Madonna is looking seriously fierce on the cover of Harper's Bazaar November issue and penned an essay for the magazine's Daring Issue.
The 55-year-old struck a pose for world-famous photographer Terry Richardson as she opened up about her struggles as a teenager, and how she made it in the music biz.
"And for me, that was going to New York to become a REAL artist. To be able to express myself in a city of nonconformists. To revel and shimmy and shake in a world and be surrounded by daring people," she writes.
When she arrived in NYC it was nothing like she'd expected."This wasn't anything I prepared for in Rochester, Michigan.
"Trying to be a professional dancer, paying my rent by posing nude for art classes, staring at people staring at me naked.
"Daring them to think of me as anything but a form they were trying to capture with their pencils and charcoal."
"I was defiant. Hell-bent on surviving. On making it. But it was hard and it was lonely, and I had to dare myself every day to keep going."
She finishes off her piece with: "One of the many things I learned from all of this: If you aren't willing to fight for what you believe in, then don't even enter the ring."
If it's possible, we think we love Madge even more now!