "My pussy is a temple of
learning…exposing it, is really a homage to it.” “It’s hard to describe it smells like a baby to me fresh
and full of life. I love my pussy, it is the complete summation of my life”
The book also included Madonna’s view on pornography: "I don’t see how a guy looking at a naked
girl in a magazine is degrading to women. Everyone has their sexuality. It’s how you treat people in
everyday life that counts, not what turns you on in your fantasy. If all a person ever did was get off on
porno movies I would say they are probably dysfunctional sexually, but I don’t think it’s unhealthy to
be interested in that or get off on that. I’m not interested in porno movies because everybody is ugly
and faking it and it’s just silly. They make me laugh, they don’t turn me on. A movie like In the Realm
of the Senses turns me on because it’s real. I’ve been told there are some good Traci Lords movies but
I’ve never seen them. I wouldn’t want to watch a snuff movie. I wouldn’t want to watch anyone get
really hurt, male or female. But generally I don’t think pornography degrades women. The women
who are doing it want to do it. No one is holding a gun to their head. I don’t get that whole thing. I
love looking at Playboy magazine because women look great naked.”
Although some of these views are now problematic in contemporary feminism, Sex was released at a
time when any abstraction of female sexuality was seen as derogative, yet Playboy magazine was
indeed at the height of its success. One female critic said of Sex, “the book was a bold, harrowing
exercise in frustration, and despite Madonna’s attempt at invincibility, the book appeared as a curious
act of self-destruction”.