Lady Gaga is known for taking fashion risks and constantly reinventing her style. Throughout the course of her career, she has always found different ways to keep her fans in awe of how creative and crazy her outfits could get.
Remember that time when she wore raw beef at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards? Gaga received a lot of criticism and angered animal rights groups during that time.
From that point on, she's just never ceased to terrify people either for arriving at the 2011 Annual Grammy Awards in an egg she said she was in for 72 hours or because her natural look in A Star Is Born is stunningly out of character. The style evolution of Lady Gaga may have always been seen as just well, very her, but fans are now debating a past magazine cover she might no longer get away from this time.
Lady Gaga's Spray Tan Era
Lady Gaga's The Fame era was a time of origami outfits, hair bows, bangs, and orange tan. During this period, the 11-time Grammy award winner just seemed to be channeling some Ganguro aesthetic, a Japanese fashion trend that started back in the 1990s and also translates to "blackface".
This subculture rebels against the traditional Japanese beauty standards—dark hair, subtle makeup, light skin—through the application of heavy bright makeup on an extremely dark foundation. Many people say that it is all that Ganguro represents, but the problematic history of the representation of black people in Japanese media certainly doesn't leave it at just that.
In Gaga's case, she could just be emulating some beachy California look to top off all the other insane choices she made during that time. However, she might have gone too far in 2009 when she made her first V Magazine cover.
Lady Gaga Gets An Even Darker Tan
In Issue 61 of V Magazine "Gaga Over Gaga", the pop star gets an even darker tan, turning her usually just orange-toned skin into a full-brown one. When asked about the choice for that look, Gaga only said, "You know, the glasses, the hair, the tan—I’m known for that. So we just made me übertan."
Fans Are Now Divided About This Look
In a Facebook group called Hint Fashion Group, a member posted eight photos from the said cover which drew different reactions from both fans and other group members. While some dismissed the blackface accusations by saying that it's Ganguro-inspired or just some cheap "blonde bimbo" fake tan, some still think it was an insensitive photoshoot.
With one of the people on the comments bringing up the gay slave auction party in Berlin Gaga allegedly attended in 2011, this V Magazine cover surely just hasn't aged that well, and maybe it shouldn't have even been published at all. What do you think? Was Lady Gaga wearing blackface here or just glamorizing a ridiculous tan?
