Portrait Of A Lady Gaga

For 150 years, Bazaar has explored what it means to be a woman in the modern world. Here, Lady Gaga offers her take on what it means to be one right now.

- Mel Ottenberg

Growing up, I was always told I was a rebel. People would say things like, “You’re defiant,” and “Why are you dressed that way?” But I continued to do what I wanted and wear what I wanted—because, clearly I haven’t changed.

For a long time, though, there was a shame that I carried with me. I’m an Italian Catholic—I grew up with a lot of guilt. But what I’ve started to realize is that my rebelliousness, if you want to call it that, is something that was passed along to me by a long line of tough people—and tough women—in my family.

My mother and my grandmothers are without a doubt the most powerful female forces in my life. My mother grew up in West Virginia, in an Italian family. Her father was an extremely hardworking man; he worked in insurance. My grandmother’s parents died when she was young, so she had to raise her sister. She really held down the fort. My father’s father’s family came over from Italy through Ellis Island. They lived in New Jersey. My grandfather was a shoemaker, and my father’s mother worked with him when she wasn’t home with their kids. They had two children. They lost one of them—my father’s sister, Joanne, who I’m named after. Joanne died when she was 19.