We're talking naked bodies today. But before you start yawning with nakedness fatigue, let us clarify that it's not that porny, underboob-flashing, airbrushed nudity – the kind that Miley Cyrus has been bravely leading a PR campaign for in recent months. No, this week nudity has taken a new turn. Or at least judging by Katy Perry and Lady Gaga.

Perry, no stranger to the nudie pic, has made it known that she's trying something new for her latest album. 'I like clothes to stay on now,' she told Graham Norton during a recent interview.

A few days later she returned to the theme during an interview with US radio station NPR, remarking on how much nudity we're seeing among women in entertainment at the moment. 'I'm not talking about anyone in particular, I'm talking about all of them. I mean everybody's so naked ... I've taken it out here and there and I'm not necessarily judging, I'm just thinking sometimes it's nice to play that card, but sometimes it's nice to play other cards.'

The comment might seem a bit surprising coming from Perry – who launched her career with the lads'-mag-fantasy anthem I Kissed a Girl, and has never met a push-up bra she didn't like – but she's got a good point. Stripping off for shock value or to play up your sex appeal isn't bad in itself, but it is getting a bit one-note. There continues to be a woeful shortage of high-profile young women getting our attention in other ways.

But there's an interesting aside to this story of nudity-turned-cliché. Lady Gaga (pictured top) appeared onstage at G-A-Y last night and finished her performance by stripping naked as the day she was born. And funnily enough, her nakedness didn't feel hypersexualised at all. There were no latex short shorts, no nipple pasties, no platform heels. She was barefoot, long-haired (ok, long-wigged), sweaty and glorious. It was more like a celebratory dance round the campfire at a hippie commune than a pornified striptease. 

In the past, she's had moments of doing the 'hand bra' on a men's mag cover, dancing in her underwear and posing for what the tabloids might call 'risqué' photos for Terry Richardson. But in this instance, rather than making us think of Rihanna in her thong, Cyrus with her foam finger or Kim Kardashian in her white swimsuit, her unrobing was more reminiscent of real human bodies and the mundanity of being naked when no one's there to pay attention – unselfconscious, human, and not driven by artificial sexuality. It felt, dare we say it, a little bit subversive and punk.

So Gaga does it again. Even when she does the same as everyone else, she somehow manages to be completely different.