Grimlock ♥ Ultra Magnus

Look, I've said it before, and I'll say it again: whether or not you like Lady Gaga, she's everywhere.  Everywhere.   And honestly, this book?   It made me loose a lot of respect for her as a person, although I admire her dedication to her art, and her vocal talent, and I do believe that she opened a lot of doors for people who felt marginalized. There are too many Little Monsters out there to argue with that.   Little Monsters who say that they have been marginalized, and look to Lady Gaga for inspiration.

Most telling is the Asian market, like the Japanese girls and women who say that Gaga is all they have.   When you look at how marginalized many girls and women are in Japan, still, and the fact that all it took was Lady Gaga to tell them that they're precious...  I admit, I teared up at those quotes, that those girls and women would feel so in need of any sort of self-worth that a stranger telling them they're precious means that they now idolize her?   Not only idolize her, but idolize her to the point that they feel that she is all they have.   Whether or not Lady Gaga believes what she says - and I'm not sure she does anyone - she has had a positive influence on some people who truly needed to hear her message.   And somehow, that softens the blow of how fucked up her priorities are and how fucked up her whole family situation is. 

Like her dad?   Her dad?   She joked about being married to him. 

Her father gets half her money, too.   Her father told her that her style was slutty - until she made money.   Her father told her that no man wouldn't want her now that she was so successful.   Because clearly the only reason a man would want her is money.  And it sickens me that she idolizes him so much.   If anything, her mother seems like less of an influence, but more of an enabler.   Gaga wanted to be famous, so her mother enabled her.  

And fame seems to be the biggest driving force in Gaga's life.   There are a couple exceptions, but none very likable in the end, that I'll talk about later.   She threw at least two boyfriends under the bus for fame.   She told her sister when they were kids that the piano was her thing, and to stop doing her thing, because competition!   She's okay with people pretty much calling her ugly and coming up with different ways to make her famous while she's in the room so long as it's all to get herself famous.   She threw friends under the bus for fame, and fired people if they did one thing wrong.   She's still friends with Starlight - and while she brought her along and credited Starlight with helping her create Gaga, she also fired Starlight as a DJ for allowing a record to skip.   She hired someone, saying that person could sleep with their husband while they were on the road because they were trying to conceive - then would text them both, asking the woman to sleep in her bed because Gaga couldn't sleep alone.   (She's done this with multiple women, apparently, all nothing sexual.  She is just severely uncomfortable with being alone.)  She dated a man whom she knew was engaged, and who had fired a boyfriend from her band, because he held the key to her record deal.   She didn't like this man, but she dated him for the record deal.  And yes, she knew about the engagement.   In fact, she'd gotten rides from the fiancee, and when said fiancee confronted her to-be-hubby about her suspicions of an affair, she did so with Gaga present, confronting Gaga as well.

Her loneliness seems to be one of those things that she can't give up for fame.   Like she dated a bartender, he was the love of her life (despite the fact that he treated her like crap, and put her down constantly).   She broke up with him, went back to see him years later where he was working, knew he had a new girlfriend, and still flirted with him.   She dated one of her stylists, who broke up with her, dated another stylist, had a child with the second stylist - and Gaga started dating him again after that.   Even this flaw of hers, this thing that makes her human?   She uses that like any other opportunist, and it just makes me sick.   (Funny thing?   That stylist she was dating?   He's described as an opportunist as well by almost everyone who knows him.)

I still respect Gaga's voice.   I like the pop-happy beats of her songs, and I think she's got an insane work ethic, to the point where I want to tell her to sit back and relax, even though I don't like her very much.   She works herself to the point of exhaustion, knows what she wants and gets it.   

In the end, I'm so confused.   She's so contradictory, and she brings out so, so many conflicting emotions in me.   It's a tight read: clear, easy, and I didn't want to continue because I felt like I was going to vomit sometimes, but it compelled me to keep reading.   It seemed well researched, and while this is an unflattering portrait of Gaga, it didn't seem mean-spirited.   The author mentions that some people, when talking about Lady Gaga, are catty or mean themselves.   There seems to be some sympathy, such as when speaking about the long-lost love, the loneliness, the physical and mental exhaustion, although it's hard to extend that sympathy too far when dealing with such a subject.   Everything about this is just fucked up.   So I'm an emotional wreck after reading this, and that factors into the star rating.   If it weren't such a roller coaster, the fantastic writing would otherwise garner a higher star rating. 

And I feel like I need and deserve this right now.