Lady Gaga Goes All "OUT"

Excerpt from OUT magazine:

A life of glamour is an ethos to which every gay — from the 17-year-old Dominican tranny voguing in his bedroom to the tanorexic middle-aged Miami circuit queen — can relate. It’s one reason we love Gaga. Another, of course, is that Gaga loves us back. Gayness is in Gaga’s DNA. A little brunette lighting bolt of energy born in Manhattan to Joseph and Cynthia Germanotta — Catholics with a healthy appreciation for the arts and the good sense to recognize a star when they bore one — Gaga began playing piano at 4 and composing at 13 under the tutelage of several gay mentors. “I had a few gay piano teachers. I was in acting class and ballet from a very young age, and I remember being around a lot of gay boys in dance class. I feel intrinsically inclined toward a more gay lifestyle.” She did Ellen before Leno, performed in gay clubs before straight ones, and plugs the gays constantly in interviews, even those with straight publications. Despite a lesbian subtext to “Poker Face” — the song is about, among other things, a woman lusting after a woman while dating a man — Gaga says, “I myself am not a gay woman — I am a free-spirited woman: I have had boyfriends, and I have hooked up with women, but it’s never been like ‘I discovered gayness when I was dot dot dot.’ ”

Her devotion to gay culture is unparalleled by any other artist operating at her level of visibility or success. “When I started in the mainstream it was the gays that lifted me up,” she says. “I committed myself to them and they committed themselves to me, and because of the gay community I’m where I am today.” Earlier this year, in her acceptance speech for her MuchMusic award for best international video, Lady Gaga thanked “God and the gays.” Before agreeing to tour with Kanye West this fall, Gaga told the rapper, “I just want to be clear before we decide to do this together: I’m gay. My music is gay. My show is gay. And I love that it’s gay. And I love my gay fans and they’re all going to be coming to our show. And it’s going to remain gay.” That’s another clause in the Gagaland constitution: Gay culture shall gush undiluted into the rapids of society. It shall not be co-opted, fancified, dolled up, or Uncle Tommed. “I very much want to inject gay culture into the mainstream,” she says, “It’s not an underground tool for me. It’s my whole life. So I always sort of joke the real motivation is to just turn the world gay.” [x]

Amazing. the shoot is fucking great. Man, this woman is on fire! I have a feeling she's going to go really far. And I mean, FAR.


























PHOTOGRAPHY BY ELLEN VON UNWERTH