Sal Cinquemani noted her popularity had eclipsed Michael Jackson's, "as she would continue to do for more than a decade". Music scholars John Shepherd and David Horn wrote that as a crossover artist on the pop and R&B charts, she emerged "the most dominant female performer of the 1980s" behind Whitney Houston. Dan Rubey observed that she presented herself as a role model for black women and as a creative intellect whose work advocated the advancement of black people. Joseph Vogel stated that her rising popularity towards the end of the decade was important for several reasons, "not the least of which was how it coincided with (and spoke to) the rise of black feminism". At a time when radio airplay and MTV primarily catered to white rock musicians, her album and its predecessor garnered widespread critical acclaim alongside other "unprecedented breakthroughs" by black women—including Alice Walker's "The Color Purple" (1982), Toni Morrison's "Beloved" (1987) and Patricia Hill Collins's "Black Feminist Thought" (1990)—musically capturing the spirit of the movement and presenting an alternate model on both womanhood and feminism to that of Madonna. Regarding her diverse appeal among youth, he also stated: "Janet didn't have the vocal prowess of Whitney Houston, or the poetic subtlety of Kate Bush; she didn't have Annie Lennox's penchant for the avant-garde or Madonna's predilection for shock. But none of these artists achieved the cross-racial impact (particularly on youth culture) of Janet. And none of them had an album like "Rhythm Nation 1814"."