Lady Gaga

New York City singer/songwriter Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta had won 5 Grammys and 13 MTV Music Video Awards, been named Artist of the Year by Billboard Magazine, been ranked fourth on VH1's 100 Greatest Women in Music, and been called one of the most influential people in the world by Time Magazine -- by the time she was twenty-five! Teased in Catholic school as a child for being different, Germanotta (better known as Lady Gaga), says she tried to tone it done a bit because she was made to feel like a "freak."  But her in-your-face-ness wouldn't allow itself to be hidden.

Following in the footsteps of in-your-face woman Madonna twenty-five years before, Lady Gaga is now recognized as one of the best selling music artists of all time, but it is her activism on behalf of gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, transgendered and queer people that gives her work its edgy focus. Embraced early in her career by the GLBTQ community, Lady Gaga rapidly responded with an appreciation and affection that eventually thrust her into the role of a spokesperson about issues such as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (the policy within the U.S. military that forced gays to stay in the closet).

But when her commitment to gay rights and her own androgyny caused a reporter to ask about the nature of Lady Gaga's own gender and sexual orientation, she stated unapologetically, "Why is this question...so important? I am a child of diversity. I am one with my generation. I feel a moral obligation as a woman -- or a man -- to exercise my revolutionary potential and make the world a better place. On a gay scale from 1 to 10, I'm a Judy Garland fucking 42!"