Page 58 - AVN October 2020

Lady Gaga
The fabulous Lady Gaga worked as a burlesque
dancer at 19 before she got famous—in NYC where
she grew up. She recently told Andy Cohen on Watch
What Happens Live that she did it “because I made more
money stripping than waitressing.” My parents were
European so for me it wasn’t that weird. I was more of
a burlesque dancer with a bikini, boobies, and pasties.
I didn’t do anything super seedy,” she says. “Although
my Dad didn’t think so.”
At the 2019 Met Gala, Miss Gaga showed up with a
billowing pink gown with a gigantic puffy train, and an
entourage of tuxedoed men. She stripped off the dress
in exotic burlesque style to reveal a glam black billowing
dress underneath, stripping that off to reveal a hot pink
dress under that, then stripping that off to reveal her bra,
panties, and what looked like 10-inch stiletto stripper
shoes. The paparazzi went insane.
Diablo Cody
Although she is not a household name, Diablo Cody is
famous in the screenwriting world, and won an Oscar for
Best Original Screenplay in 2014 for her movie Juno. The
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script also won the BAFTA, Independent Spirit Award for
Best First Screenplay, and The Writers Guild Of America
Award for Best Original Screenplay. Prior to that she
wrote a book in 2005 called Candy Girl: A Year In The
Life of an Unlikely Stripper.
The reason I include her in the list is because as a
screenwriter myself and a member of the Writer’s Guild,
I vividly remember going to the WGA West Christmas
party in Los Angeles after she won her Oscar, and a
group of Hollywood screenwriters I met, who were all
male, cruelly began slut-shaming her.
“It was a great script,” I said, “very clever,” and directed
by Jason Reitman, trying to defend her, adding that
she also sold a script to Steven Spielberg. “Yeah, but
she was a stripper,” huffed one of the screenwriters. A
second one said, ”How good could a script be from a
stripper?”—as they all concurred. They were so jealous
of a sexy, pretty female writer that they had to diminish
her, like Trump does when anyone seems more talented
or smarter than he is or when anyone gets more attention
than he does. The whiny Barton Fink nerds looked like
such big babies knocking her down to size, that they