Lady Gaga covers the December issue of Glamour mag (the Woman of the Year issue). The photoshoot is… meh. Not hideous but not really glamorous either. And I still can’t believe crimping is coming back into style. That needed to die in the 1980s, and I was sure that it had died back then. For the honor (of being “Woman of the Year”), Gaga got to sit down with Andy Cohen for the interview – you can read the full piece here. Some highlights:

On confidence: “It depends on what it is we’re talking about. I’m really confident about my music because I love it… I’m confident in who I am. I’ve come to a place in my life where I’ve accepted things that are me, as opposed to feeling pressure to explain myself to people around me. That’s just the way I’ve always tried to be. It didn’t change when I became a star.

Whether she considers herself beautiful: “Not conventionally beautiful. If there was some sort of mathematical equation for beauty, I don’t know if I would be the algorithm. I’ve always been OK with that. I’m not a supermodel. That’s not what I do. What I do is music. I want my fans to feel the way I do, to know what they have to offer is just as important, more important, than what’s happening on the outside.”

But she’s insecure: “I would say that I am. Maybe it’s from the things I experienced in my past, you know? Being beautiful is not so fun when you’re in a business with all men. Because it can actually get in the way. So in some ways, the outfits—these creations are because I don’t want to face the reality of what people want from a female pop star. Everybody always laughs because I feel so much more comfortable with, like, a giant paper bag on my whole body and paint on my face. Sometimes I try really hard to take it all off. But inevitably what’s underneath is still not a straight edge. And I don’t think it ever will be.”

Stefani versus Gaga: “I’m both all the time. Gaga and Stefani are my nicknames. I guess when people meet me for the first time and call me Stefani, it bothers me. Because it’s something that’s reserved for only the people who are closest to me. It’s not because I don’t like my given name; it’s that I became somebody else. I became somebody else for a reason, you know. This is part of what my message is—you can become whoever you want to be, to escape your past.”

The Born This Way Foundation: “The foundation is everything that I’ve ever believed in. My ambition was never to rule the world. It was always to change the world. And once I started to become more and more successful, this voice in the back of my mind was telling me to make sure that I staked my claim as a person. The Born This Way Foundation isn’t about money at all. It’s about communities, people coming together. It’s about kids telling their stories to one another, and finding a sense of home by breeding compassion, making it cool to be that kind of person. I truly believe that people can find a happier way, if they are aware of the stories of people around them—people who share similar challenges and similar fears.”

On the similarities between “Born This Way” and “Express Yourself”: “Truthfully, all of that stuff is nonsense. It did upset me when I saw a lot of young people fighting on the Internet [about it]. My desire is always to bring people together. I never care personally what people say about me. But is it inspiring a community to split down the center and go to war over who is the queen? The music, and the message—this will always be more important to me than people thinking I’m the best. And any sort of bantering about “am I going to have a career like hers”—who’s to say I’m anything like her at all? Who’s to say that my ambitions are even the same as hers? Who’s to say I’m not an entirely different person? Because I am. You have to understand, I was a waitress five years ago.”

On Pres. Obama calling her “intimidating”: “Oh, I think he was just being funny. He’s actually really funny. It means a lot to me that the President’s able to see through everything, straight to the center of who I am.”

[From Glamour]

I guess I don’t understand this argument: “Being beautiful is not so fun when you’re in a business with all men. Because it can actually get in the way. So in some ways, the outfits—these creations are because I don’t want to face the reality of what people want from a female pop star.” The way I read this is that “being beautiful” would have gotten her a lot of attention, which she claims would have been unwanted attention, attention that would have taken away from her music and her message. And so because she’s not beautiful, she has to dress up in bizarre costumes (not to mention taking off those costumes) to get attention and to get the men to pay attention to her and her music. Everything is about LOOK AT ME, and beauty isn’t really any part of it. Beautiful or not beautiful, it’s still LOOK AT ME.

Here are some new pics of Gaga over the past 24 hours:

Photos courtesy of Glamour.