Lady Gaga has made headlines over the course of her career for myriad reasons, and one of the most notable is when she wore a dress made of raw meat to the 2010 VMAs. The stunt drew a bunch of different reactions, and now Gaga says that at the time, she didn’t think her fashion choice would be as big a shock as it was.
Gaga is on the cover of the latest issue of Elle, and in an interview (conducted by Oprah Winfrey), she said of the dress:
“Well, the meat dress, quite frankly, I didn’t think it was going to be as shocking to everyone as it was. But that’s just me. I have a sort of eccentric brain, so for me, I was like, ‘Of course this makes sense.’ I’m showing up to make a statement about ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell.’ I went to the event with soldiers who were discharged from the army because they were out, or they were found out, and to me, if you’re willing to give up your life for your country, does it matter what your sexual orientation is or what your gender identity is? For me, it was like, ‘Flesh is flesh,’ so that was the intention of the meat dress. For me, that wasn’t shocking; it was shocking to the world.”
She went on to speak about how her mindset about this sort of thing has changed since making A Star Is Born, saying, “And I have to say, it was quite recently — after doing A Star Is Born, and working with Bradley Cooper, and my experience even with winning an Oscar — I sort of just went to myself, ‘You have a much greater mission on this Earth than to freak the hell out of people. Your mission is to give people a form of love through your art that lifts them up.'”
Read the full interview here.
