Lady Gaga Goes Guy

Lady Gaga is a popular singer and musician, known for her elaborate outfits and videos. Her first album came out in 2008, and she has since sold over 13 million albums. She appears on the cover of the September issue of Vogue Hommes Japan dressed as her male alter ego, “Jo Calderone.”

I’m not a Lady Gaga fan; all of the information above came from five minutes on Google. My interest in the photographs of her cross-dressing doesn’t lie in any interest in her music, but rather in the fact that I’m gender-fluid. This means that I identify as someone whose gender shifts between male, female and neither, as does the way I present myself to the outside world.

What’s Lady Gaga’s motivation for this stunt? Publicity? An opportunity to introduce “Jo Calderone” to the world? Real gender identity issues? I can’t tell you for sure, but I can guess that it’s probably just publicity.

This isn’t the first time a celebrity has taken advantage of taking on an LGBT identity. Anyone who remembers Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl” can tell you that. Perry sang, “Ain’t no big deal, it’s innocent,” denying—both in the song and outside of it—that she has any actual attraction to girls.

How will Lady Gaga or “Jo” handle this? We don’t know yet, but I don’t anticipate tact and sensitivity towards transsexuals and cross-dressers. It’s not something most celebrities seem interested in bothering with.

—Leo Johnson, 14, Contributor