Aw, how cute! Lady Gaga surprised three bullied teens with an impromptu performance during her appearance at Harvard University last month to launch her Born This Way Foundation. Watch the teens squeal with delight and she a-cappellas a few lines from “Born This Way.”
Mother Monster also revealed to O that she’s taking a vow of silence of sorts. Said the Gagster:
“Other than this interview, Oprah, I don’t intend to speak to anyone for a very long time. I have to shut out the noise… The latest thing I do is I don’t read a damn thing. No press, no television. If my mom calls and says, ‘Did you hear about?’ I don’t want to know nothing about anything that is going on in relation to music. I shut it all off.”
A part of the interview we were less jazzed about was one where she claimed to have been so bullied that she felt “scarred” and “worthless.” I get that she wants to sympathize with her cause, but she should still be honest about the fact that she wasn’t really different from most of the girls in her tony Upper West Side Catholic high school.
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“There really is no difference between the bully and the victim,” Gaga said. “I would like to do a psychological autopsy on as many bullies and victims as possible … How do we understand what breeds hatred, what breeds anger?
She added, “All the praise you receive, something inside of you is scarred by those experiences. … Sometimes I feel worthless.”
The NYU drop-out certainly has a flair for the dramatic, yes, but let’s keep it real when it comes to bullying. It lessens the very real struggle that so many of our gay teens face everyday when a well-off white girl complains about maliciously not being invited to parties.
Jose
I know its not the most credible source, but my friend said her friend went to NYU with Lady Gaga, and she tried really hard to fit in, and it made her look weird. People felt uncomfortable around her, so maybe she was outcast and bullied for being such a tryhard, i mean a lit of the time it feels like shes tryimg really hard to portray a character to impress people, so i believe it. I think she was bullied, its not hard to believe she was teased and outcast.
Steve
Wow kids these days are really sensitive! Listen yes bullying is bad and shouldn’t happen. but guess what? just like bad things and bad people aren’t going to disappear, neither is bullying. They are not the first kids or gays to get bullied and they won’t be the last, there are assholes all over the place, but if you don’t get some balls and stand the hell up for yourself, be prepared to be a doormat the rest of your life. I was bullied in school and you know what it sucked, but I fuck did I fight back!
Rawrzellers
I can get where you guys are coming from in that her bullying may not seem that bad. But all I can say is that people often want me to prove to them that I had an addiction to self harm just because it isn’t visible to them on my arms. It’s really aggravating when you’re trying to help someone by relating to them and all they want you to do is prove this and that and validate this and that. I think we need to just let her feel the way that she feels and not try and demean what she has gone through. It feels awful when people try and tell me I didn’t struggle with my addiction and that I don’t have “real” problems, because it’s something that I really had a hard time overcoming and if I can use my experience to help someone else then I will.
Belize
@Steve: Get over yourself.
1. Your experiences as a bullied child may be different compared to what other kids have experienced, currently experience and will experience. Still it is all lumped together as bullying. The extent however varies. For all we know you could have just been shoved against a locker by accident and now you’re supposedly someone who “grew balls and learned to fight back.”
2. Am I correct in to thinking that you’re one of those gay people who believe that just because you have the capacity to survive something that means others should have the same ability? Sounds like all those conservatives who say that if they can like pussy, we can too.
3. You survived your years as a bullied kid. Great. Tell that to those who didn’t.
4. “They are not the first kids or gays to get bullied and they won’t be the last, there are assholes all over the place, but if you don’t get some balls and stand the hell up for yourself, be prepared to be a doormat the rest of your life.” — So basically, what you’re saying is that we should just leave the issue alone? Wonderful. Again, tell it to those who didn’t survive.
5. “Wow kids these days are really sensitive!”–and old people today are better just because kids nowadays get the protection they never did. Get over it and get on with your life. The clock’s ticking, grandma. Don’t waste it complaining about things that are actually better than your time.
DouggSeven
How can a foundation stop bullying? Sounds like a letterhead organization sending out plees to corporations to get money from them to put out pamphlets in schools and have a staff of 20 making 50k a year keeping them a-float…but not really doing anything for society. Wait – did I just outline what 99.9% of charities actually do?
Whoops, mb.
Reece
The world becomes more just because people choose to take a stand against an injustice. The person who watches bullying being committed and chooses to do nothing about it is little better than the bully himself/herself.
This article neglects to mention that Lady Gaga was picked up in front of her classmates by a group of boys and thrown in a garbage can when she was 14. To quote her, “I got profanity written all over my locker at school and all the others were nice and clean. I got pinched in the hallways and called a slut. [I felt] worthless. Embarrassed. Mortified. I was 14. Three boys put me in it. The girls were laughing when they did it.”
I don’t know about you, but I will gladly do my part to make tomorrow a little bit better for anyone that is treated like that. There are many teens who have taken their lives because these things have happened to them in the halls of their school every day while people look on or join in the humiliation. And Gaga’s right, it does leave a lasting impact on you. At 30 years old, I still recall my own personal experiences in school and how it made me feel. It changes you.
Eric
@Belize
I was with you right up until you launched a personal attack against Steve because of your perception of his age. Don’t ruin an otherwise perfectly logical argument by resorting to personal attacks, yet alone ageism. Ageism is no better than homophobia.
@Steve
I agree with what Belize said with the exception of the personal attack. I would add that the flaw in your logic is that if humanity doesn’t strive to make things better then things don’t get better, instead they get worse. To paraphrase Edward Gibbon in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.
Also, according to statistics, bullying is worse now than when you went to school (http://www.bullyingstatistics.org/content/bullying-statistics.html), and I think that things will get worse before they get better, just as they did with racism in the sixties. Homophobes know they are losing ground, many of the poor are scapegoating LGBT people for their own circumstances, as are many Christians. They all feel threatened, and we’re getting attacked.
Ogre Magi
@Eric: Steve is just a rotten old fart
Red Meat
Her mother said in the interview that her locker was once defamed with the word faggot. That’s pretty big since the school she went to has clean lockers and any writing would stand out.
parasite eve
shes amazing….HATERS GONNA HATE WE LOVE YOU GAGA!!!
JJJ
Is there a requirement that you have to be bitter to work for Queerty? You guys actually can write interesting pieces without being so catty.
I don’t know you Mr. Queerty, but who is to say that your childhood was worse than hers? Or that you were more scarred by bullying than she was? We all walk away from our childhoods with a little bit of our own insecurities. You can’t belittle hers. You don’t know anything about it.
Say what you will, but she’s trying to do something…and you’re just sitting back being nasty. What a shame considering that you’ve got your own soapbox.
Shannon1981
It isn’t fair to judge anyone’s insecurities. Everyone has them, including someone as famouse as Lady Gaga. Kudos to her for making a difference. More than we can say for 99% of the people in the world.
Marcus
The views in this post display the same attitude that causes gay teen bullying to be overlooked by most people. Just because you can’t relate to someone’s suffering does not mean that it is not still painful and real to them. Your ignorance is only furthered more by comments such as “well-off white girl”. Really??? The gay community is often targeted and criticized, here is someone who is seeking to embrace and really support the cause of many silenced and vulnerable teens, show some love and support rather than returning the same kind of ignorance we face from society.
Phil
Does anyone else get the feeling that she’s putting on airs? Her pseudo-vow-of-silence and “psychological autopsy”, whatever that is, certainly makes me believe so.
mike128
I don’t know why you assume someone can’t be bullied at school because they’re white and well off? People get bullied at every school – anyone who comes across as different is vulnerable.
Don
@Rawrzellers:
Well said. Its so often these days I hear people saying things like “Your problem isn’t that bad” or “There are people who have had it way worse. What’s wrong with you?” None of that changes the fact that some things are just inherently painful. Instead of telling people to grow a pair we should be offering support and understanding. Its not like this is a contest of who’s got a better sob story.
mattsy
she needs to work on an album thats great instead of mediocre like the last one.
Allen D.
@parasite eve: NO, ACTUALLY, NOT -ALL- OF US LOVE YOU, GAGA! SOME OF US REALLY CAN’T STAND YOU!!!
LittIe,Kiwi
hating lady gaga wont’ make your own life better, boys.
truly. i know some of you need to tell everyone that you cant’ stand lady gaga, lest your family and buds think you’re one of those “stereotypical fags”, but the hating her won’t make them respect you any more nor will it improve your own life.
it just makes you look pathetic. keep it up!
p.s. i’m sorry that Lady Gaga is doing more to support the LGBT Community than your own families and friends are. it’s clearly fucked you up royally.
CBRad
And then she privately told them, in a low serious voice : “Here are the plans…you will kill off the enemies of Mother Monster….”
ScaryRussianHeather
“How do we understand what breeds hatred, what breeds anger?”
I would have alot more respect for this vapid girl if she had said: “When will bad parents stop creating bullies, stop abusing their own children, and actually get involved with their childrens’ lives instead of leaving them to the electronic media babysitter 24/7”.
Question answered, hunty. Looking forward to your vow of silence, tho.
alex
Its so easy to judge and criticize, And call people liars . Well instead of bitching and saying that she is dramatic, instead you should use ur time to actually do something about it. She has a voice and is putting it to use. Therefore I thank her.
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