Lady Gaga took home this year's award for best female performer — after putting on a raucous show dressed as a cigarette-smoking, beer-drinking man.
Her tweak on gender identity opened the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday with a monologue in character as her male alter ego, Jo Calderone, who declared nothing real, and everything theater. Then Calderone tore off a black blazer and danced with a crew of men in white T-shirts and black pants during a rendition of "Yoü and I."
On a night when Lady Gaga's album and anthem of the same name for gay rights, "Born This Way," brought in the awards, Lady Gaga spent the entire evening as a drag king. The song beat a number of this year's biggest musical statements for gay acceptance to win Best Video with a Message, a new category.
"I feel so blessed to be here," Gaga said while accepting best female performer. "It doesn't matter how you are — gay, straight, bi, lesbian, transgendered — you were born this way."
Before the night was over, Britney Spears accepted a kiss from Calderone, who enthusiastically introduced Spears as the winner of the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award.
Her tweak on gender identity opened the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday with a monologue in character as her male alter ego, Jo Calderone, who declared nothing real, and everything theater. Then Calderone tore off a black blazer and danced with a crew of men in white T-shirts and black pants during a rendition of "Yoü and I."
On a night when Lady Gaga's album and anthem of the same name for gay rights, "Born This Way," brought in the awards, Lady Gaga spent the entire evening as a drag king. The song beat a number of this year's biggest musical statements for gay acceptance to win Best Video with a Message, a new category.
"I feel so blessed to be here," Gaga said while accepting best female performer. "It doesn't matter how you are — gay, straight, bi, lesbian, transgendered — you were born this way."
Before the night was over, Britney Spears accepted a kiss from Calderone, who enthusiastically introduced Spears as the winner of the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award.
