Lady Gaga on Larry King: Government is Archaic, DADT is Bad, Sparkly Suspenders are Cute

LADY GAGA:

Lady Gaga went on Larry King last night and said a lot of things. She also just so happened to be wearing a sort of “menswear” inspired outfit, which did not go unnoticed by our gender-radar eyes. We love how she’s totally humbled by Ellen DeGeneres, and seemingly annoyed by Larry King, who’s interview style is somewhere between “interrogation by Drunk Uncle” and “visit to the principal’s office.”

Here she talks to Larry about Lupus. She has been tested for Lupus but at this time is okay:

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Here she talks about her feelings on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and the overall fuckedupedness of the government:

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Gawker also would like to share this Compendium of Unnecessary Lady Gaga Eccentricities. You can balance this out with the list of the Top Ten Reasons The Most Cake loves Lady Gaga.

SATC2:

We’ve been waiting for the Racialicious review of Sex and the City 2, and they have delivered! Latoya Peterson, the post’s author, takes issue with the minority characters being relegated to the background, with the treatment of gay men and with the lack of cultural sensitivity. She also looks at rom coms like SATC2 as bonding activities:

Women aren’t watching Sex and the City for its political message – it’s really about two other things:  Gender Bonding, and RomCom fantasy worlds. Sex and the City is a phenomenon because of what it prompts women to do.  It isn’t so much about the characters, but the fact that millions of women have modified their behavior in accordance with the images shown on screen.  The idea of four friends dishing on life and love over cocktails didn’t begin with Sex and the City, but the cosmopolitan and the tartini owe their bar standing to the foursome.  Interestingly, it prompts many women into doing things like organizing entire parties around the release of the movie – it is a convenient excuse for a night off, and the women I was with (most with children or heading that way) were looking forward to getting dressed up and going out with friends as much as (if not more so) the actual movie.  And even those of us who are ambivalent about the series find ourselves heading off to the same gatherings because you haven’t seen your friends in a while and you don’t have a better idea.

(@racialicious)

JEANETTE WINTERSON:

Jeanette Winterson, the lesbian author responsible for Written on the Body and Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, speaks on identity, secrecy, David Laws and why she hates being labeled as a ‘lesbian author’. (@guardian UK)

GREAT LEZBRITAN:

Drama Gives “First” Lesbian Fresh Life: “The first day I had to kiss someone, it was [actress] Susan Lynch and she just went for it and set the precedent. Kissing somebody is kissing somebody, at the end of the day.” (@bbc)

MARIE CLAIRE:

Marie Claire France goes curvy in their June issue. Hot! (@highsnobette)

CHARLOTTE CHURCH:

Charlotte Church kissed a girl and lost her husband?: “That night it was Charlotte back to her wild best, just how she was when she and Gavin first met. She was lolling around all over the place.” (@oneindia)

TILA TEQUILA:

Just when you thought Tila Tequila couldn’t possibly stimulate your gag reflex any more, she comes out with a new single, entitled “I Fucked the DJ”. Omg, there are no words for the level of terrible. (@queerty)

KRISTEN STEWART:

Kristen Stewart addresses nature vs. nurture:My family are amazing. I had, like, the perfect upbringing. It sucks for people like Lindsay [Lohan], but it’s not her fault that she’s so off the rails – and she’s smart, very smart.” (@people)

GLEE:

GLEE will be adding a Christian who disapproves of Kurt’s homosexuality, just in case you were thinking that whole show was too good to be true. Oh, it’s for diversity. (@tvguide)

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Sarah

Sarah lives in Chicago with her partner and her big white Great Dane. She is a lawyer by day and a beer brewer/bread baker/knitter by night. She & her partner are currently learning how to grow their own food, and eventually they hope to move to a small farm outside the city. In 2009-2010, before jetting off to law school, Sarah was Autostraddle's Managing Editor.

Sarah has written 127 articles for us.

30 Comments

  1. Did Larry King and Lady Gaga coordinate their outfits? Cause it kinda looks like they did.

  2. Something about Lady Gaga’s energy makes me really nervous when she talks and gives interviews. But probably I get nervous when most celebrities talk (rather than sing, act, whatever) unless they’re particularly absurdly eloquent. I dunno what it is. Also olympic gymnastics makes me pretty nervous. I’ve got meds; it’s under control.

    • I know exactly what you mean. Jeanette Winterson’s interview made me feel the opposite of nervous though.

    • I just get nervous when people talk. In general.

      Real, fictional, famous, random people of the street…

  3. I loved Gaga’s look during that interview, though I’m not sure she really said much she’d not said before.

    The drama about the “first” British lesbian was ok, but the documentary afterwards that contextualised her life not only as a lesbian but an incredible businesswoman was really outstanding (plus narrated by #1 brit celesbian Sue Perkins). I implore anyone interested enough to fiddle with proxies/downloads to get the drama to get the doc too!

  4. interview style is somewhere between “interrogation by Drunk Uncle” and “visit to the principal’s office.”

    Nailed it. He is tactless.

  5. Ooh, Glee. Oh, Jeanette Winterson. Inspiration for so many bad literary tattoos on so many lesbians. (Apologies in advance.)

  6. Did anyone watch Gaga’s showstudio interview the other day? Brilliant. In case you haven’t seen it, I’ll leave you with a quote that may inspire you to watch:

    “Every vagina feels different.” – Lady Gaga

  7. Just one thing. “Marie Claire France has women with real curves”. I SO understand that the fashion industry portrays unattainable (for some) ideas of what their body should look like. On the other hand, that statement can also be damaging to people that don’t have “real curves”, because there’s a whole lot of feelings that go with being the “other end” of the body type spectrum as there can be if you’re a bigger girl. There is no right or wrong or better body shape. I know you guys know that on some level, but I just wanted to say this.

    (Snaps to my fine Aussie friend if she’s reading this, she got me thinking about it on a broader level)

    • (Dude, its like you’re in my brain! Again.)

      This, so many times over. We women spend far too much time thinking about how ‘real’ women look and what is ‘really’ attractive. I am in no way discounting the grief curvy women have to deal with and this is definitely not ‘woe is me, I’m skinny’, but I am going to throw it out there that thin people also have to deal with scrutiny and comment. My curvy friends talk about the snide remarks they have to deal with like its par for the course, but are shocked when I tell them about the time a complete stranger told me to ‘get over myself and eat a hamburger’. If ‘real’ women have curves, where does it leave the people who just genetically don’t?

      Its SUCH a loaded area, there doesn’t seem to be a way to talk about it without offending someone and once again, I am definitely not trying to make it sound like thin people have a harder time than bigger people. I just think we should all take a deep breath and make a concerted effort to take the terms ‘real’ and ‘ideal’ out of the conversation and aim to replace them with ‘healthy’.

      Because really, can’t we all stop judging each other and just get along? (Feel free to join hands and have a sing at this point)

      • The prob is the labels and these ‘special features’. Do not put the label, ‘normal’ ‘real’ ‘plus-size’ just show the woman.

        When you put the label on there you will inevitable excluding and maybe even offending some other group. You also highlight the differences and the fact that you are almost giving one group ‘a break’ by featuring them to me shows that you think of them as less not just different.

        Skinny, plus size, average, dark skin, fair skin, red hair, nappy hair, multiracial, short, tall should all be the standard because there are many types of women.. They should be represented throughout the magazine throughout the year. One group should not be singled out, when you ‘segregate’ that’s when you have issues.

    • Hi I feel skinny privilege every day of my life. I don’t think it’s the same. I like seeing curvy girls in magazines b/c I think they’re sexy, and I know “real” is a problematic term, but I don’t think it’s problematic enough to overwhelm the messages we get from most media that “redic skinny” is actually the norm. it is easier to be me because of skinny privilege.

      I’m 5’10, I presently have a BMI of 17.2%, which is “underweight.” (I’m maybe 5 lbs skinnier than per ushe right now due to the wonders of the ‘starting your own business’ diet.) At some point today, at least one woman will express envy to me about my body size or metabolism, and if I try on a friend’s clothing they will say “it’ll look better on you because you’re so skinny.” When I go to McDonald’s in 5 minutes, I won’t be judged. Although I’m too large to be model-sized, I get a fairly reasonable idea of what clothes will look like on me by seeing what they look like on the model in the magazine.

      I sometimes don’t even know if I like my body — as a kid, I hated it, all I wanted was “real curves” and I ate several boxes of Cheez-Its a night to achieve this to no avail — but at this time in my life, I am validated frequently by images I see in the media and all around me, but mostly by society’s destructive “nothing tastes as good as being thin feels” attitude.

      When I first got sick (w/ fibro) my sophomore year of college, I gained weight and looked like a normal-sized human. People treated me VERY differently. And when I got healthy again and returned to my body’s “normal” weight (which for me is slightly underweight — I do eat a lot and I do exercise, this is just how i be), I was showered in complements for my weight loss. I had people (even in my own family) tell me they’d been “a little worried” about me when I ballooned to a 21% BMI. It had nothing to do with whether I looked better with or without a few pounds. It was because our culture associates weight gain with “letting yourself go” or losing control.

      I notice this bizarre privilege most of all, maybe because I’m not rich or pretty or straight or sane or anything. People tell me to go eat cheeseburgers A LOT. It’s actually fine. “Go eat a sandwich,” IMHO, is not mean. I’d love to. I’d love to eat a sandwich. Who’s buying?

      • Um also just to put it out there, when I said “real curves” I meant that these women are actually curvy, because sometimes magazines say women have curves but they actually don’t.

      • I remember as kids when my family used to go visit one of our great aunts, who would always make comments to my sister saying, delighted, “ooh, you’ve put on weight!”

        My sister was mortified, but to my great aunt this was the biggest compliment she could possibly pay; having lived through rationing and general wartime deprivation, she considered weightiness (short of corpulence) a sign of general wealth, health and happiness.

        She was obviously responding according to the standards of the age she grew up in, as people do today when they shower praise on weight loss.

        Short of starting another world war to try and flip those size standards again (or even better, dismantle them completely), how do you get people to de-obsess with thinness?

        The curvy magazine things, while infrequent, help, but I think we need International Tell Your Friend She’s Hot day. Every day.

        • My ex’s mom told me a couple times I had put on weight, and the first time she did I thought he was going to keel over. I understood what she was saying though, the way she said it proved it to be a compliment. I did not get offended, though I thought “Wow, I must have been reaaaaally skinny, cuz I am still not overweight at all”.

        • It’s interesting what points of view older generations, and people from some other cultures, have on body shapes. As you said, for some having a bit more meat on your bones is great! Which can be awkward as all get out but it’s just a different POV.

          And yes, I vote we tell our friends they look hot all the time. Like, our own friends are our personal hot #100 or something.

  8. Lesbos had The L Word. Heteros had Sex And The City. Both show the differences between the communities and how retarded hats that look like used tampons look ridiculous on everyone.

  9. I love Lady Gaga.
    That is all.
    Also, fun fact, the only time I’ve ever watched Larry King was in Tokyo.

  10. Idk how to feel about GLEE. I love it because it’s so progressive, but sometimes the dialogue/ story-line is lacking or too cheesy imho. To be honest I probably won’t watch GLEE when the new character comes up because it’s too much like real life. I watch tv to escape from reality and adding someone who disagrees with who i am rubs me the wrong way. I feel as if in a way they were promoting hate. Why not promote compassionate Christianity? Like the Christianity more representative of Jesus and his teachings?

  11. RE “Glee”: WTF. Why is that even necessary? There’s only a handful of characters on the show that are accepting of Kurt. Sure, they’re main characters, but presumably–if the football bullies/team, the anonymous phone caller, and the homophobia storyline(s) are any indication–most people in the town aren’t that accepting. Many of them are probably also Christian. Why do we need a character specifically to put even more of a focus on all of that? I get promoting diversity, but what about promoting (unconditional) acceptance too?

    I just. Why.

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