On Lady Gaga, Mad Money and Ridiculous Cars

One morning after breakfast I was browsing through YouTube and I watched Lady Gaga perform at the Brit Awards 2009. She was wearing one of those jackets on top of something that looks like a one-piece swimsuit or leotard. I then started browsing photos of her and I realized something.

The realization was that having too much money has enabled people to suddenly lose all sense of style and taste. Take a look at Lady Gaga before she became the Gaga of everyone worldwide (pic above). She wore normal looking clothes with less shoulder padding than people in the 1980s, unlike her style today, and she also wore pants or skirts and looked pretty much like a normal human being to me.

Then she wrote some songs, cut a video or two, flaunted the kinky look, and became famous. After which she started wearing  swimsuits everywhere. She wore a swimsuit at the Brit Awards 2009 and performed with the Pet Shop Boys. She also wore a swimsuit in Montreal recently and everywhere else. All you have to do is browse the web for Gaga photos and you will find her wearing one-piece swimsuits. They may not be 'swimsuits', but since they look like swimsuits I am calling them swimsuits. Anyway, would you wear a swimsuit to a gala event if you were poor ol' you today?

Swimsuits aside, when it comes to cars it’s the same thing. When we are starting off in life, a car is something like in the picture below.

Or worse.

When we get slightly richer this is what we may end up buying:

When we get even higher up the food chain, we end up with a Mercedes or an Audi or whatever is in our new price range.

Then when we get to the point where the next car is still a Mercedes or a BMW or an Audi we end up buying this.

Before making it into this....

Then comes the Rolls Royces, Bentleys and Bugattis when you become a Captain of the Industry. Or if you want to be invisible, a Volkswagen Phaeton.

Then comes the insane pimpage of your automobiles in absurd colours such as bespoke pink as you have nothing else to spend your money on as you don't want to be insivible when you're rich. You want to tell the whole world you have tons of money and can afford a pink Bug.

The tons of money also allows you to over-customize not only that Cadillac Escalade of yours but also to bastardize any car you feel like bastardizing. Take this Mansory Porsche Panamera.

My morning cup of coffee nearly exited the way it entered after viewing the photos of it. It is what I believe to be the ultimate in self expression…of the totally wrong kind. It shows loud louder than anything that ever existed before this. It lights you up like a lightbulb telling everyone that you have the money to create monstrosities, or too much money till it goes into something as garish as this.

Money makes people feel that they can buy everything, anything and also anyone in the world. It is also a ticket for some to be ostentatious, loud, debauched, and garish. I really don’t know whether this is a good thing or not. Cars like the ones pictured above may create a social backlash. Imagine if you were a zillionaire driving through some area where everyone wears hand me downs and eats only bread (not cake) everyday. It may start a social revolution and cause communism to take root again as some peasant decides that he cannot live just by driving a 1977 AMC Gremlin or an Austin Allegro. Everyone who is poorer than you will want equality again and then they'll force people to drive Trabants, Yugos and Zils again.  You wouldn’t want that would you?

But having someone crazy enough to turn these cars into monstrosities sure makes life fun doesn’t it? Contradictory, but this is the reality nonetheless. Now where are those Elton John white framed star-shaped sunglasses I just bought?

Lady Gaga pic - Glamourvanity.com