Poke Her Face

We’ve said before that we’ll always be supportive of Lady Gaga’s ongoing efforts to get people talking by being as strange as she can be. In the prepackaged plastic world that celebrities have become (and in truth, always were), we’ll always cheer on the guy or girl (and it’s almost always a girl) who comes along once every ten years or so to laughingly shove the absurdity of it all in everyone’s faces.

On the other hand, we’ve been around the block a couple of times ourselves, which means just being strange doesn’t excite us as much as it would your average teenager. Seen it and done it. So yes, we love a crazy bitch, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to love everything she does. Lately, she’s been showing up in getups that even we can’t quite get behind.

Of these three looks, we like the last one the most. The other two just leave us scratching our heads, which admittedly, was probably the idea. The antlers are just ridiculous. The lobster makes us laugh but we don’t think it works as well as it could have. Assuming she lasts long enough to make an impression – which is by no means assured – people are going to look back on her and ask one thing: what’s with all the head stuff? Meaning, why is she always obscuring her face and wearing outrageous head gear?

Yes, yes. We know. There’s only so much “why” you can apply to her. But artists often do things over and over without realizing themselves why they’re doing it or even if they’re doing it at all. Now, if she was in any way a normal girl, we’d be all, “Oh, honey. Look at your shayna punim! Why would you want to cover that up?” But there’s two things wrong with that approach. One, we’re not elderly Jewish ladies, so we probably wouldn’t say it quite that way, and Two, she clearly has no time for standard definitions of beauty. It’s that latter point that’s the most important here.

The public likes to think that public figures who aggressively flout convention are brave social warriors – and they are, to an extent. But it’s not uncommon for people like this to be brave, while at the same time, have a ton of issues that they’re working out through their performances and personal style. There’s no better example than her fairy godfather Elton John, who similarly went way over the top in his early career, only to have revealed in the ensuing decades that on a personal level, the man was a fucking mess.

So, our question to you non-Gaga ladies is this: Do you think she wears these getups on her head and face just for the attention and to fuck social norms and make a statement about celebrity culture or do you wonder (as we sometimes do) if she’s not a teensy bit insecure about her looks and is overcompensating on some level?