Lady Gaga: I Am a "Librarian" of "Glam Culture"

If there's one thing Lady Gaga knows a lot about, it's pop culture. In her first column for V Magazine, the 25-year-old New Yorker says she's been keeping tabs on the world around her since she was an aspiring singer in a roach-infested apartment.

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"Glam culture is ultimately rooted in obsession," she writes, "and those of us who are truly devoted and loyal to the lifestyle of glamour are masters of its history. Or, to put it more elegantly, we are librarians."

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"I myself can look at almost any hemline, silhouette, beadwork or heel architecture and tell you very precisely who designed it after them, and what cultural and musical movement parented the birth, death and resurrection of that particular trend," she boasts.

So how did the "Judas" singer (real name: Stefani Germanotta) become such an authority?

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"An expertise in the vocabulary of fashion, art and pop culture requires a tremendous amount of studying. My studio apartment on the LES, quite similar to many of my hotel suites now (knock on wood), was covered in inspiration," she explains. "Everything from vintage books and magazine I found at the Strand on 12th Street to my dad's old Bowie posters to metal record from my best friend Lady Starlight to Aunt Merle's hand-me-down emerald-green designer pumps were sprawled all over the floor about two feet from my bathroom and four inches from my George Foreman Grill."

"I've done my homework. Have you?" she asks readers. "Where are your library cards?"