Lady Gaga and the Ritual of Undressing

Apparently she sold all her clothes again. New outtakes from a V Magazine session landed in September 2013, confirming what the previous several weeks had already established: Gaga is almost always naked now, and it’s part of a very deliberate, sustained performance. She’s gorgeous, the images are strong, the fashion violence lands. I follow all of that.

What I’ve never been able to access is the depth of devotion she inspires—the fans who built whole identities around her, heart and soul and all of it. I get the hooks, the theatrics, the insistence on being unwearable in public. It just doesn’t reach me at that frequency. The nudity as artistic statement, the total commitment to the bit—admirable on its own terms. But there’s something in the Gaga signal I can’t quite tune into, and I’ve stopped trying to figure out what that says about me.