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Happy 60th birthday, Madonna! While many will be celebrating her decades of music and her iconic fashion statements, we’d like to take a moment for her arms. Those sculpted biceps, those blood-pumped veins, those sinewy guns of steel. They can move mountains. They can chop wood. They can, and should be, molded into a great big statue for all to see. And why not? The entertainer’s arms are almost as famous as Madonna herself. Google “Madonna’s arms,” and thousands of workout tutorials appear in the form of articles to half-hour-long videos. It’s no surprise that the icon boasts a pair of fit upper limbs, either. She has, after all, always been active, long before her ‘80s debut, as a cheerleader in high school and a dance major at the University of Michigan’s School of Music, Theatre, and Dance. Once fame hit, she was often spotted running around with her personal trainer Robert Parr, allowing for her arms’ first standout moment to occur on the Who’s That Girl World Tour in 1987, when she took the stage in a body-cinching sleeveless bodysuit.
Her upper body took on a whole new fitness level during the Ray of Light era, two years after she became pregnant with her daughter Lourdes Leon while filming Evita. It was 1998, and Madonna went on The Oprah Winfrey Show to reveal just how her pregnancy changed her hardcore exercise routine. “No more pumping iron, no more StairMaster, no more treadmill,” she said, “I’m free. I’m gym-free.” Of course, that simply turned the fitness-minded star toward intensive Ashtanga yoga six days a week. The result? Two super-buff arms that later appeared at the Grammy Awards in 1999, where Madonna lifted one of her four music awards as if it were a dumbbell.
