Lady Gaga avoids sex to save her creative energy

American singer Lady Gaga has shrugged off her famously wacky outfits to pose nude for Vanity Fair, marking an interview in which she explains why she likes to avoid sex. It helps her maintain her creative energy. "I have this weird thing," she says, "that if I sleep with someone, they're going to take my creativity from me through my vagina."

Naked except for a long, grey-blond wig, the 24-year-old singer is the cover star of the magazine’s September issue, which hits the news-stands this week.

Gaga, real name Stefani Germanotta, reveals that the demons she struggled with at the beginning of her pop career - bulimia and drug abuse - sent her "completely mental".

She tells of an incident early in her career when she was eating fried chicken in bed and got a phone call summoning her to a meeting with a record company executive. "I said, 'I'll be right there'. I got up, went to the bathroom, threw up, did a line of coke, went to the meeting."
 
Gaga admits she still uses illegal drugs – only "a couple of times a year" -  but makes it clear she is not condoning their use. "I do not want my fans to ever emulate that or be that way," she says. "I don't want my fans to think they have to be that way to be great. It's in the past. It was a low point, and it led to disaster."

Talking of more recent low points, she confirms that, yes, she was drunk when she invaded comedian Jerry Seinfeld’s private box at the New York Mets stadium, giving the finger to photographers and showing her bra.

"Of course I got drunk at Yankee Stadium," she says. But she is not worried about her image: "My real fans know who I truly am, and they know what I represent and what I mean, and my music and my performance is what really speaks." ·