Lady Gaga straps it on for "Q" magazine

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on February 24, 2010

Lady Gaga is currently gracing the cover of the UK’s Q Magazine wearing spider-like gloves, tight black pants, and a curious bulge that has the blogosphere buzzing.

Gaga's pop persona first served up consumer-friendly danceable tunes and quirky videos featuring scenesters bopping around in various house parties and eventually revealed itself to be much more complex and subversive, so it's not a surprise that the Q cover shoot is more than what (initially) meets the eye.

The much talked-about accessory does not jump out at you — it makes a subtle appearance. The first thing you notice is that she is topless, and it looks like a straightforward and oh-so-done-before sexy photo shoot of any young female pop star — with an Edward Scissorhands twist.

The second thing you notice is that she is wearing pants, because it is a detour from the norm.

Then, if your eyes happen to fall on the grey smudge on her right thigh, you might conclude that it is camera glare, but if you look a bit longer, you will see that she is packing, as she would put it, a disco stick, or — if I want to be more blatant — a p-p-p-poker. What appears to be just another cover shot of yet another pop tart staring blankly at the camera reveals itself to be deliciously subversive and cheeky. It’s contradictory. It’s meta. It’s Gaga. Is that a “f--k me” look she’s giving? Au contraire. The whole package says, “F--k you.”

But to whom?

In the interview, Gaga reveals that she wore a strap-on to the shoot to address rumors about her perceived gender. We’ve all come across rumors on the internet that Lady Gaga has a penis, and as you know, everything you read on the internet is true. After all, the internet told us about the untimely demise of Miley Cyrus, and the internet also memorialized the day that Kanye West supposedly started walking with Jesus. Imagine if the internet were around when the rumors about Richard Gere’s gerbil fetish started circulating. He wouldn’t be allowed within ten feet of a pet store or a research facility.

Some celebrities take the route of denying such rumors. Other simply say, “No comment.” But Lady Gaga decided to take the ball and run with it, no pun intended. She told the magazine, "We all know that one of the biggest talking points of the year was that I have a d--k, so why not give them what they want? I want to wear a d--k strapped to my vagina. ... This is not out of nowhere, right? I want to comment on that in a beautiful, artistic way. How I wanna show it. And I want to call this piece 'Lady Gaga Dies Hard.'”

And this is why we love us some Gaga. When people attacked her with disparaging remarks about her gender, she simply reappropriated them — along with a visual aid — and threw it back in their faces to demonstrate the absurdity of those remarks.

She then uses the rampant gossip as to whether she has male genitalia as an example of how the public perceives gender stereotypes:

If a guy says, "Oh I f----ed all these chicks this week," there’s a high-five and giggling. But when a woman does that and it's publicized or she is open about her sexuality or she’s free or liberated, it’s, "Oh, well, she must have a d--k."

Justice, Gaga style, has been served.