Lady Gaga Tells Harper’s Bazaar: ‘I Have Free Will to Choose the Way the World Will Envision Me’

Lady Gaga is vocal about the fact that she went to Catholic school for 13 years, and her parochial school upbringing is evident thanks to something she says in her cover story for the May issue of Harper's Bazaar: "I am an artist and I have the ability and the free will to choose the way the world will envision me."

God gave Gaga free will and she is choosing wisely!

The high fashion mag recruited Terry Richardson to shoot Gaga, who is sporting a wavy pink mane and her (new) signature prosthetic cheekbones on the cover. Gaga morphs her face with prostheses, as she does not believe in plastic surgery and what it does for one's body image. Clearly, Gaga is not body dysmorphic in her thinking. "I have never had plastic surgery, and there are many pop singers who have," she says in the piece. "I think that promoting insecurity in the form of plastic surgery is infinitely more harmful than an artistic expression related to body modification."

Gaga also compares her emotions towards Hollywood and its plastic culture to doing Kegel's exercises, which many women do after giving birth to strengthen their vaginal muscles. Only Gaga could craft such a comparison and have it make sense, saying, "I had all these No. 1 records, and I had sold all these albums, and it was sort of this turning point: Am I going to try and embrace Hollywood and assimilate to that culture? I put my toe in that water, and it was a Kegel-exercise vaginal reaction where I clenched and had to retract immediately ... I ran furiously back to New York, to my old apartment, and I hung out with my friends, and I went to the same bars."

While Gaga is grounded in reality when it comes to body consciousness and the playgrounds of Los Angeles, the singer does have a fantastical way of viewing her relationship with the late, great fashion designer Alexander McQueen, whose sky high heels she wore in the 'Bad Romance' video. "I think he planned the whole thing: Right after he died, I wrote 'Born This Way,'" Gaga said. She mused further, saying, "I think he's up in heaven with fashion strings in his hands, marionetting away, planning this whole thing."

In a total act of coincidence, Gaga released 'Born This Way' on the one-year anniversary of McQueen's death, so maybe there is some credence to Gaga's theory about McQueen being the architect of her current single. "When I heard that, I knew he planned the whole damn thing. I didn't even write the f---ing song. He did!"

The Gaga issue of Harper's Bazaar lands on stands on April 26. 'Born This Way' is out May 23.