Lady Gaga has urged women to stop worrying about their weight because people who achieve great things do not have to look like "supermodels."

The 27-year-old pop superstar has suffered with fluctuating weight throughout her career and has been criticized for being both too thin and overweight. But Gaga has dismissed society's obsession with women's figures and insists it's time people concentrated on what they're going to do with their lives rather than what they look like.

"I want to remind everyone that people who win Nobel Peace Prizes and cure diseases are not supermodels. Your legacy does not need to be a perception of beauty that's not realistic," she said in February's Fashion Magazine.

Although Gaga is now one of the world's biggest singers she insists she would still be wearing eccentric outfits and pushing the boundaries of pop if she was an unsigned artist playing in bars and small venues in her native New York City because music is her life. "There's this implication that if I wasn't so successful I would have to stop. But I never would have stopped. I would be in some bar; being Lady Gaga," she explained.