Lady Gaga

Lady Gaga is an American singer, songwriter, performer, and actress who is known for her powerful vocals, unconventionality and experimentation with new images, in addition to her smash hits like Pokerface, Bad Romance, and Born This Way. Along with being a pop superstar, Lady Gaga is a strong LGBTQ activist and feminist.

Biography
Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, known professionally as Lady Gaga, was born on March 28, 1986 in Manhattan, New York to a Catholic family with strong Italian roots. Her parents are Joe and Cynthia Germanotta and she has one sister, Natali Germanotta. Gaga began playing piano at four years old because her mother insisted that she become a "cultured young woman." Furthermore, her parents actively encouraged her to pursue music and enrolled her in numerous Creative Arts Camps. As a teenager, Gaga played countless open mic nights, wowing New Yorkers with her extensive talent. In addition to music, Gaga also studied method acting for a little over ten years at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in New York. At 17, Gaga was granted early admission to the Collaborative Arts Project 21, the music school at New York University. At NYU, she continued to study music and worked to improve her songwriting skills by writing various essays on art, religion, social issues, and politics. However, she dropped out the second semester of her sophomore year to focus entirely on her music career. After releasing her debut album, The Fame, in August 2008, Gaga became an instant hit with her songs "Just Dance," "Pokerface," "Paparazzi," and "LoveGame." Pokerface went on to become the best-selling single of 2009 with almost 10 million copies sold in that year alone. Through the length of her career, Lady Gaga has won 6 Grammys (with 19 nominations), a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actress in a Limited Series for her acting on American Horror Story: Hotel, 3 Primetime Emmy Nominee with her most recent nomination being her Super Bowl LI Half-time Show performance, 25 MTV Video Music Awards, and has headlined huge music festivals like Coachella.

Music:
From writing songs for artists like Britney Spears, Fergie, and the Pussycat Dolls, to selling out stadiums around the world, Lady Gaga has become a pop sensation. But a closer look at her discography shows the messages behind her songs.

Lady Gaga was given her "gay icon" status when she dropped her second studio album, Born This Way, in 2011. The title track is all about expressing yourself and breathes the unforgettable lyrics "No matter gay, straight, or bi / Lesbian, transgendered life / I'm on the right track baby / I was born to survive" which instantly became a gay pride anthem. Another song from the album, a powerful ballad titled Hair is about self esteem and self-liberation. Her song Americano is rumored to be about a lesbian romance, as Gaga identifies as bisexual. Gaga has sung Born This Way on hundreds of stages, but most importantly, on the Superbowl Halftime stage where she proudly shouted it to over 112 million people/viewers.

In 2011, Gaga arrived at the MTV VMAs in full drag, performed in it, accepted awards in it, and continued to wear it throughout the entirety of the night. This helped spark the conversation of drag, transgender, and gender roles in a society where these topics are often swept under the rug.

Other Activism:
Lady Gaga is considered one of the world's leading "shock-value activists" meaning she and others like herself use attention-grabbing actions to highlight controversial issues. She has used these tactics to bring awareness to issues affecting the LGBTQ community like inequality and "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." In the early stages of her career, Lady Gaga spoke out against the military's discriminatory "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy and was awarded the Randy Shilts Visibility Award by the Servicemember's Legal Defense Network in December 2010.

In 2012, Lady Gaga co-founded the Born This Way Foundation with her mother, Cynthia to help LGBTQ children and teenagers. The non-profit is "committed to supporting the wellness of young people and empowering them to create a kinder and braver world." She also takes steps to help LGBTQ youth homelessness because gay youth are far more likely to be victims of sexual violence than their heterosexual counterparts. The organization has raised millions of dollars since it began. During her Monster Ball Tour, she created Born Brave Buses as a safe space for her fans to unite pre-show and discuss issues ranging from mental health, bullying, and gender and sexuality.

She also helped advocate for the legalization of gay marriage in 2012 in four different states and has spoken out against the growing anti-gay propaganda in Russia and the country's oppressive government. Gaga encompasses an array of activist efforts toward equality for the LGBTQ community including her moving speech at the Human Rights Campaign Dinner, a heartbreaking speech for the Orlando Pulse Nightclub victims, and various pride appearances across the country. Gaga also campaigned for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election and held a protest outside Trump Tower in New York City when the results were announced.

Contributions to the Feminist Movement
A subsection of feminism named "Gaga feminism" is the new era of contemporary feminism that pulls together meditations on fame and visibility with a lashing critique of the fixity of gender roles for males and females. Feminists who adhere to this type of feminism go beyond the bounds of glass ceilings, wage gaps, and professional bias. Adherents to Gaga feminism extend their activism to their everyday lives of women, being objectified and judged everyday for the way they dress, speak, express themselves, and the company they retain.

Gaga's purposefully exuberant actions of wearing extremely over-the-top outfits (like her dress made entirely out of raw meat) along with her warped perception and presentation of beauty has paved the way for young women to finally believe that they do not have to conform and adhere to the incredibly strict beauty standards that society, and even worse, men, have placed on them. Throughout her entire career, Gaga has been a victim of body shaming. In response to her unwanted critics, she says "You are the only one who has a right over your body and, by default, the only one who has an opinion on it as well."

Criticisms of Gaga
Although Lady Gaga is loved and adored by most of the population, there are a few critics of her work. Through her work, she has been accused of using and exploiting the gay community to sell records but she proved this wrong through terminating her Born This Way album partnership with Target after finding out they were donating to anti-LGBT causes and politicians. Additionally, some gay activists do not agree with Gaga's stance on being "born this way" - or having a predetermined sexuality. Many of these activists claim that a person's environment influences their sexuality. Critics have also claimed that some of her songs/performances are overly-sexualized.