Dear lord, what was Nicki Minaj wearing on the red carpet at the Grammys in 2012? The otherwise lovely girl showed up for the event wearing a long blonde wig, pale make-up, and dressed in a giant hooded cape that was apparently made for her by the fashion design house Versace. She never smiled, and what’s worse was that she had a man who looked like a Pope from the Catholic Church escort her in to the awards. Making a fashion statement, she hid all her famous womanly curves under the garment that was so big she could have been smuggling monks under there. But while the hip hop princess was busy planning to hide her figure to make a public statement about iconic images, the queen of avant garde wardrobe choices Lady Gaga was talking with kids about her girlish figure and using her star power more wisely. Here’s the scoop about the 2012 Grammy Awards and the rivalry between these two otherwise beautiful ladies…
Nicki Minaj and Lady Gaga need to end this war for who can do the most obnoxious award show performance before neither one of the famous women have any fans left. Last year, Mother Monster arrived in an egg than hatched on stage. Before that, she wore a meat dress to another awards ceremony for VH1. This year, she sat quietly in the audience of the 2012 Grammys and watched while some say Nicki Minaj sent her career all to hell. The rival hip hop and pop music diva showed up for the award show wearing a giant hooded red cape. Looking like Little Red Riding Hood gone religious, she had a man dressed like the Pope from the Catholic Church escort her to the 2012 Grammy Awards show. Then, when it came time to do her number, she did a complete roast of the religion’s most iconic symbols. Even atheists winced watching her emulate corruption, vanity, and evil.
But it was not the hell-fire and demon vs. church theme of Nicki Minaj’s production that had people talking. Actually most people on the East Coast sent early Twitter warnings to viewers on the West Coast to avert their eyes when they heard Nicki start to sing. [Lest they be turned into a pillar of salt for watching or enjoying the heresy.] The real gossip about the Lady Gaga and Nicki Minaj rivalry was about why on earth Nicki, who is blessed with such a gorgeous figure, hid it all under that big red cape. What’s more, fashion critics could not figure out why she would want to put on a show that not only hid her… assets… but made she and all her back up dancers look so garish and ugly.
To that end, the performance piece Minaj did took some guts. Not only did she sacrifice her red carpet moment to win best dressed for a nearly unanimous worst, she tried to let her voice (rather than her figure) carry her through what should have been an opportunity to do a stunning [rather than horrifying] Grammy act. Going through with the publicity gag when the theme of the night was to pay tribute to dead celebrity Whitney Houston seemed a little bit obscene. Minaj really should pray on her decision about what to do for future performances, as her 2012 act’s theme seems more frightening and less about showcasing her own talent as a fashion visionary. So, while she might have been trying to look more confident that her rival (who was brazen enough to wear meat rather than hiding her shape entirely), either Nicki Minaj missed the point entirely or America did. Reading tweets and looking at the face of the journalists who had to discuss her outfit or act on TV made that pretty easy to see. But Minaj and the Grammys producers said that her act would be extreme, so we should all forgive them, right?
Hardly.
Mother Monster chose to use her star power more wisely this year. While people joked she looked like a dolphin caught in a tuna net while she sat with a black netting veil over her face while watching Minaj perform, she used the time leading up to the awards ceremony to talk about herself in a way that was interesting.
Born This Way star celeb and humanitarian Lady Gaga wasn’t always as confident as she appears on stage. In the week before the Grammys 2012, Lady Gaga admitted to students at the Brentwood School in Los Angeles that she suffered from bulimia as a kid reports the New York Post. The celebrity singer said she grew up wanting to be thin like most girls, but she’s pretty happy now with her “voluptuous” Italian figure (and who’s going to argue?), and she’s encouraging other girls to talk about it. Eating disorders can lead to health problems, social stigma, and bullying.
“I used to throw up all the time in high school. So I’m not that confident,” said Gaga. “I wanted to be a skinny little ballerina but I was a voluptuous little Italian girl whose dad had meatballs on the table every night. I used to come home and say, ‘Dad, why do you always give us this food? I need to be thin.’ And he’d say, ‘Eat your spaghetti.’ It’s really hard, but … you’ve got to talk to somebody about it.”
The green celebrity has spoken out before about bullying. She has started work on the Born This Way Foundation to be formally launched on February 29, 2012, according to MTV. And she earned first place in the teen-centered volunteer site DoSomething.Org for the Top 20 Celebs Gone Good. So if anyone can speak to kids suffering from body image issues, Lady Gaga is the one to be heard when she says it’s okay to be born this way.
When asked how she conquered her eating disorder, she said the bulimia affected her vocal chords (presumably she was binge eating and then purging by vomiting), so she had to quit, reported Fox News. She said bulimia was a no-no as a singer, which would have affected not only her career but her humanitarian and charity work. But she reminded the students that you don’t have to be a star celeb for the eating disorder to do so much damage that it affects the rest of one’s life.
“But for those of you who don’t sing, you maybe don’t have that excuse until it’s too late. It’s very dangerous.”
She also reassured students that not all female celebrities are as stick-thin as they appear in magazines.
Gaga said: “Every video I’m in, every magazine cover, they stretch you; they make you perfect. It’s not real life.”
And Lady Gaga isn’t the only star celeb who suffers from eating disorders. Recent Dancing with the Stars runner-up Kirstie Alley knows about weight loss issues. And Ashton Kutcher ex Demi Moore has recently admitted that her own body image is a source of constant stress for her.
If you have an eating disorder, you can contact The National Association for Anorexia Nervosa and Related Disorders. Of course, regular check-ups are advised for healthy living, and there are many other organizations, public and private, to help with bulimia and other eating disorders. Being too fat or too thin is dangerous for anybody.
Then again, you could go to the opposite extreme and just keep eating as much as you want. Make yourself as big as a house. We hear Nicki Minaj is selling the Versace tent-wear for those extreme binge eaters who forget to purge and are starving for attention. Not really, but seriously… the red cape and flaming the Catholic Church did noting to improve that young lady’s star status as a celebrity.
Which is too bad really — because otherwise we like Nicki and would rather have been talking about celebrity diets than how foolish she made herself look while trying to be extreme.