Recreating Lady Gaga

I love to create. I didn’t always realize that until just recently. But as I continue to create and look back at all of my creations past, I realize that I do love to create. And that I’m an artist. I would never have called myself that before. My sister and brother paint spectacular paintings from scratch. They are artists. My father can do the most amazing detailed drawings. He is an artist. But I don’t paint. And I’m not great at drawing. I don’t knit. I don’t crochet. I don’t sew. Most of these things I just never learned how to do so I never realized if I had the potential to do them.

No, my creations have come along the way slowly and unbeknownst to me. I write books and poems. I have for a long time. And yes, I realize that is art. However, I would still never consider myself an artist because of it. I used to take these creative pictures of my dogs and my children. I would dress them up in these fun outfits and edit the pictures and then post them on Facebook. But, again, not an artist. I also for a moment would do chalk drawings and chalk photography with my daughter. They were just Disney characters and the photography photos were some that I stole off of Pinterest. But it was fun and a great way to bond with my daughter. But no artist.

So I recently started doing something completely different. Instead of taking pictures of my dogs or children, I decided to turn the camera on myself. My life is insanely busy. I am a 39-year-old mother of two daughters, one two and one six. I currently work full time from home and take care of both children at the same time. I am also attending online college full time. I write and try to create in-between all of these things but life gets hectic and at the end of the night I feel tired and stressed out. I kept lying in bed at 8:00 and not doing anything but hating that I was already in bed at 8:00. So one day while scrolling through Instagram I came across this picture of Lady Gaga. She was lying in the grass and the picture was perfectly angled to show off some of her toned body but not too much. It was a beautiful, sexy photo and I began to wonder if I could produce something so beautiful or if it would just turn out hideous. So instead of lying in bed, I jumped up and began to recreate this picture of the lovely Lady Gaga. To my surprise, it turned out not to be so bad. I hovered over the post button on Instagram for at least thirty minutes not sure if I had the guts. But then I said, why not? If Lady Gaga can do it, then why can’t I?

After the initial posting and shock that I would be so bold as to put myself out there like that, I craved more. So I began my journey into recreating Lady Gaga. Every night I would piece together these wonderful outfit creations trying to get as close to the likeness of her photos as possible. I posted one after the other. At first it was just fun and creative, but after moving from Instagram to TikTok and starting to gain some likes and follows, I realized that I was not only creating these photos for myself but for body positivity. Because even though I knew I would never look like Lady Gaga, sometimes not even close in the photos, I was happy with how I looked as a mother of two and someone who was about to hit an age milestone. So I continue my journey of recreating Lady Gaga almost every night. It churns my artistic side. It makes me feel happy about my body and myself. It de-stresses my life. I hope it inspires other mothers out there like me who are sometimes too tired to even move at the end of the night. I hope it inspires those that might not appreciate their bodies to realize that everyone can be their own version of Lady Gaga. And after posting these photos and seeing my own creations, I finally can comfortably call myself an artist.