Lady Gaga Shocks and Disgusts in Dress Made of Meat

This post is part of a series running throughout New York's Fashion Week (Sept. 9-16, 2010) to highlight the best and the worst of cruelty and compassion toward animals in the fashion industry.

During Fashion Week, celebrities should be on their most fashionable behavior. And with the exception of one unfortunate satin mini-dress, most celebrities have stepped up to this challenge.

That is, until Lady Gaga donned a dress made of meat at last night's MTV Video Music Awards. This comes quickly after her controversial meat bikini which she wore on the cover of Vogue Hommes Japan.

What's outrageous is that Lady Gaga believes she's making a positive statement with her meat outfits. She explained to vegan Ellen DeGeneres in an interview: "Well, it is certainly no disrespect to anyone that is vegan or vegetarian. As you know, I am the most judgment-free human being on the earth. However, it has many interpretations. But for me this evening, if we don't stand up for what we believe in and if we don't fight for our rights, pretty soon we're going to have as much rights as the meat on our own bones. And, I am not a piece of meat."

It's great to know that you aren't judging vegetarians and vegans, Lady Gaga, but you should know we are judging you.

Besides being a tuberculosis risk, wearing raw meat is in aggressively bad taste. A cow suffered and died for nothing but a desperate ploy for media attention.

Lady Gaga got by last time with only a slight slap on the wrist from PETA, and President Ingrid Newkirk responded to the second meat outfit this morning:

In her line of  business, Lady Gaga has a hard time being “over the top,” and wearing a dress made from cuts of dead cows is offensive enough to bring comment, but someone should whisper in her ear that there are more people upset by butchery than impressed by it — and that means a lot of young people will not be buying her records if she keeps it up. On the other hand, maybe it was fake ... Meat is the decomposing flesh of an abused animal who didn’t want to die, and after time spent under the TV lights, it would smell like the rotting flesh that it is and likely be crawling in maggots — not too attractive, really.

Lady Gaga wore several outfits last night, so she may not have been wearing the meat dress long enough for it to really reek. I'm assuming it was real cow flesh, until Gaga admits otherwise. Ellen DeGeneres gifted Lady Gaga with a vegetable bikini for the next time she wants to make a clothing statement (you can watch Ellen's interview with Gaga here.)

Lady Gaga has over 17.5 million fans on Facebook, but because of her tasteless meat dress, today she has at least one less.

Photo Credit: devennmedia