Garland wasn’t with her on the night, but saw the pictures online. “I thought it was fabulous,” she remembers. “It’s all about being noticed. It’s all about, ‘did I make you think? Have I left a lasting impression?’ And I guess there’s that shock factor as well, which is, whether people like it or not, they’re all going to be talking about it.”
They certainly were. Francesca Granata, associate professor of Fashion Studies at the Parsons School of Design, and author of Experimental Fashion: Performance Art, Carnival and the Grotesque Body, says the combination of raw meat on bare skin was what was most shocking to people. “It is the ultimate abjection,” says Granata. “It troubles the inside versus outside of the body, literally having flesh on the outside of the body. It reminds people of their own mortality. I don’t think any of her other looks were so explicitly disturbing.”
Granata says the dress can also be read as a critique of the objectification of women, “particularly the way female pop stars have been read as sex objects. With Lady Gaga’s meat dress, the expression ‘a piece of meat’ is turned on its head.”
Some were angry. Animals rights charities condemned the dress, with Peta calling it “offensive” and saying “there are more people who are upset by butchery than who are impressed by it.”
In a post-show interview with Ellen DeGeneres, Gaga said no offence was intended, and explained that the dress was a statement protesting the US military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy – which prevented service people from disclosing their sexual identity. “For me this evening it’s [saying], ‘If we don’t stand up for what we believe in, if we don’t fight for our rights, pretty soon we’re going to have as much rights as the meat on our bones’.” A week later, she appeared at a rally calling for the repeal of the policy and gave an address entitled “The Prime rib of America”. The law was formally repealed three months later.
