Lady Gaga Reveals How Makeup Changed Her Life

Lady Gaga is on the cover of Allure‘s October 2019 “Best of Beauty” issue, on newsstands September 24.

Here’s what the 33-year-old entertainer had to share with the mag…

On how makeup changed her life: “I never felt beautiful, and I still have days that I don’t feel beautiful. All of the insecurities that I’ve dealt with my whole life from being bullied when I was younger, they come right back up to bite me. Then I put makeup on, and before I know it I feel this superhero within. It gives me those wings to fly.”

On how her makeup and her glam team help her to walk on stage as Lady Gaga: “Sarah [Tanno, Lady Gaga’s makeup artist] would pick me up off the floor, sit me in a chair, dry my tears, and say, ‘I’m going to put on your face now.’ If I cried while she was putting on my makeup, I would apologize, and she would say, ‘It’s okay. I’ve got you.’ Sarah would do my makeup, Freddie [Aspiras] would do my hair, and they would hold me and say, ‘Look at yourself. There’s Lady Gaga. You can do this. Now go do it.’ And I would go out there, and the second that spotlight hits me, bam, I’m in the zone. But I can’t do that without them. That is the power of glam for me. Not everybody has a Sarah, but I’m very lucky that I do. And I want this line to be for the person at home who needs that pick-me-up. If they use it, or don’t use it, they can at least look at it and go, ‘That’s what helps Lady Gaga shine on her bad days. And I want to shine today.’”

On wanting Haus Laboratories to be a continuation of her championing of the LGBTQ+ community, especially youth: “I would like all gender identities to know very clearly that they are included, and never exploited, ever. I want that little boy at home that might like to be called a girl to say, ‘Mommy, I want to wear Dynasty. It’s a Glam Attack.’ And then Mommy goes, ‘Oh, my son wants to be called a girl, and he wants the Glam Attack.’ And then she goes and she gets it for him. And he uses it. And then there’s a bond. It’s kind of like when kids used to come to my shows with their parents, and they’d lean over and they’d say, ‘Mommy and Daddy, I’m gay.’ Or ‘I’m not a boy; I’m a girl’. Or ‘I’m not a girl; I’m a boy.’ I have heard those stories so many times, over and over, for all of the years that I have been in this business. And I want the same thing that I’ve had in my concerts to happen with this company. If I’m not changing people’s lives, what are we doing here?”

For more from Lady Gaga, visit Allure.com.

FYI: Gaga is wearing her own Haus Laboratories makeup line for the shoot.