Like clockwork, it happens every summer. The temperature rises, my collection of tank tops emerges from the back of my wardrobe, and my veins begin their annual migration towards the surface of my arms. It doesn’t help that, at this time of year, I become compulsively addicted to doing triceps dips and hammer curls. You see, I was not genetically blessed with lean arms, and I have broad shoulders that will remain as wide as the Hudson River no matter what workout I do. For me, only one image comes to mind as an achievable goal: Madonna. 

I’m not talking about just any pictures of Madonna. It is Madonna leaving the gym in the 2000s, sunglasses on, tank top damp, Tracy Anderson or Gwyneth Paltrow somewhere in her orbit. Madonna on stage with one arm raised above her head, each tricep carved as precisely as the choreography. Madonna in a sleeveless T-shirt, the veins running down her forearms like electrical wiring. There are more glamorous Madonnas, certainly, but this is the one I return to: not draped in diamonds or Gaultier corsetry, but wearing her body as the ultimate status symbol.

Some people have hair muses. Others have eyebrow muses, leg muses, or women whose stomachs they save furtively to a folder marked “summer”. Madonna is my tank-top muse. More specifically, she is my bicep muse.

Her biceps, which she has hewn over decades rather than months, have withstood the test of time because Madonna is a woman who has always followed her own rules and instincts rather than following the latest craze: she has always been relevant, because she has forever deemed passing trends such as “Pilates arms” as not relevant to her. The zeitgeist has finally caught up with her muscular physique. 

Madonna has always been a woman who has subverted what is expected of her. She is a person of perennial transformation and, at the age of 67, she is still is still finding new fans. Case in point: she just played the World Cup final in New Jersey, escorted onto the pitch in a 4x4 flanked by Ronaldo and Rolandinho. A couple of weeks prior, she played to a sell-out crowd for her Confessions II album in London. In true Madonna style, guests entered the venue through two giant inflatable legs. This was a woman’s world of unapologetic power, which has arguably never felt so now. 

The timing makes sense. More women than ever are weight training, and the language surrounding their bodies has become strikingly specific. “Toned arms”, that vague old euphemism, has given way to more specific vernacular: biceps, triceps, deltoids and lats. Women are no longer waving tiny dumbbells around in pursuit of something long and lean; instead, they are lifting heavy enough to change the architecture of their bodies. For years, female gym culture seemed largely preoccupied with the lower half–with building a bigger bum while keeping everything above the waist discreetly narrow. Now, the weight room is full of women training their backs, shoulders and arms. Nike even offers a workout called “Tank Top Arms”, complete with tricep dips and hammer curls; the Danimás "Arms of Glory" workout includes simple, highly effective supersplits to truly sculpt your silhouette. 

Madonna’s arms have always expressed something essential about her. They are not merely toned, that politely feminine word implying definition without bulk, effort without aggression. They are muscular. They look worked for; they are earned. Madonna’s biceps are less an accessory than a trophy: physical evidence of discipline, diet, and the refusal to become smaller with age. Not only does Madonna look strong, but she looks powerful. Her arms suggest that no one and nothing can stand in the way of this woman taking a firm grip on whatever the hell she wants. To me, there couldn’t be anything more aspirational. 

It seems that I am not alone in thinking so. Retro images of Madonna’s athletic body are circulating online with renewed intensity, folded into the current appetite for vintage activewear, body recomposition and women who look visibly strong. One recent Instagram post by writer Liana Statenstein was devoted to her gym-era wardrobe and sculpted physique, attracting around 25,000 likes. In the comments section, women of all ages and demographics swapped workout routines. One remembered wanting “Madonna arms” in the 1990s and christened the look “bridal arms”–a phrase that sounds demure until you realize it describes the kind of triceps that could carry the groom over the threshold. Emma Hope Alwood, a writer who has great arms, indulged her workout in the comments: “shoulder press, Arnold press, tricep pull downs, hammer curls, some classic bicep curls, delt flys on the cable machine… and a crazy fucking nutrition plan.” Women everywhere are up in arms over Madonna again—quite literally. Longevity is in, and Madonna is the very definition of it.