via usatoday.net
In advance of Wednesday’s launch of Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation, a couple publications have done interviews with Cynthia Germanotta, Lady Gaga’s mother and the head of BTW Foundation.
In those interviews, Germanotta talks about, among other things, how the issue of bullying affected her daughter when she was in school. The Daily Beast‘s story uncovers a specific moment which has turned out to be a definitive moment in her daughter’s life and likely a big reason why Gaga has decided to put her mother in charge of BTW Foundation.
Her daughter, whose given name is Stefani Germanotta, was “purposefully not invited” to a party one weekend by some of her classmates, her mother says. “On Monday, they asked her what she did over the weekend, knowing full well that she knew about the party. It comes down to meanness and cruelty,” she says. “Exclusion is a form of that.”
She adds, “We had a long conversation about it. We talked about how it affected her, about how important it is to be inclusive. She was always one to include people, sitting with new people in school at lunch.”
Germanotta is quick to note that the focus of her new foundation is on “kindness, not meanness,” saying that “bullying is almost overused in the media.” The group plans to partner with three other groups—Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, the MacArthur Foundation, and the California Endowment to Empower Youth—to help educate kids, Germanotta says, by connecting Gaga’s fan base with the programs the groups have started.
Click here for the full story.
Don’t you wish Mrs. Germanotta was your mom?
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