Why I like Lady Gaga...

So I just got back from the sewing studio on a Friday night.  It was the first time I really got my hands dirty (so to speak) since school's started.  Sometimes I listen to music during my time in the studio, sometimes I don't... depends on how focused I want to be.  Since tonight was basically just a paint-by-numbers project of tracing, cutting and sewing stuff, I could zone out a little and let my mind wander while my hands went to town...

After a bit, I decided I was in the mood for Lady Gaga.  Probably 95% plus of my school loves her to death... and I like her a lot too.  In fact our Patternmaking professor/ head of the program, Professor Blackman, read us a snippet of her story Tuesday.  It was a story about how she basically performed at a club a few miles away ("You would buy a beer so you wouldn't have to drink out of their glasses there," he said) for two years building her chops and how she would book venues in the beginning by acting as her own publicist when trying to get a gig.  As in, talking about herself in the third person hahaha...

The point of the story was the importance of being willing to think creatively and take risks in getting what you want career-wise and how she is now living in a world that, to a large extent, she created for herself.

Sidenote, Professor Blackman is one of the best teachers I've ever had.  Not just teachers either because I know him a bit better, as he is the advisor for the Menswear Club, of which I'm President.  He's amazing with conflict resolution and diplomacy also.  I really appreciate the fact that he ruthlessly (in a good way) addresses when his students do any of the following:

• Start sentences with "um"
• Talk with their hands in front of their mouths
• Don't sit up straight
• Present things that are sloppy

Anyway, so Lady Gaga... Yeah, she has a fucking great background story.  As I understand things, she came from a wealthy family in the Lower East Side and attended the same high school as Paris Hilton.  So did she buy her way into the music industry?

No, she voluntarily cut herself off as soon as she could and made money as a waitress and stripper.  She also gained early admittance to the Tisch School of Arts at NYU, no easy feat.  In addition, she studied Literature so she could develop her writing and storytelling skills.  She writes much of her own music, melodies and lyrics.  She was signed to Def Jam, but was dropped three months later.  Not missing a beat, she kept booking and performing shows where she could and caught someone at Interscope's attention who signed her. Etc, etc, etc... she's awesome.  I've read she sings her songs while running on the treadmill now for conditioning.

Looking at her only a few years ago, she LOOKS like regular ol' Stephani Germanata.

Then, in my opinion, she just let go and embraced her the part of herself that she always wanted to be but didn't give herself permission to like Edward Norton did in the movie Fight Club with his totally free character he fabricated in his mind, Tyler Durden.

But Lady Gaga did it for real.  She actually became a female Tyler Durden.  Tyler explained at the end of the movie, "People do it everyday, they talk to themselves... they see themselves as they'd like to be, they don't have the courage you have, to just run with it."

She basically became, or gives the appearance of, being totally free.  It's such an incredibly rare and awesome thing to observe, she pulls even the most independent people into her reality like a vortex.  And for people that think this isn't true and she's somehow a manufactured star, can you seriously imagine a record company promoting their artists to look like this:

I really like what she represents to people, and also specifically to girls.  If you look beyond all the fluffy glitter and see the human being, her story and the way she creates the world around her makes her a really good, and really rare, role model for women.  Her style is summed up as... what is going on in her mind.  She's not trendy.  She does her own thing so hard that people want to imitate her spirit in the most tangible way they can.