Madonna, Pamela Anderson and I agree – take your idea of how a woman should look, and shove it | Zoe Williams

A woman in the public eye will be judged by an ever-changing standard: too strident, too provocative, too predatory, too thin, too fat, too muscly and very soon too old. The only dignified answer? Smash the patriarchy

Madonna arrived at the O2 for her Celebration tour last weekend, and Oh Madge," the columnist Sarah Vine wondered aloud in the Daily Mail, isn't it time you grew up?" Madonna had already answered that, of course, by dressing in a broken mirror catsuit, a cowgirl corset and another corset, and by cavorting with topless dancers. It all amounted to a pretty comprehensive statement of: Take your idea of what a grownup 65-year-old should wear and how she should comport herself, and shove it."

If I were Madge, that would be the kernel of my celebration, an entire career lived as the lightning rod of the conundrum of female sexuality. Who gets to decide what it looks like, what is attractive, what is off-putting? Who gets to police what is too much, what is too old, what is too scary, what is too slutty? Is it men, and if so, which men? Just the loudest ones? Is it socially constructed by an unstable but vocal alliance of sexist men and disapproving women? Do feminists get a say, and if so, do we all have to agree first about where we stand on fishnet tights? Where do conical bras fit, in the long pantheon of shapes you're apparently pretending your breasts might be"?

Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist