Nicki Minaj as the Harajuku Barbie at 2010 BET Awards (Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images)There are some pop stars right now who look a lot like drag queens — Lady Gaga, Nicki Minaj, Beyonce, Katy Perry, even Ke$ha.
Excellent report, on today's Morning Edition. Listen to it, or read it, here.
A few more juicy excerpts:
Gaga has started calling her fans "monsters." 18-year-old Darnell Purt is one of those them. He just graduated high school in Brooklyn. "We're all monsters," he says. "Like, if they think that I'm a monster because I'm bi, or I'm a hermaphrodite, or I dress funny, or I'm gay-friendly, then we're all monsters. We're all crazy monsters"...
This is a modern phenomenon, but that doesn't mean it's new, says Judith Halberstam, who teaches media studies at the University of Southern California.
"Look back at the 19th century at people like Oscar Wilde," she suggests. "Oscar Wilde may well be one of the early people who created a public persona for himself and then was happy, when called upon, to perform this role of the glib dandy who was full of one-liners."
Instead of spinning around helplessly in a media cycle devoted to his outlandish behavior, Wilde grabbed the steering wheel...
So are these stars controlling their fans, controlling their media coverage, or just enabling everyone's inner drag queen to come out?
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