Uh-Oh: We've Seen Lady Gaga's Future
With so much attention being paid recently to the factual background of Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta--aka Lady Gaga--and her, er, progression from Catholic schoolgirl to pole-stripper to pop sensation, I couldn't help but start wondering about the foundation of her image.
Now, while I certainly agree with some of the comments we've seen by the faithful Yahoo! audience noting that Ms. Gaga bears more than a passing resemblance to, say, Christina Aguilera or Gwen Stefani in a wig and sunglasses, I couldn't keep but thinking, "No, that's not quite it. That combination of look and attitude is so familiar. Where have I seen this before?"
Then, as fate would have it, I was channel-surfing the other day when I happened upon the 1988 movie Earth Girls Are Easy, starring Geena Davis as an L.A. hairdresser who falls in love with outer-spaceman Jeff Goldblum. And then it hit me, and in living pink no less, in the scene where Goldblum's fellow aliens Jim Carrey and Daman Wayans wind up at a gas station and have a close encounter of the hubba-hubba kind with a buxom blonde in a pink Corvette who needs help with her, um, pump.
It's not just any blonde, though, playing (as she'd listed in the credits) "Gas Girl." It's Angelyne, the sex bomb whose outrageous billboards advertising herself made her a cult legend in Los Angeles in the 1980s, and thus became an influential, pioneering role model in the famous-for-being-famous celebrity game.
Just how much Lady Gaga took from Angelyne I'll leave up to you to decide. But I can tell you that when she ran for Governor in the 2003 California recall election won by Arnold Schwarzenegger, Angelyne's slogan was: "We've had Gray [Davis], we’ve had [Gerry] Brown, now it’s time for some blond and pink." Her political campaign (she got over 2,500 votes, by the way, coming in a not-too-shabby 28th out of a field of 135)came not long after Angelyne appeared in Moby's celeb-filled video for his song "We Are All Made Of Stars," in one of her classic billboards and then in the real live, er, flesh:
Of course, if Lady Gaga wants a peek in the old crystal ball for what her future might be like a few decades down the road, well, those bloodthirsty paparazzi did catch the now 50-ish Angelyne coming out of an L.A. drugstore not long ago--and no, it wasn't a pretty sight.
All I can say is, Ms. Gaga, take heed.
