In Defense of Lady Gaga
Lady Gaga at the 2009 MTV VMAs
Look, I’ll say it: fashion and entertainment has long been in need of a Lady Gaga character.
Those industries (populated as they are by self-important fashionistas, editors and music execs) take themselves way too damn seriously. We’ve all heard the catch phrases du jour:
- Couture isn’t fashion, it’s wearable art!
- [Insert random Disney-groomed star/let] is really DEEP. S/He speaks for the masses!
- [Current famewhoring producer du jour] is truly an art-eest!
- Anna Wintour is a godlike creature, willing to throw verbal thunderbolts at undeserving humans!
- Vogue sets the trends!
- [Insert random magazine] has a higher circulation than Vogue!
I love the fashion and entertainment industries, I’ve made my career working in various positions within these storied businesses. But, good GOD, does the self importance get old.
But Lady Gaga manages to package serious fashion sense (and, yes, it’s avant garde – you can’t wear it on the street, but that’s the very POINT) and complex messaging (her debut single detailed the deep confusion many closeted gays feel) in fluffy dance tracks that are palatable to middle America.
Guys, this is a woman who has managed to make a physical disability SEXY (in her Paparazzi video). Damn sexy, and damn fashionable.
Even more than that, she has GOT to be in on the joke. You don’t go to the VMAs wearing a completely impenetrable mask of red lace that ends in a crown if you want to be taken seriously. No, if you want to be taken seriously, you hire Rachel Zoe to dress you, you make sure you’re well versed on your speaking points, etc.
Instead, Gaga is a gorgeous mix of incomprehensible interviewing skills, avant garde fashion that makes many roll their eyes, and very serious messaging … Not your average pop starlet, but very fun and very much needed.
AMEN!
Sorry, I disagree, respectfully. Nothing in her behavior has ever made it seem, to me, as though she takes herself anything less than VERY seriously. Which is, in a word, obnoxious. Obnoxious beyond belief, really, because she seems to think she’s this generation’s Madonna, but more avant-garde, more of an artist and talent. Madonna, btw, is also a self-congratulating pain in the ass.
They both rub me the wrong way, but Lady Gaga especially. Ugh.