It seems like coming forward about rape is very chic these days, and now it’s not all thanks to Bill Cosby. Lady Gaga, evermore desperate for attention, has now also “shyly admitted” that she, too, has been a victim of sexual assault while on, classiest of all places to make such an admission, the Howard Stern Show (yes, it’s still on).
Gaga, who has attached her waning star to Tony Bennett’s waning star in order to create one semi-noticeable star, continues to act as though she’s the poster child for empowerment by using the recognition of her rape as a way for her to say, “I don’t want to be defined by it. I’ll be damned if somebody’s gonna say that every creatively intelligent thing that I ever did is all boiled down to one dickhead that did that to me. I’m gonna take responsibility for all my pain looking beautiful and all the things I’ve made out of my strife. I did that.” Losing a bit of cohesion at the end, Gaga is essentially giving her rapist credit for her “artistry” by trying not to give him credit.
Taking her experience and turning it into the song “Swine,” it would seem Gaga has managed to wield her pain for plenty of profit. The incident (always a great word for making an event hold less weight than it does) took place when she was nineteen, the same year she dropped out of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts to start selling herself (musically speaking) on the Lower East Side. Between getting raped and establishing herself as a musician, maybe the two are more interrelated than Gaga would like to believe. Perhaps this moment in her life does define her as an artist after all, setting the tone for the start of her career. Side note: “Eh, Eh Nothing Else I Can Say” would be a super creepy song to play during a rape scene. I’m counting on Eli Roth to make it (considering he was willing to add to the “trending now” status of rape with the unreleased Marilyn Manson/Lana Del Rey video).
[…] Plath Sexton: This 19-year-old shares a trait in common with Lady Gaga: they both got raped when they were 19. You can read about it in her short story, “The Rape […]