As a young girl, one of my favourite things I owned was a pink Sanyo stereo. To go along with my stereo, the very first album I purchased was Lady Gaga’s The Fame. So when I think about my girlhood heroine, Lady Gaga is the person who stands out most clearly for me.
As a girl, what I noticed first was her ability to commit fully to whatever she was doing. There was no sense that she was trying to blend in or soften her edges. She made bold, sometimes bizarre choices, but what mattered to me wasn’t the shock value; it was the sense that she was steering her own direction. Watching her shaped my early idea that you don’t always need to wait for permission to take yourself seriously.
Growing up in a small rural town, I didn’t see many examples of people who openly expressed themselves in ways that didn’t fit the norm. Being part of the LGBTQ+ community made that gap feel even larger. Gaga’s music and interviews were some of the first places where I saw my sexuality treated not as something to hide or downplay, but as something ordinary and deserving of support. She didn’t label herself as a role model, but her visibility and openness made me feel less out of place.
As I learned more about her career, I also became aware of how hard she worked to get her music out into the world. Behind all the theatrics was someone who wrote constantly, performed anywhere she could and pushed through a long string of rejections. She didn’t let early criticism about her image or sound distract her from making the work she wanted to make. It has become one of the qualities I admire most about her.
Her approach to creativity influenced how I understood what it means to make things. Gaga doesn’t present creativity as something that requires perfection. She treats it as an ongoing process, shifting between genres and roles without needing to define herself too narrowly. As someone who grew up interested in art, but not always sure what form that interest would take, it was reassuring to see an example of someone who explored several paths rather than choosing one and sticking to it forever.
One thing I’ve always respected is how she approaches advocacy alongside her work. Her mental health efforts, especially through the Born This Way Foundation, feel grounded and purposeful, putting real support systems in place.
Lady Gaga wasn’t an unreachable figure to me. She was the first person who made creative ambition feel accessible. She didn’t present it as something reserved for people who had everything figured out early. Instead, she showed it as something you could shape gradually, by staying curious and open to new experiences, and that perspective has stuck with me.
She might seem like an unusual choice for a girlhood heroine, but for me, she offered an example of someone creating her own path without hiding the work behind it. She made a strong impression during a time when I was forming my understanding of who I might become. Even now, she still represents the idea that you don’t have to shrink yourself or narrow your interests to fit neatly into one category. You can grow in several directions at once. That possibility mattered to me then and still does today.
-Sarah M