In a recent interview with New York Magazine, pop star Lady Gaga was quoted as saying, apparently without any irony, “Pop stars shouldn’t eat”.

Anyone who has been following Gaga’s career can understand how disappointed I am by this. Most musicians tend to argue that it perfectly okay for them to say offensive things because they don’t view themselves all role models; this is how mainstream rappers get away with advocating drug abuse and misogyny. (Whether or not they actually are role models is another matter.) Gaga, however, is a different story entirely. She has framed herself as a role model since the beginning of her career. Repeatedly, she has told the press that one of the main goals of her music is to carve out some kind of space where “freaks and weirdoes” like her can be themselves. And her songs and videos always have done that; there is an element of pure artistic expression to Lady Gaga, with her bizarre fashion choices and concept videos, so unlike the standardized drivel produced many female artists. “I want your ugly, I want your disease,” sings Gaga on her hit track “Bad Romance,” and you get the sense that she really does--that even if no one else understands you, she might. Nothing, after all, is too weird for Lady Gaga.

Except, apparently, eating food. Her quote to NY Mag shines a light on what we should have known all along: artistic expression is okay, girls, as long as you’re attractive enough to pull it off. Fat girls--hell, girls that weigh any more than Gaga’s petite one hundred pounds--are, apparently, considered too freaky and weird even for the champion of freaks and weirdoes. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Gaga’s not just telling girls who don’t match her standard of beauty that they aren’t good enough to be singers. She's advocating an eating disorder. “Pop stars shouldn’t eat,” she says, as in, ever. It’s a sentiment that would be more at home coming from an insecure teen on a pro-anorexia message board than a rare entertainer whom feminists have come to think of as “one of us”. (After all, this is the same woman who, in an interview with Cosmo, violated the magazine’s Golden Rule by stating that having a career is more important than snaring a man.)

It’s not as though we should really be surprised. After all, this is the prevalent attitude in Hollywood, where reporters do indeed act as if it is more unusual to see a female celebrity gaining weight during a pregnancy or daring to eat a hamburger than it is for Lady Gaga to attend an awards show in a dress made of tinfoil and Christmas lights. It was more of a scandal when Jessica Simpson gained a small amount of weight than when R&B singer Rihanna was beaten by her boyfriend--because the priority of the tabloids are incredibly skewed, and frankly, very anti-woman.

The mainstream media has done a very good job of selling eating disorders to women, and even to men--check out the critical commentary that shows up every time an older male celebrity goes shirtless, or watch any appearance of Ryan Seacrest on a talk show (I know, shocking choice of example from me). Inevitably, pictures will be shown of the chubby preteen Ryan, to which the host will react with obvious shock. “You were overweight, and now you’re so successful!” they will say, because to them, the two things are opposites. We know that people with any physical defect have a lower chance of being successful, because Hollywood told us so. And what that results in is a wave of plastic surgeries and an increasing number of young people sticking their fingers done their throats in bathroom stalls, frantically trying to erase any perceived defect.

So no, no, it shouldn’t be shocking to see Lady Gaga telling us that pop stars shouldn’t eat. At least she’s being honest about what everyone else is thinking. (“Pop stars shouldn’t eat, but they should tell the press they do.”) Gaga alone isn’t the problem here, although the fact that someone we thought was outside the system has apparently bought so thoroughly into it just shows us how pervasive this system is. And it tells us that we need to overturn it.

In the meantime, though, I’m kind of worried about Lady Gaga. Instead of picketing her concerts or trying to work up some moral outrage about her videos, someone should make sure she eats a sandwich.