Can you believe Lady Gaga on the cover of the January 2010 issue of Elle UK? She looks… dare I say… pretty. Normal-pretty, not like “Oh, I guess her headgear doesn’t clash with her dominatrix outfit too badly” pretty. Sure, Gaga is no great beauty, but she’s been trying to look a bit nicer… cleaner, really. In the interview excerpt from The Daily Mail, Gaga seems to be trying to put out a nicer image of herself too – she’s even talking about babies. Minivan majority, here she comes!
Without her usual bizarre outfit, outrageous make-up and eye-popping headgear, it’s hard to tell that this is Lady GaGa at all. With tumbling blonde curls and a sexy corset, the Bad Romance singer is virtually unrecognizable – in fact she looks more like a supermodel.
Only the tattoo on her left bicep gives the game away as Stefani Germanott graces the cover of the January edition of Elle magazine.
And to go with her fresh-faced image, the kooky 23-year-old was refreshingly normal in an interview, talking about her future, having children and old jobs waiting tables.
She said: ‘In eight to 10 years, I want to have babies for my Dad to hold, grandkids. And I want to have a husband who loves and supports me, just the way anyone else does. I would never leave my career for a man right now, and I would never follow a man around.’
Talking about being a waitress, she said: ‘I was really good at it. I always got big tips. I always wore heels to work! I told everybody stories, and for customers on dates, I kept it romantic. It’s kind of like performing.’
The star also revealed how stress affects her.
‘I get all the symptoms of a pregnant woman. I get headaches, I get tired, I get blurred vision sometimes during a really intense session with [her creative team] the Haus.’
She added: ‘My album covers are not sexual at all, which was an issue at my record label. I fought for months, and I cried at meetings. They didn’t think the photos were commercial enough…The last thing a young woman needs is another picture of a sexy pop star writhing in sand, covered in grease, touching herself.’
And she also explained why she fakes her own death on stage: ‘I feel that if I can show my demise artistically to the public, I can somehow cure my own legend. I can show you so you’re not looking for it. I’m dying for you on domestic television—here’s what it looks like, so no one has to wonder.’
[From The Daily Mail]
I totally agree about Gaga’s image, and I could see how the powers that be at any record label would try to make her image more like, say, Britney Spears – as if that worked so well the first time. Or the first hundred times. Sure, Gaga is derivative, with her music and with her shock-value costumes, videos and image. But… I do think she’s an heir to Madonna in a way that someone like Britney just isn’t. Britney was only Madonna’s heir because they made pop music and danced and made a lot of money. Gaga is Madge’s heir in a different way – in the image-focused “provocateur” way that Madonna used so well for the first decades of her career.
More photos of Lady Gaga for Elle are available on Elle.com.
Elle UK cover for January 2010 courtesy of Elle.com. Additional image courtesy of HuffPo.
Well she can always hook up with her ass kissing friend Perez and have that family.
I thought she hated being called Stefani?
I also find it funny that she was so insistent to not be a sexual pop star yet she commonly talks about how much she LOVES sex
At first blush I thought it was madonna! But I like gaga, and I think it’s cool that she wants to be different
I think she looks a lot like Audrey Landers of “Dallas” fame in this cover shot.
I really, really like her. She has a great voice – in that way she is like Madonna, and she is going for the theatrics in the same way Madonna did. But I’ve heard people talk about meeting her at different events, and they say she talks about her family and how close she is to her father and how difficult it was to deal with his cancer. She is a showperson, but I think underneath it all, she is a family girl who wants the husband and children – just like lots of us.
More power to her. I hope she gets it.
Damn she looks like Madonna! Not good, Stefani.
@solitary Angel:same idea!
Madonna look-alike
I love GaGa, but they totally, totally airbrushed her nose. She’s got a honker on her – or it’s normal sized and looks out of place because she’s so tiny.
Here’s hoping she doesn’t follow Madge’s influence and work herself into a piece of gristle.
I don’t think she’s not ‘insistant’ that she not be sexualized. I think she’s insistant that if she choses to display her sexuality it is done in her style and on her terms.
That’s not a bad thing.
She’s saying she doesn’t want it to be commercialized, seen-it-before, run of the mill half naked girl pop.
And she does talk about how she LOVES sex. Which I think is funny that people make a big deal about. Because…um…don’t you? I know I do. I think it’s what’s referred to as honesty, rather than a promise-ring prudish lie…ahem…Miley.
The more I see of LG the more I really respect her and like her. She just seems to be a really authentic person. Batsh!t crazy, as I’ve said before, at least her stage persona is, but is amazingly talented. And I think she looks STUNNING in these photos. When I only caught a couple of her live performances, I wrote her off as trying too hard to be avant garde. But the more I hear her in interviews, and as I finally caved and got her CD and am shocked at how great the songs are (all have her “sound” but don’t sound like the same song, ala Britney”, I really respect her as an artist and I really find her to be a genuine, warm person. I don’t find her to the heir to Madonna at all. Britney is more the heir to Madonna in the sense they both have the same pop music and use sex as their hook. LG has sexual overtones to her performance for sure but somehow it doesn’t feel as blatant to me.
Streisand-esque w/o photoshop.
Wow! nanster, I haven’t thought of the Landers sisters in years! Man they were smoking during their day. HEY! Wait a minute! They were in Playboy! Does that mean they were rent-a-cooches?
Wowza that looks like Madonna. I am guessing old Madge was in tears when she saw this cover. I wonder if Gaga’s new reign is making Madonna feel the years piling on top of her?
LOVE HER!
For anyone to believe that she is 23 is totally ridiculous. You can look at how stiff she is when she performs and tell she isn’t limber like at 23 year old. If you put a picture of Rhianna who is 21 next to her she looks about 10 years older, I believe she is really 33 she looks everyday of it.
Yes, completely gave her a computerized rhinoplasty.
Regarding the issue of sex in her music:
In terms of being sexualized, the issue that she takes with the blanket judgments of the sex in her music is that people perceive it as a liability when, gender equality withstanding, it shouldn’t be.
She did an interview with the Norwegian press this past summmer where the reporter asks her this very question, and her response was epic:
She said (and I’m paraphrasing), if I were a man sitting here in this chair smoking a cigarette with a drink in hand and gragging my crotch, braggin about all the girls I sleep with you’d call me a rock star. Instead, you question the morality of my sexuality. I’m a rock star. That’s what I am.(Read: don’t question me because you wouldn’t pose that same question to Anthony Kiedis.)
Love it.
i like that she’s still totally sexy but her entire image isn’t all about being as hot as possible… it’s about being expressive and weird… and yes, hot all at the same time.
She’s on the same trajectory as Madonna 25 years ago, only more accelerated. Madonna started off trashtastic and after she established her popularity got all sleeked up for “True Blue”.
She’s awesome!
i cannot wait until her fame time is done.
bad music, mediocre voice, and in terms of lyrical content, well she has nothing to say.
i hope she gets in her minivan and disappears.
If she comes up with half the stuff she does on her own, she’s more talented than 99% of the people who are famous today.
Love her!!
I am with the celebitchy majority with respect to the madonna resemblance. She (or ELLE UK) appear to be trying desperately to present and (re)invent her as the next Madonna.
That said, the Landers Sister’s comparison brought me TO MY KNEES- dead on. Thank gawd for witty people here in the chat, because I don’t give two shakes of a Aqua Net can about this entertainer.
heb– her mom and friends call her Stefani, that’s her name. Lady Gaga is just a public persona.
re: Audrey Landers comparison– PERFECT.
Team Audrey Landers.
oh yeah… photoshop pretty
She has the strangest eyes. It’s like they’re juuuust a little too low on her face. It’s weird, but she is pretty.
I didn’t really care much for her music when she first showed up…”Just Dance”, “Poker Face” and “Lovegame” are, though extremely catchy, total garbage. But “Paparazzi” and “Bad Romance” are actually really good. I was surprised. She’s kind of winning me over.
If you are nonetheless around the fence: grab your beloved earphones, mind lower to some best obtain and ask for to plug them in to a ms zune then an ipod device and see which one certain appears much better to you, and which user interface has a tendency to cause yourself to smile more. then you most undoubtedly will know that is better for you.
I personally think she is VERY pretty, she just needs to tone it down with the so-called “avant garde” costumes. But I personally love the fact that she can change her image. The badass Gaga in “Bad Romance” and the sweet inoccent voice in “Paparazzi” to the country-strong woman in “You and I.” That’s talented, whether or not you like her music.
Her nose hasn’t been photoshopped. If you watch any video of her you will see that she has a naturally thin nose, it’s only from the side that it looks big. And as for the whole madonna look-alike thing, she can’t help it if she does look like madonna. Sure, she plays up to it sometimes, but they naturally look similar so sometimes it can’t be helped. i don’t think she was trying to look anything like madonna in this shoot.