You might not love her music, or her antics, or her performance art, or her self-aggrandizing soundbytes, or even her manipulation of the spotlight. You might have no patience for the Britney-Warhol-glam-rock shenanigans or the Kabuki sendups or the blood or the accent. You can argue, as many have, that she's not doing anything others haven't done before her. You might just not give a damn about the latest pop-culture phenomenon. Well and good. But never let it be said that those who embrace Lady Gaga have no good cause. Even leaving aside the acoustic performances that sunk a thousand skeptics or the sunglass-free interview that won over Lindsay, take a few quotes from this L.A. Times profile:

"I'm getting the sense that you're a little bit of a feminist, like I am, which is good," she said. "I find that men get away with saying a lot in this business, and that women get away with saying very little . . . In my opinion, women need and want someone to look up to that they feel have the full sense of who they are, and says, 'I'm great.' " Gaga's casual use of the term "feminist" was interesting; like many female pop stars, she's rejected the term in the past. But she's evolving. She is growing "more compassionate," she says, and focusing more on ideas of community, especially the one formed by her core fan base, a mix of gay men, bohemian kids and young women attracted by Gaga's style and her singable melodies.

Or this:

Her new songs address serious themes like women's shame about their bodies and the need for open communication in relationships; her often physically distorting costumes show that the pursuit of the feminine ideal is far from natural. Her commitment to confront the changing notion of what's "natural" puts Gaga on the same road traveled by artists she admires, such as the photographer Cindy Sherman. Her frank talk about how female artists aren't expected to write their own songs or about how young women are afraid to ask for what they need from their sexual partners inches her toward a new articulation of feminism.

Or this:

"Celebrity life and media culture are probably the most overbearing pop-cultural conditions that we as young people have to deal with, because it forces us to judge ourselves...I guess what I am trying to do is take the monster and turn the monster into a fairy tale."

It's a mistake, and silly, to ascribe to a 23-year-old pop singer with a two-year-old career the qualities of visionary or icon, or even give her shtick too much analysis. She's going to do - and probably say - many ridiculous things before she's through. But taken as a celebrity with a lot of influence, she's already using it for a lot more good - and speaking more plainly - than many stars twice her age. She's embraced the f-word, only a few months after rejecting it, and that's a powerful statement in itself. There are far worse people we could love, is all I'm saying, and no one should need to justify that anymore.

Frank Talk With Lady Gaga [LA Times]
Lady GaGa - Poker Face (Acoustic Live @ AOL Sessions)[YouTube]

Earlier: Most Fascinating People: Lady GaGa "Devoted To Art", Michelle Obama Watches Mindless TV

Slate's Amanda Schaffer investigates the medical benefits of the placenta when she visits Tenteki 10, a trendy IV drip spa in Tokyo that sells 10-minute drips of amino acids, biotin and placenta extract to health-conscious customers. (The placentas are contributed by local hospitals, but no information is given as to whether monies are exchanged, or whether the women from whence the organs came gave an actual go-ahead. Clients at the clinic Schaffer visits include two Japanese businessmen.)

Sure, the idea of buying IV drips at a spa may give you the willies (especially since they are injecting these "treatments" into healthy adults) and the idea of getting placenta injected directly into your veins sounds a little odd, but does it work? Schaffer says that in peer-reviewed medical journals, there is little evidence that the placenta holds significant medical benefits for adults. While the doctors at Tenteki 10 say the placenta is safe and "better than aspirin," placentas can offer some risks to healthy adults and Japanese people who are "treated" with placenta drips are no longer allowed to donate blood in Japan :

It's hard to know what exactly is present and what the accumulated effects will be. For instance, some cytokines found in the placenta act to increase inflammation while others act to decrease it; some, like interleukin 6, can do either, depending on what other molecules are present, according to Ted Golos, an expert on placenta at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Rigorous clinical trials, using standardized extracts, would be crucial for sorting out what the actual effects might or might not be. And since extracts are made from human tissue, they could contain bacteria or viruses, some of which may not be tested for. As the staff at Tenteki 10 casually informs clients, those who receive placental infusions are no longer allowed to donate blood in Japan.

These dangers might seem important to wrestle with if placenta were shown to have genuine healing powers. But with little proven benefit, it seems questionable to turn to the extract, especially for conditions that have other available treatment options. For severe menopausal symptoms, for instance, it's hard to know whether placenta would prove better (or worse) than hormone therapy, unless more research, including head-to-head comparisons, were conducted. Meanwhile, claims that the extract aids both insomnia and fatigue are cause for some head-scratching.

Is Human Placenta A Wonder Drug, Or Is It Just Another Japanese Health Fad [Slate]

Earlier: Save Some Womb For Dessert
Conan The Barbarian

[Image via Tenteki 10]

I have nothing against New Year's Resolutions. I make some every year, and then break them. Last year, I made a resolution to break my resolutions before Valentine's Day. I started biting my nails on January 2 at 9:15 AM, after sleeping in and neglecting to get that "early morning run" in. Mission accomplished!

Anyway, it makes sense to me that people use the New Year as a means to motivate themselves to change their habits, patterns, and focus on their health, and that's a good thing, really, but the constant barrage of diet ads and diet articles that spring up around this time of year (and around mid-March, when "bathing suit season is just around the corner!") are a reminder of how messed up our society's views on weight and healthy habits are. January is a time for changes; February is a time for saying "fuck it" and eating half a box of Valentine's Day candy before you even leave the Rite-Aid, thanks to a month long "diet" of rice cakes and grilled chicken breasts. We are a nation of spurts; we all get psyched up as the year changes, discouraged as it moves along, psyched up again once it gets hot enough for us to realize that we can't cover ourselves with 8 layers, and discouraged again once we peel off the layers to see what we've been hiding all winter.

It's a tough situation for those of us who have struggled with eating disorders; the rest of the world is suddenly focused on weight to an even greater degree than usual at this time of year, and at times it feels like the rest of the world has temporarily picked up our illness, or at least certain quirks of it, under the guise of "healthy changes." It is incredibly strange to watch and often difficult; I imagine it's a bit like being a recovering alcoholic who watches her friends get trashed at a party; those friends can get drunk, but stop drinking and eventually come back to normal. For ED patients, "just dropping 10 holiday pounds" often spirals into trouble, if not a full-out relapse.

I realize that weight is a touchy subject for mostly everyone, and I don't begrudge anyone their rights to get healthy and feel better about themselves. I just wish that the weight loss push that happened at this point every year would focus more on overall health than on dress sizes or fitting into a stupid bikini or impressing your husband/boyfriend/girlfriend/random person you went to high school with. Perhaps the best resolution any of us can make is just to be kind to ourselves, to treat our bodies not as numbers on a scale or sizes on a rack, but, as Fiona says, "extraordinary machines" that require a little love, patience, and a decent mix of spinach and Snickers bars.