The Age Old Question: Is Lady Gaga a Feminist?

Originally posted @feministcupcake.com:

A few weeks ago – okay, maybe it was a few  months ago - V - of The Porch fame brought up the Forbes list of The World’s Most Powerful Celebrities. The topic raised concerning this list was the fact that Lady Gaga had sprinted past the big O earning the #1 spot. At the time I was pretty flabbergasted and called for an explanation – I wanted details – I wanted to genuinely understand the credentials that made one eligible for this position and it turned out that in this case the argument was quite limited. The list only dealt with a year at a time, and it was Gaga’s domination of the social networking phenomena that earned her number one status.

To be honest – at first glance I found her sort of gimmicky and never really looked back until her “power” to shape and influence came to my attention and then I was suddenly interested.  What do we make of this intentional enigma? I studied. I watched her on Letterman:

I read about her on the Ms. Blog, QueerPlanet, Bitch, The New York Times, and the LA Times. I listened to her music and trolled her social media sites. Admittedly, she is more than meets the eye – and pretty catchy. And  I also noticed that there are a lot of people trying to decide if she represents anything feminist. Is she third wave feminism? Is she the end of feminism? And if she has all this influence that Forbes says she does will she influence a generation one way or another with regards to feminism?

The quote most often turned to regarding Gaga and feminism is as follows:

I’m not a feminist – I, I hail men, I love men. I celebrate American male culture, and beer, and bars and muscle cars…

Clearly, Gaga is making the same mistake that so many have made before her – she is reading feminism as a political movement that hates men – and all things that have been associated with stereotypical masculinity. But despite this comment many have identified her as a third wave feminist because she sees herself as powerful – and perhaps some would argue that second wave feminists paved the road upon which she’s walking – in other words they helped create a world in which a woman could claim power of all kinds.

But either way – I am fairly certain that Gaga will play a role in how we define gender in the future – mostly because she is very post-modern. She doesn’t seem to define herself as belonging to anything in particular and she constantly seems to redefine the boundaries of normal and gender performance – very Judith Butler, if I do say so myself. I apologize these thoughts on Gaga are just beginning. I have to think about this some more…

What do y’all think?  

– feed my brain, think about this with me.