Madonna proves age is but a number with risqué, bare-breasted bedroom photo shoot

Madonna spent her weekday evening posing bare-breasted on her bed in leather and fishnets before biting down on the bed frame.

In other words, Madonna at her finest.

On Wednesday (24 November), the 63-year-old “Vogue” singer proved that age is but a number as she staged a subtle throwback to her 1992 photo book, Sex.

“Angel watching over me,” she wrote on Instagram. But it seemed that Madonna was very much hiding from that angel, with one snap seeing her crawling under the bed, flashing her red Louboutin heels.

The hitmaker arched and spread herself across her white sheets in leather lingerie, fishnets and a diamond cross necklace. A metal cherub hanging on the wall looks down at her as she, in one photograph, posed naked under the covers.

She also shared more photographs from the shoot on her Stories while quoting the poem Evidence by American author Mary Oliver.

“Beauty without purpose… Is beauty without virtue… But all beautiful things… Have this function… To excite the viewers… To sublime thought… Glory to the world…,” Madonna wrote.

“That good teacher, Mary Oliver.”

Madonna has long fought against the idea that older women don’t matter

Some so-called fans questioned whether the “nipple [was] really necessary”, among other judgmental, misogynistic comments, such as cruel jabs about her being a mother and having “no self-respect”.

But for the majority of her nearly 17 million followers, Madonna’s carousel of photos proved once again that the singer is “perfection”.

“She serves,” one user commented. “I REPEAT SHE F***ING SERVES.”

Another added: “Perfection as always.”

“What an AMAZING body. You look beautiful, girl! The jealous, catty b***hs are gonna go crazy.”

Madonna has long faced up against sexist attitudes about her age, fighting the idea that older women don’t matter – especially in the youth-obsessed music industry.

The singer embraced her image as a seductress during the height of her career in the 1980s. In the decades since, she’s used that very same idea as a battered ram against ageist attitudes of beauty.

Even when she was just 34, the press already began to hold her up to the pernicious idea that older women should fade away.

Appearing on BBC One’s Jonathan Ross Presents in 1992, the trailblazer was asked whether she will be a warrior against ageism in the same way she has queerphobia, racism and sexism.

“I mean a lot of people have said: ‘Oh, that’s so pathetic, I hope she’s not still doing that in 10 years,’” she told host Jonathan Ross.

“I mean, who cares? What if I am? I mean, Is there a rule?

“What are you just supposed to die when you’re 40? That’s basically what everybody wants people to do.”

Then in 2016, she delivered a scathing speech against the bias she’s faced for apparently deigning to age as a woman.

Rather than wither away, as some would expect her to, she instead has taken pride and sought to remain on the front line of an industry that, she said, sees ageing as a “sin”.

“I think the most controversial thing I have ever done is to stick around,” Madonna said in her acceptance speech for a woman of the tear award at the Billboard Women in Music 2016.