IT sounds like the plot of a Hollywood rom com, where the main character wakes up to find her ex-boyfriend is dating a superstar.
But that is exactly what happened to New York Times journalist Lindsay Crouse when she discovered her ex, Michael Polansky, who runs a charitable foundation, was dating Lady Gaga. Her article on the surreal situation has been shared around the globe. Here is what she wrote . . .
HOW do you compare yourself with one of the most famous women in the world?
I was eating grapes at my desk on a recent Monday morning, gearing up to wrangle my inbox, when my phone started buzzing:
“Check Facebook.”
“Check Twitter.”
“Are you OK?”
It was an emergency: My ex-boyfriend, I learned, had a new girlfriend. Lady Gaga.
“Lolol” if you want. (Everyone I know did).
But it was true. While I’d been watching the Super Bowl on television in New York, they were snuggling in her private box at the Hard Rock Stadium at Miami Gardens.
There were the paparazzi as he escorted her away, her pink hair flowing and sequins pasted around her eyes. New York Post gossip column Page Six produced a deep dive into Lady Gaga’s new “mystery man”.
Website Refinery29 announced Gaga was: “Wearing 2020’s hottest new accessory: A normal boyfriend.”
The story appeared in the Business Insider and People magazine, where my mother read about the couple after checking the magazine out from our local library.
I dated this normal mystery man for seven years. Our relationship lasted all of college and then a few years more. (A popular song from back then described being “caught in a bad romance”).
As you can guess from the fact that you’ve probably never heard of me, I’m not famous. So suddenly it’s like I’m star-gawking by proxy (yes I know there’s another word for that). But there’s almost no way to avoid it.
Social media in 2020 is so ingrained that it’s no longer a supplement or even an addiction. It’s just an accelerated extension of the way humans have always behaved.
We live in a culture of constant updates. You want to unsubscribe? Well, you can’t.
I don’t follow my ex on social media. We were “friends” on Facebook. Then we were “in a relationship” on Facebook. After we broke up I noticed I was “blocked” on Facebook.
And then we moved on. I hadn’t Googled him in for ever (I promise). But this month I knew everything about his new relationship status, within hours of when it was disclosed.
Lady Gaga is amazing. Comparing yourself with her is incredibly motivational, and I recommend you try it, regardless of how you relate to who’s dating her.
In some ways this is the natural, if absurd, arc of my generation’s entire adult life. In a vertical cascade of photos, I watch my friends’ ex-boyfriends nurturing the pregnancies of the nice-looking women they married instead.
Sometimes I know the names of the resulting children, kids I will almost certainly never meet — but I will know whether they were princesses or pirates for Halloween anyway.
I’ve seen their Christmas trees and sand castles and their tablescapes on special occasions. Sometimes they go dark for a period, the dinner parties disappear and they’re single again. I keep following, a passive but not unwilling audience.
We used to obsess about celebrities and then started obsessing about one another. Maybe a decade ago I would have subscribed to US Weekly. Today there’s no need: I have the parade of people in my phone.
I mix “real” celebrities with people I know and I can curate it all however I want. Then I scrolled through Instagram and saw a post from Lady Gaga: She was sitting in her new boyfriend’s lap.
Friends from college liked it — along with nearly three million others. If you’ve ever Googled an ex’s new partner (be honest) you’ve probably played a certain game with yourself. You’re either just curious — which is healthy of you — or you want to know how you compare.
Ideally the ex’s life didn’t improve too much without you. In this case, though, that’s all upended. How do you compare yourself with Lady Gaga? Instead of thinking: “Why not me?” when I see them together, I think: “That was me”. It pulls the illusion of celebrity down.
At first that was confounding. When one friend called me at my desk that morning to discuss, my voice actually shook. (Who wants to rehash an old relationship at work the day after the Super Bowl?) So I gave myself till noon. And then I thought again.
Lady Gaga is amazing. Comparing yourself with her is incredibly motivational, and I recommend you try it, regardless of how you relate to who’s dating her.
At least, that’s what I did. For example: I was going to wear a black dress I’d gotten on sale years ago to an event that weekend, for probably the 27th time. But Lady Gaga would never do something like that.
I’ve never owned anything that costs more than a week’s worth of groceries — whereas she is a woman who wears pieces of raw meat on the red carpet.
I went to a nice store I’d never been inside before and I tried something on. The clerk asked me what the occasion was. “I found out from Facebook that my ex-boyfriend was dating Lady Gaga,” I told her, and she looked me up and down. “Huh,” she said. “Really?” “Yes.”
The dress was too expensive, but I bought it anyway. Why should I accept less than Lady Gaga? I went to a coffee shop. Did I want a large? “Yes.” For the event: Did I want my make-up done? I never had, but yes. And yes, I’ll get the lashes too.
When I was emailed praise, did I forward it to my boss? Yes. Did I agree to do the work presentation I was anxious about? Yes. Yes, yes, yes. (I haven’t figured out how to start a multi-million-dollar entertainment empire yet, or a major advocacy campaign, but yes to that, too.)
The point is, Lady Gaga is living the ambitious life that we keep saying women should embrace. A quote I remember reading from her, probably on Instagram, says: “Don’t you ever let a soul in the world tell you that you can’t be exactly who you are.”
It’s so easy as you get older to find the best in who you’ve become, to make the most of it — and maybe even to get a little complacent about it.
But if Lady Gaga can do what she wants, and even expand on what she wants, why not me, too? Why not let being “exactly who I am” mean trying to be the best I could be?
Lady Gaga continues to challenge herself, to try new things, to thrive. At least that’s what I gather from my phone, the place where we all converge.
Recently someone sent me a photo of my fiancé and me dancing at a wedding, and I posted it on Instagram. I saw Lady Gaga’s boyfriend in the views, and I realised we’re actually all the same: Strangers, smiling on a screen.
- ©2020 The New York Times Company.
Lady Gaga’s romances
2005 – 2011: Bar owner and nightclub promoter, Lüc Carl: Gaga dated Carl on and off for six years as her career took off. He reportedly wasn’t a fan of losing his name and being known as “Lady Gaga’s boyfriend”.
2006-2007: Record producer, Robert Fusari: He discovered Lady Gaga when she was still called Stefani Germanotta and claimed to have bagged her a record deal at 23. It was reported they were romantically involved while Rob was living with his fiancée. The relationship went sour when Rob tried to sue the pop star in 2010 for “$30 million, claiming he co-wrote some of her most popular hits and even chose her stage name”. He said she promised him a 20 per cent cut and didn’t deliver but dropped the lawsuit later that year.
2008: Designer, Matthew “Dada” Williams: She briefly dated the LA designer before deciding they’d be better as business buddies. He became creative director of Haus of Gaga, and fashioned the LED-illuminated disco stick she first showed off in New York in 2008.
2009: Model and dancer, Speedy: The star dated Speedy, who was in her “LoveGame” video. They split in July 2009 after he reportedly saw a photo of her kissing another bloke.
2011-2016: Actor, Taylor Kinney: The pair met at a video shoot. They steadily grew serious and in 2014 she spoke about him being “The One”. They got engaged in February 2015 but in July 2016 they broke up.
2017-2019: Talent agent, Christian Carino: She was spotted smooching with her agent before her Super Bowl performance in 2017. They reportedly got engaged but split following her 2019 awards season, which included her Golden Globe, Grammy and Oscar wins. Rumours of a romance with Bradley Cooper didn’t help.
2019: Audio engineer, Dan Horton: Gaga seemed to be having fun with her audio engineer fella at a gig in August. But she later referred to herself as a “single lady”.
2020: Entrepreneur, Michael Polansky . . .
Lady Gaga releases her new single, Stupid Love, with a music video, that was entirely shot on an iPhone
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2005 – 2011: Bar owner and nightclub promoter, Lüc Carl: Gaga dated Carl on and off for six years as her career took off. He reportedly wasn’t a fan of losing his name and being known as “Lady Gaga’s boyfriend”.
2006-2007: Record producer, Robert Fusari: He discovered Lady Gaga when she was still called Stefani Germanotta and claimed to have bagged her a record deal at 23. It was reported they were romantically involved while Rob was living with his fiancée. The relationship went sour when Rob tried to sue the pop star in 2010 for “$30 million, claiming he co-wrote some of her most popular hits and even chose her stage name”. He said she promised him a 20 per cent cut and didn’t deliver but dropped the lawsuit later that year.
2008: Designer, Matthew “Dada” Williams: She briefly dated the LA designer before deciding they’d be better as business buddies. He became creative director of Haus of Gaga, and fashioned the LED-illuminated disco stick she first showed off in New York in 2008.
2009: Model and dancer, Speedy: The star dated Speedy, who was in her “LoveGame” video. They split in July 2009 after he reportedly saw a photo of her kissing another bloke.
2011-2016: Actor, Taylor Kinney: The pair met at a video shoot. They steadily grew serious and in 2014 she spoke about him being “The One”. They got engaged in February 2015 but in July 2016 they broke up.
2017-2019: Talent agent, Christian Carino: She was spotted smooching with her agent before her Super Bowl performance in 2017. They reportedly got engaged but split following her 2019 awards season, which included her Golden Globe, Grammy and Oscar wins. Rumours of a romance with Bradley Cooper didn’t help.
2019: Audio engineer, Dan Horton: Gaga seemed to be having fun with her audio engineer fella at a gig in August. But she later referred to herself as a “single lady”.
2020: Entrepreneur, Michael Polansky . . .
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