Freaks fascinate me.

Chalk it up to my own genetic mediocrity and incapacity to demonstrate anything more interesting than making my tongue into a three-leaf clover — an accomplishment I basked in for days — or emitting throaty sounds similar to that creepy girl’s death rattle from ‘The Grudge’ (that one’s not usually a crowd-pleaser).

Luckily, there seems to be no shortage of freaks in the public eye these days. Take newly appointed hip-hop princess, Nicki Minaj, for example. Her debut album, ‘Pink Friday,’ was certified platinum earlier this month after its November release, a feat not accomplished by a female rapper since Lil’ Kim eight years ago. That means more than 1 million people have deemed Minaj’s perpetual voice changes, sporadic growls and hot-pink mane compelling enough to purchase the record, despite free availability via calculated Google searches. 

Let Minaj herself explain her identity, as she charmingly raps in Kanye West’s ‘Monster’ track: ‘First things first, I’ll eat your brains, then Imma start rockin’ gold teeth and fangs … (insert blood-curdling scream) I’m a mothaf***in’ monster!’ Apparently, freakiness sells, and it sells big.

‘Anybody that knows me knows I have a very, very bipolar personality, so one minute I’m excited, and the next minute I’m crying, and the next minute I’m cussing and yelling, and the next minute I’m singing Enya,’ said Minaj to FADER magazine last year about her erratic behavior. ‘I’m not kidding. And the point is, my rap style now reflects my true personality because I am so weird.’

Gone are the days when the masses embraced any vanilla star that the entertainment industry churned out. Normalcy is now regarded as a label to be actively skirted — being normal equates to being boring, and being boring is the highest offense one can receive. In today’s era of distraction-prone, stimulation-craving consumers, the freakiest reign in terms of capturing attention and ensuring others anticipate their every move and questionable wardrobe change. 

Comparable to Minaj’s legion of fans known as ‘Barbies,’ a term created to salute the outrageous style of their freak-in-chief, fellow performer Lady Gaga’s devoted followers have been affectionately described as ‘Little Monsters,’ celebrating the no-apologies strangeness of Gaga herself. 

Both women have built careers on being anything but normal and created entire personas through their music, which is sometimes polarizing but nevertheless iconic due to their eccentric personalities, outlandish clothing and unpredictable nature in and out of the studio. They took the world by storm precisely because they were like nothing we had ever seen. 

What makes for a good freak, though? How exactly do they come about? Take any of the most-discussed figures in entertainment, and you can see that they were building their lasting impressions way before stardom. Reveling in your differences is usually discouraged in adolescence, but it’s those who manage to fight past the taunting while refusing to relinquish what makes them so peculiar who ultimately captivate us. 

‘I used to get made fun of for being either too provocative or too eccentric, so I started to tone it down,’ said Gaga in an interview, describing her high school days. ‘I didn’t fit in, and I felt like a freak.’ Good thing she continued on her quest to weirdness, though, dropping one hit single after another and making it socially acceptable to cry, ‘Rah, rah, ah, ah, ah’ while fiercely clawing at the air. 

Like Minaj without her wigs, Gaga without her meat dress, West without his tweets, Snooki without her pickles, and Perez Hilton without excessive punctuation, celebrities would lose what makes them utterly bizarre and therefore wildly successful if they weren’t freaks. Whether you abhor or adore them, their popularity remains undeniable, and all have firmly cemented their places in pop culture history. So if it’s attention you seek, don’t hesitate to let your freak flag fly. I, for one, have perfected the leaves on my clover tongue and expect overnight fame to come shortly.  

Sarah Lee is a senior magazine journalism major. Her columns appear every Monday, and she can be reached at shlee01@syr.edu.