March  28

Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta's Birthday
 

Lady Gaga in her Meat Dress at the 2010 Video Music Awards
 

A little Deborah Harry, a lot of Madonna, and something entirely new: Lady Gaga’s unique blend of style, slick pop production and shock value catapulted her to the top of the charts and into the international collective conscious.  More than a pop singer, Gaga is a style icon, a gay rights activist, and a self-appointed “Mother Monster” for freaks, outcasts, and those who simply identify as such. 

Gaga was born Stefani Jolene Angelina Germanotta on March 28, 1986.  She began her career in music in New York in 2003 and was soon picked up by a major record label.  Her moniker came from “Radio Gaga,” a hit by one of her major musical influences, Queen’s Freddie Mercury.

While a singer-songwriter by trade, it is impossible to separate the music of Gaga from the spectacle.  From her ten-minute music video epics to her provocative live shows, she never fails to surprise and shock critics and fans alike.  It’s tough to pinpoint exactly one moment that encapsulates the Gaga persona and zeitgeist.  The music, while well-crafted, is by design ephemeral pop music. It would seem that, looking back on Lady Gaga from the future, what will be most remembered are her truly bizarre clothing choices.  She has worn a dress made entirely of Kermit the Frog stuffed dolls, a headpiece that resembles a gyroscope, and even a dress inspired by Stephen King’s Carrie that was interpreted by most as a giant used tampon.

In late 2012, Gaga’s continuing stranglehold on the world’s attention span manifested itself in an unusual way – scientists apparently became compelled to name things after her. A species of wasp, discovered during a “turbo-taxonomic” study to identify new species, possessed the gene sequence GAGA – and so did an entire new Genus of ferns discovered a month later. In a particularly apt coincidence, the subspecies of fern is also hermaphroditic, echoing Mother Monster’s LBGT rights activism. Both wasp and fern were named after Gaga.

However, at 2010’s MTV Video Music Awards (and thankfully immortalized on DVD), Lady Gaga took outlandish to a whole new level with a Little Red Dress – as in red meat. Gaga wore an entire dress made completely of real, raw beef, complete with matching beef hat, clutch, and shoes.
 

 Skirt Steak