On Sunday Lady Gaga jumped into the 33-degree Fahrenheit waters of Lake Michigan—and it wasn’t for a music video. The “Poker Face” singer and fiancé Taylor Kinney went swimming in the freezing lake for the Chicago Polar Plunge, an event that raises money for the local chapter of the Special Olympics.
Vince Vaughn and several of Kinney’s Chicago Fire castmates also took the icy challenge.It was a very different scene for the usually glamorous Gaga—who made headlines last week for her amazing tribute to Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music at the Academy Awards—though she did manage to keep her bright red lipstick intact the whole time. But braving those excruciatingly cold waters was worth it as Gaga, Vaughn, and the more than 4,500 other participants raised $1.1 million for Special Olympics—the most in the event’s history. And Gaga seemed to be soaking it all in. “It was awesome,” she told The Chicago Tribune.
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“She’s pure heart. She came out for the cause—low-key, no press. It doesn’t get any better than that,” Casey Hogan, president of Special Olympics Chicago and its fundraising arm Special Children’s Charities,” told The Tribune.
Gaga explained on Instagram that it “feels so good to do things for a good cause like the Special Olympics. It’s great [to] donate money, but also great to donate a gesture of love for those who deserve to be showered with it.”
However, she run did run into some unexpected problems.
“My weave froze!! Taylor gave me his hat I thought my wig was gonna freeze into and become one with the lake,” she said. Luckily, with the help of Kinney—who carried his fiancée on his back for most of the plunge and back to the shore—the singer and her wig both came out of the water.Gaga and Kinney became engaged on Valentine’s Day. We have a feeling if they can handle the Polar Plunge, marriage should be a breeze!
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