Ugh. Lady Gaga covers the October issue of Harper’s Bazaar. She just had the cover in May, for the love of God, although I doubt Gaga remembers that train wreck of coked-out musings and extreme inappropriateness (like saying the ghost of Alexander McQueen – who basically still warm at the time – had written “Born This Way”). Anyway, unlike Gaga’s last pictorial, which featured Gaga’s little-known third tit and an assortment of tragic styles, Gaga decided to go “low-key” for this shoot, done by Inez and Vinoodh. Some are saying that Gaga is “bare-faced” on the cover. She’s not. She’s just not wearing any discernable eye makeup, which gives her a “naked” look. I spy lipstick and powder, at the very least. I don’t hate Gaga when she’s doing low-key, and surprisingly, when she’s not covered in crap, she looks so more feminine and interesting (to me, at least). As for the interview… it’s really boring. The full piece is here. Here are some highlights:

Gaga on how Donatella Versace threw open the doors of the Versace archive in Milan: “It was me and my friends,” Gaga remembers of this particular fashion moment. “We were all running around this warehouse laughing and putting on jackets and shoes. We started crying at one point. I’ve been dreaming of seeing those outfits my whole life.”

On new fashion: Lately, “there are some amazing emerging kids from Parsons. I’ve been wearing a lot of young designers,” she explains. She wore a custom-made Hussein Chalayan dress in her recent “Yoü and I” video and chuckles that without McQueen, “I’d be naked.”

Artifice is the new reality: “I don’t really view it as ‘natural,'” she explains. “I think that artifice is the new reality. It’s more about just being honest and sincere to the core of what you do. Whether I’m wearing lots of makeup or no makeup, I’m always the same person inside.”

Does she ever get tired of her “Gaga” act? “Sometimes I do. It all really depends on my mood for the day. But I think the perception that I ‘put it on’ every day is probably not true.” In Gaga’s mind, “putting it on” is subject to interpretation. “Don’t you think that what’s on the cover of a magazine is quite artificial?” she asks. “There’s this idea that it’s all natural, but everything’s been staged to look natural. It is also an invention. It’s just that my inventions are different. I often get asked about my artifice, but isn’t fashion based on the idea that we can create a fantasy?”

What’s expected: “I try to not focus on what people expect from me,” she says. “I think what has been lovely about my relationship with the public is that they expect something unexpected from me.”

“Her body image is as fearless as her fashion.”: “I’m very free-spirited,” she says, like a Swede in a spa. “Even when I was a kid, I used to run around naked with the babysitter, driving her crazy.” She attributes her body confidence to dancing, and “I do yoga, I do Bikram and I run, and I eat really healthy. You know, my work sort of feeds me. I keep in shape by working hard.”

Gaga’s downtime: Even when she’s not touring, Gaga works “about 16 to 20 hours a day. And when I’m alone, I write, I imagine, I create things, and I decide how I want to do my future performances. I don’t take much time off.”

Alone time and reading: And due to her crushing travel schedule, Gaga spends a lot of time on her own. “When you’re alone as much as I am,” she observes, “you become accustomed to your solitude and embrace it.” Of late, she’s been immersing herself in plays. “I love John Patrick Shanley. And I’ve been reading some books that I loved when I was in theater school, like Bertolt Brecht. Those books really changed my life.”

Gaga has also taken up surfing, which she tried for the first time on a princely two-day vacation to Mexico in August. “I fell off a lot in the beginning,” she says, “but one of the surfers said to me, ‘Now that you can stand up, just look into the future and enjoy the ride.’ I thought that was an interesting metaphor about life.”

[From Harper’s Bazaar]

Once again, ugh. I still have no friggin’ idea why Bazaar gave Gaga the cover for the second time in five months. At least Gaga wasn’t high as a goddamn kite in this interview, but that’s a problem too – because Gaga doesn’t have anything interesting to say when she’ not coked out of her skull or making up stories about how misunderstood she was or how hard she struggled. Boring. Or ART?!?!

Photos courtesy of Bazaar’s slideshow.