Naked and Noble

There was a moment somewhere in there when Gaga stopped needing the costume. All those years of construction, calculation, shock—and then something shifted. The nakedness that came after wasn’t the opposite of the artifice, it was the endgame. You perform authenticity long enough and it becomes real. The person and the persona stop being separate things. That’s when you see what was actually underneath. That’s the nakedness that turns noble.