Lady Gaga Research Paper
Profile of a Leader: Lady Gaga
More often than not, society will oppose the thought that Pop Star sensation Lady Gaga, real name Stefani Joanne Germonatta is a positive role model and there for have no leadership qualities. This I can safely testify against. In my personal opinion and with the facts I have gathered, I will outline in this essay a brief history of Lady Gaga, as her past is an extremely important story that clearly highlights why she is the person she is today, her work with politics, her loyal fan base, her brand which her fan base follow (proving she is a leader) and a personal story about myself. My choosing to follow and except Gaga as my leader saved my life.
Lady Gaga was born 29th March 1986 in Queens New York City. Her father was a reasonably successful entrepreneur, maintaining the ownership of his IT company for over fifteen years. With this success he could afford to send Gaga to a Sacred Heart Private School in New York’s upper east Manhattan, where Gaga soon found out it was some of the hardest years of her life as “my fellow students were not very nice to me…I remember them picking me up and throwing me in the trash can” (Lady Gaga 2012, …show more content…
MTV). Gaga was an outcast, and always considered herself different, usually in the way she dressed, spoke or even the style of her hair. She labeled herself eccentric but always explained she was happy that way “I mean yes I was different, that’s just me, that makes me who I am…what makes you, you? Who are you?” (Lady Gaga 2010, Rolling Stone). After leaving high school, Gaga went on to world renowned acting school TISH in NYC, where later she dropped out and pursued her career in music, playing at all the night clubs and bars in New York. She fell into a life style that was all about music, drugs and alcohol. Then it soon just became about drugs and alcohol, but with some help from her father the drugs became a distant memory and it was all about the music again.
Today Gaga is “the 2nd most influential woman in the world’ (Forbes Magazine, 2013). If that isn’t a quality found in a Leader, what is? Her fan base of “Little Monsters” sits at 112,387,027 strong following on Twitter, Facebook and her own social site LittleMonsters.com. This group of dedicated fans follow Gaga for a particular set of reasons, and the most common is her noticeable crusade for equality and gay marriage. Her message is clearly carried out in most, if not all her songs, but the stand out tracks that relay a very important vision, a vision that has become apart of the Lady Gaga brand, the vision in which has made her and her music so prominent, so influential and inspiring are as follows;
Alejandro- This song is in regards to gays and lesbians serving in the military. She started a campaign called “Don’t ask, Don’t Tell” which was soon adapted by the US military and became apart of their Statute Law. The US military now has NO right to ask serving members for any information on their sexual orientation.
Born This Way- is a song quite close to the hearts of many, and not just to the GBLT community but also the heterosexual community too. It’s a self-explanatory song simply stating that we are born the way we are, and we should choose to except, respect and love ourselves and others for whom we are.
Judas- received a lot of flak from religious leaders because of its so called suggestive lyrics and was labeled blasphemy. The one lyric in this song “I’m just a holy fool…but I’m still in love Judas baby…Jesus is my virtue and Judas is the demon I cling to” (Lady Gaga’s Judas, 2011) was seen to be the talk of the ‘town’. Gaga released a statement explaining what the song was about at a televised conference hosted by the ABC network in the USA saying “Judas is simply about self-betrayal and how we have all betrayed somebody we love before…it’s about excepting our flaws and the fact we are not perfect and moving on” (Lady Gaga 2011, ABC).
So as stated above Gaga has had some considerable and notifiable relations with people in politics about equality and gay marriage, but the ball doesn’t stop there. Gaga also had a personal one on one dinner at the white house with President Barack Obama to discuss what they could do about the epidemic of school bullying, in which Gaga was all too familiar with.
On the contrary to this there have been some not so pleasant encounters with politics. A member from the Republican party in the US made contact with Gaga asking her if she could perform at a convention they were hosting, with a fee being paid to Gaga in the amount of $1 Million USD. Now I’m sure most people are aware that the Republicans are extremely fond of conservatisms. A Gaga relative reported to Daily Mail stating that her reply to this unknown member was “are you kidding? I didn’t fight for equality and freedom so you could buy me out, how about you donate that money to a charity just so you can embrace what it feels like to experience human emotion” (Fay 2012, Daily Mail) and then Gaga allegedly hung up the phone.
Lady Gaga started her charity, a charity very dear to her heart which is ironically named The Born This Way Foundation (BTWF).
This Foundation is financially backed by Gaga, contributing a startup balance of a mere $80 Million USD. The chairwoman and spokesperson for this amazing foundation is Gaga’s mother Cynthia Germonatta. What the BTWF does is travel the US and provide free counselling to students at schools and colleges. It also conducts lectures to these students about the effects bullying can take on an individual and their mental well-being. This Foundation was fully backed and endorsed by The President whom attended the official opening of the BTWF. Gaga hopes to expand this foundation globally by the year
2014.
Cameron Milligan 131059 Page 4 of 6
As you can see there is more to Lady Gaga’s life than music, she is a compassionate human being who has a vision of the world connecting peacefully and compassionately through the power of not just her music, but every meaningful artist’s music. Other than music Gaga expresses herself through the means of fashion. People seemed confused and disgusted at the fact that Gaga wore a dress made entirely out of meat to the MTV Awards in 2011. Being human we a quick to judge, this is not always a nice thing but it would be a lie if you said you had never judged anybody. What the meat dress resembled was that no matter what we look like on the outside, whether we are gay, straight, bisexual, whether we are large, skinny , black or white, on the inside we are all the exact same. We are just ‘red meat’. Gaga decided to wear her metaphorical insides on the outside. As a leader that has established a reputation, a level of a respect from her fan base and even critics, Gaga felt more than free to express this kind of art, and I strongly believe it is a form of an art. To rein force my point that Lady Gaga is a leader and has the power to inspire individuals to want to be better, to be happy and to move forward in life, I will share a personal story of what Gaga has done for me.
“In March 2011 I was attending the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras festival with my partner Andy of 5 years. After a night of dancing and celebrating I decided to head to Kings Cross to visit my brother. Andy was hesitant in going and wanted to stay and party with our friends. I pushed and nagged Andy until he finally agreed. On our walk to Kings Cross we were attacked by four men of Lebanese decent. I was hit from behind with something hard and I woke up in hospital three days later. Shortly after I woke up I had asked my mother where Andy was, she replied that Andy had passed away. One of the men struck my partner in the head with a pipe so hard that it caused a cerebral contusion on the frontal lobe of his brain which ruptured and bled out. My partner, the man I loved, died on a cold street in five minutes because I dragged him to come to a place he didn’t want to be.
In May that same year Lady Gaga’s Born This Way came out and I found liberation in it. Her music literally saved me. I wasn’t living much of a life, blaming myself for Andy’s death, severe depression and I had suicide attempts one of them being near successful. Gaga’s music and message gave me hope, helped me to love again, to trust people and become apart of society again. She is my leader, someone I look up too. Gaga inspired not just me but hundreds of millions of people across the planet to live, love and be free and happy with who they are, to live a shame free life. That to me shows qualities of positive leadership, could you really disagree with that?
Bibliography
Simpson, S. & Munro, J., 2012. Music Business 4th ed., Sydney: Omnibus Press.
Eldon, E., 2013. Troy Carter To Bring A Bit Of Gaga’s Social Magic To Disrupt NY. techcrunch.com. Available from: http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/05/troy-carter-to-bring-a-bit-of-gagas-social-magic-to-disrupt-ny/. [Accessed: March 25, 2013].
Hodson, F., 2011. Lady Gaga. Crunchbase.com. Available from: http://www.crunchbase.com/person/37251/troy-carter. [Accessed: March 22, 2013].
Amanda, D., 2012. Lady Gaga Reflects on Past Cocaine Use. Rolling Stone. Available From: http://http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/lady-gaga-reflects-on-past-cocaine-use-20120504. [Accessed 15th February 2013].
Germanotta, S., 2011. Lady Gaga - VEVO News Exclusive, Pt. 1, YouTube VEVO.
Whitworth, D., 2010. BBC - Newsbeat - Lady Gaga Beats Justin Bieber to YouTube Record. BBC. Available from: http://http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/11626592. [Accessed 16th February 2013.]
Seacrest, R., 2010. Lady Gaga Explains Her "Telephone" Video | Interview |On Air With Ryan Seacrest, YouTube RyanSeacrest.
O 'Grady, P., 2011. Lady Gaga – Paul O 'Grady Show, television program ITV.
Gaga, L., 2011. Lady Gaga - Marry The Night, YouTube VEVO.
2010. UNCUT: Lady Gaga 's Portland Speech, YouTube abc.
Fury, A., 2010. In Camera - SHOWstudio - The Home of Fashion Film. SHOWstudio. Available from: http://showstudio.com/project/in_camera/session/lady_gaga. [Accessed 20th February 2013]
Russo, D., 2011. Lady Gaga: Inside the Outside. Television Program MTV.
Gill, R. & Scharff, C., 2011. New Femininities, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Herbert, E., 2010. Lady Gaga: Queen of Pop, Melbourne: Wilkinson Publishing Pty Ltd.
More often than not, society will oppose the thought that Pop Star sensation Lady Gaga, real name Stefani Joanne Germonatta is a positive role model and there for have no leadership qualities. This I can safely testify against. In my personal opinion and with the facts I have gathered, I will outline in this essay a brief history of Lady Gaga, as her past is an extremely important story that clearly highlights why she is the person she is today, her work with politics, her loyal fan base, her brand which her fan base follow (proving she is a leader) and a personal story about myself. My choosing to follow and except Gaga as my leader saved my life.
Lady Gaga was born 29th March 1986 in Queens New York City. Her father was a reasonably successful entrepreneur, maintaining the ownership of his IT company for over fifteen years. With this success he could afford to send Gaga to a Sacred Heart Private School in New York’s upper east Manhattan, where Gaga soon found out it was some of the hardest years of her life as “my fellow students were not very nice to me…I remember them picking me up and throwing me in the trash can” (Lady Gaga 2012, …show more content…
MTV). Gaga was an outcast, and always considered herself different, usually in the way she dressed, spoke or even the style of her hair. She labeled herself eccentric but always explained she was happy that way “I mean yes I was different, that’s just me, that makes me who I am…what makes you, you? Who are you?” (Lady Gaga 2010, Rolling Stone). After leaving high school, Gaga went on to world renowned acting school TISH in NYC, where later she dropped out and pursued her career in music, playing at all the night clubs and bars in New York. She fell into a life style that was all about music, drugs and alcohol. Then it soon just became about drugs and alcohol, but with some help from her father the drugs became a distant memory and it was all about the music again.
Today Gaga is “the 2nd most influential woman in the world’ (Forbes Magazine, 2013). If that isn’t a quality found in a Leader, what is? Her fan base of “Little Monsters” sits at 112,387,027 strong following on Twitter, Facebook and her own social site LittleMonsters.com. This group of dedicated fans follow Gaga for a particular set of reasons, and the most common is her noticeable crusade for equality and gay marriage. Her message is clearly carried out in most, if not all her songs, but the stand out tracks that relay a very important vision, a vision that has become apart of the Lady Gaga brand, the vision in which has made her and her music so prominent, so influential and inspiring are as follows;
Alejandro- This song is in regards to gays and lesbians serving in the military. She started a campaign called “Don’t ask, Don’t Tell” which was soon adapted by the US military and became apart of their Statute Law. The US military now has NO right to ask serving members for any information on their sexual orientation.
Born This Way- is a song quite close to the hearts of many, and not just to the GBLT community but also the heterosexual community too. It’s a self-explanatory song simply stating that we are born the way we are, and we should choose to except, respect and love ourselves and others for whom we are.
Judas- received a lot of flak from religious leaders because of its so called suggestive lyrics and was labeled blasphemy. The one lyric in this song “I’m just a holy fool…but I’m still in love Judas baby…Jesus is my virtue and Judas is the demon I cling to” (Lady Gaga’s Judas, 2011) was seen to be the talk of the ‘town’. Gaga released a statement explaining what the song was about at a televised conference hosted by the ABC network in the USA saying “Judas is simply about self-betrayal and how we have all betrayed somebody we love before…it’s about excepting our flaws and the fact we are not perfect and moving on” (Lady Gaga 2011, ABC).
So as stated above Gaga has had some considerable and notifiable relations with people in politics about equality and gay marriage, but the ball doesn’t stop there. Gaga also had a personal one on one dinner at the white house with President Barack Obama to discuss what they could do about the epidemic of school bullying, in which Gaga was all too familiar with.
On the contrary to this there have been some not so pleasant encounters with politics. A member from the Republican party in the US made contact with Gaga asking her if she could perform at a convention they were hosting, with a fee being paid to Gaga in the amount of $1 Million USD. Now I’m sure most people are aware that the Republicans are extremely fond of conservatisms. A Gaga relative reported to Daily Mail stating that her reply to this unknown member was “are you kidding? I didn’t fight for equality and freedom so you could buy me out, how about you donate that money to a charity just so you can embrace what it feels like to experience human emotion” (Fay 2012, Daily Mail) and then Gaga allegedly hung up the phone.
Lady Gaga started her charity, a charity very dear to her heart which is ironically named The Born This Way Foundation (BTWF).
This Foundation is financially backed by Gaga, contributing a startup balance of a mere $80 Million USD. The chairwoman and spokesperson for this amazing foundation is Gaga’s mother Cynthia Germonatta. What the BTWF does is travel the US and provide free counselling to students at schools and colleges. It also conducts lectures to these students about the effects bullying can take on an individual and their mental well-being. This Foundation was fully backed and endorsed by The President whom attended the official opening of the BTWF. Gaga hopes to expand this foundation globally by the year
2014.
Cameron Milligan 131059 Page 4 of 6
As you can see there is more to Lady Gaga’s life than music, she is a compassionate human being who has a vision of the world connecting peacefully and compassionately through the power of not just her music, but every meaningful artist’s music. Other than music Gaga expresses herself through the means of fashion. People seemed confused and disgusted at the fact that Gaga wore a dress made entirely out of meat to the MTV Awards in 2011. Being human we a quick to judge, this is not always a nice thing but it would be a lie if you said you had never judged anybody. What the meat dress resembled was that no matter what we look like on the outside, whether we are gay, straight, bisexual, whether we are large, skinny , black or white, on the inside we are all the exact same. We are just ‘red meat’. Gaga decided to wear her metaphorical insides on the outside. As a leader that has established a reputation, a level of a respect from her fan base and even critics, Gaga felt more than free to express this kind of art, and I strongly believe it is a form of an art. To rein force my point that Lady Gaga is a leader and has the power to inspire individuals to want to be better, to be happy and to move forward in life, I will share a personal story of what Gaga has done for me.
“In March 2011 I was attending the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras festival with my partner Andy of 5 years. After a night of dancing and celebrating I decided to head to Kings Cross to visit my brother. Andy was hesitant in going and wanted to stay and party with our friends. I pushed and nagged Andy until he finally agreed. On our walk to Kings Cross we were attacked by four men of Lebanese decent. I was hit from behind with something hard and I woke up in hospital three days later. Shortly after I woke up I had asked my mother where Andy was, she replied that Andy had passed away. One of the men struck my partner in the head with a pipe so hard that it caused a cerebral contusion on the frontal lobe of his brain which ruptured and bled out. My partner, the man I loved, died on a cold street in five minutes because I dragged him to come to a place he didn’t want to be.
In May that same year Lady Gaga’s Born This Way came out and I found liberation in it. Her music literally saved me. I wasn’t living much of a life, blaming myself for Andy’s death, severe depression and I had suicide attempts one of them being near successful. Gaga’s music and message gave me hope, helped me to love again, to trust people and become apart of society again. She is my leader, someone I look up too. Gaga inspired not just me but hundreds of millions of people across the planet to live, love and be free and happy with who they are, to live a shame free life. That to me shows qualities of positive leadership, could you really disagree with that?
Bibliography
Simpson, S. & Munro, J., 2012. Music Business 4th ed., Sydney: Omnibus Press.
Eldon, E., 2013. Troy Carter To Bring A Bit Of Gaga’s Social Magic To Disrupt NY. techcrunch.com. Available from: http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/05/troy-carter-to-bring-a-bit-of-gagas-social-magic-to-disrupt-ny/. [Accessed: March 25, 2013].
Hodson, F., 2011. Lady Gaga. Crunchbase.com. Available from: http://www.crunchbase.com/person/37251/troy-carter. [Accessed: March 22, 2013].
Amanda, D., 2012. Lady Gaga Reflects on Past Cocaine Use. Rolling Stone. Available From: http://http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/lady-gaga-reflects-on-past-cocaine-use-20120504. [Accessed 15th February 2013].
Germanotta, S., 2011. Lady Gaga - VEVO News Exclusive, Pt. 1, YouTube VEVO.
Whitworth, D., 2010. BBC - Newsbeat - Lady Gaga Beats Justin Bieber to YouTube Record. BBC. Available from: http://http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/11626592. [Accessed 16th February 2013.]
Seacrest, R., 2010. Lady Gaga Explains Her "Telephone" Video | Interview |On Air With Ryan Seacrest, YouTube RyanSeacrest.
O 'Grady, P., 2011. Lady Gaga – Paul O 'Grady Show, television program ITV.
Gaga, L., 2011. Lady Gaga - Marry The Night, YouTube VEVO.
2010. UNCUT: Lady Gaga 's Portland Speech, YouTube abc.
Fury, A., 2010. In Camera - SHOWstudio - The Home of Fashion Film. SHOWstudio. Available from: http://showstudio.com/project/in_camera/session/lady_gaga. [Accessed 20th February 2013]
Russo, D., 2011. Lady Gaga: Inside the Outside. Television Program MTV.
Gill, R. & Scharff, C., 2011. New Femininities, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Herbert, E., 2010. Lady Gaga: Queen of Pop, Melbourne: Wilkinson Publishing Pty Ltd.