the Saint taking the simulated Virgin: Madonna became a symbol for La Serenissima, the Republic itself. Andrew Greeley opined that the video "celebrates a powerful erotic fantasy", finding parallels to "the way we are in the presence of God [...] Is not the gentle care in which [Madonna's] lover treats her the way God alleges that he treats us?". Live performances 1984 MTV Video Music Awards On September 14, 1984, Madonna opened the inaugural MTV Video Music Awards ceremony with "Like a Virgin"; she initially wanted to perform with a full-grown Bengal tiger, but this idea was quickly nixed. Instead, she emerged from a 17-foot wedding cake, donning a white wedding dress with a bustier, pearls, rosaries, lace fingerless gloves, and a belt with a buckle that read "Boy Toy". During the number, she slithered and writhed across the floor, with her dress going up and her underpants showing. The singer explained that this was not intentional, as one of her shoes had come off at the beginning and she simply had tried to reach for it; "I thought, 'Well, I'll just pretend I meant to do this,' and I dove on the floor and I rolled around", she later recalled. MTV's Jessie Peterson opined that the performance put Madonna "on the map as Queen of Pop Music", and established the VMAs as "the place where water-cooler moments happen". Ian Anglis, on Performance and Popular Music: History, Place and Time, saw the performance as Madonna's "coming-out party", further adding that it gave MTV "legitimacy when [it was trying] - by the roundabout means of award ceremonies and live music - to convince the world [...] of the worthiness of music video". For Courtney E. Smith, "although Cyndi Lauper took home the Moon Man for Best female video, [Madonna] made 1984 all about the 'Blonde ambition' [...] The act she put on that night convinced a lot of us that we shouldn't just buy in to her image, but that we wanted to [...] run out and buy a copy of her second album". Similarly, Tom Breihan pointed out that many of the performers and presenters were already established figures: Rod Stewart, Huey Lewis And The News, and David Bowie among others, yet, "all anyone remembers is Madonna singing 'Like A Virgin' in public for the very first time". For the staff of Rolling Stone, it's a moment in pop culture