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Lady Gaga is the body-positive super hero we all need right now
Lady Gaga performed at the Super Bowl on Sunday night. Maybe you heard?
Immediately following her (chill-inducing, heart-filling and jaw-dropping) performance, the court of public opinion weighed in. A lot of the commentary was positive—even many of the critics who were worried she would get "too political" (there was a petition to stop her from performing) expressed relief that she seemed to stick to the music and "steered clear of politics."
Sidenote: Gaga made a very loud and very clear statement—but that’s the thing about writing albums full of songs centered on equality, love, self-acceptance and empowerment. Your lyrics speak for themselves. (Also, as the Washington Post points out, consider the origin of "This Land is Your Land.")
Anyway. Three days post performance, my mom asked me a question that made me sick.
“Did you see where all these people are fat-shaming Lady Gaga for her ‘belly’ at the Super Bowl?”
Why yes, Mom. I did see it. (You can scroll through some of that garbage elsewhere—I’m certainly not going to normalize it by printing it.) But I had hoped that somehow, by some miracle, maybe LG would miss all of it. Maybe she was on the other side of the world somewhere completely off-grid, and by the time she returned to the land of WiFi, the internet trolls would be on to the next thing.
Maybe she’d never know that after one of the most awesome and athletic performances in Super Bowl history (my opinion but also public opinion), a bunch of people decided it was OK to sit behind their keyboards and criticize every inch of her beautiful body.
But then I scanned through my Instagram feed and saw her most recent post: a response to the national discussion that she somehow found herself at the center of. “I heard my body is a topic of conversation so I wanted to say,” she wrote, “I’m proud of my body and you should be proud of yours too. No matter who you are or what you do.”
Um, yeah, Gaga—I'm proud of your body, too! You look healthy and happy and strong, which is something that I also happen to be loving about my body lately. I’m not the smallest I’ve ever been—and my stomach is not the flattest it's ever been—but I’m certainly the fittest, and I wouldn’t change that for anything.
She continued. “I could give you a million reasons why you don’t need to cater to anyone or anything to succeed. Be you, and be relentlessly you. That’s the stuff of champions. Thank you so much everyone for supporting me.”
Let’s ignore the fact that Lady Gaga’s body is considered pretty incredible by most standards—we’re not here to talk about her body or all the problems with body "standards" in the first place. (Although Gaga, if you’re reading this, your spectacular thighs in those sparkly booty shorts gave me LIFE. So much life!)
Let’s ignore the endless things that are wrong with this entire body-shaming scenario. (OK, here's just one: Please show me a Super Bowl performance…or any performance…or anything, really…where a man did aerial stunts and then Twitter was like, “OMG, did you see his rolls?” Please.)
And let’s ignore all the headlines that claimed Gaga “clapped back” or “fired back” at her haters. She didn’t. These are terms used to spark drama and there was none of that. She didn’t even *address* her critics—she addressed us. That Instagram post was written for me and for you and for everyone out there who saw all this hate and felt hurt by it.
But here's what we're not going to ignore: that she brushed it all off like a boss and reminded us how insane it is that we even have to have this conversation. (Pretty insane.) And how insane it would be to be *anything* but proud of our bodies, ever.
And I'm officially done giving trolls way more attention than they deserved (none). Let's talk about something more important...
Like that bodysuit collection by Atelier Versace. Slay.
Immediately following her (chill-inducing, heart-filling and jaw-dropping) performance, the court of public opinion weighed in. A lot of the commentary was positive—even many of the critics who were worried she would get "too political" (there was a petition to stop her from performing) expressed relief that she seemed to stick to the music and "steered clear of politics."
Sidenote: Gaga made a very loud and very clear statement—but that’s the thing about writing albums full of songs centered on equality, love, self-acceptance and empowerment. Your lyrics speak for themselves. (Also, as the Washington Post points out, consider the origin of "This Land is Your Land.")
Anyway. Three days post performance, my mom asked me a question that made me sick.
“Did you see where all these people are fat-shaming Lady Gaga for her ‘belly’ at the Super Bowl?”
Why yes, Mom. I did see it. (You can scroll through some of that garbage elsewhere—I’m certainly not going to normalize it by printing it.) But I had hoped that somehow, by some miracle, maybe LG would miss all of it. Maybe she was on the other side of the world somewhere completely off-grid, and by the time she returned to the land of WiFi, the internet trolls would be on to the next thing.
Maybe she’d never know that after one of the most awesome and athletic performances in Super Bowl history (my opinion but also public opinion), a bunch of people decided it was OK to sit behind their keyboards and criticize every inch of her beautiful body.
But then I scanned through my Instagram feed and saw her most recent post: a response to the national discussion that she somehow found herself at the center of. “I heard my body is a topic of conversation so I wanted to say,” she wrote, “I’m proud of my body and you should be proud of yours too. No matter who you are or what you do.”
Um, yeah, Gaga—I'm proud of your body, too! You look healthy and happy and strong, which is something that I also happen to be loving about my body lately. I’m not the smallest I’ve ever been—and my stomach is not the flattest it's ever been—but I’m certainly the fittest, and I wouldn’t change that for anything.
She continued. “I could give you a million reasons why you don’t need to cater to anyone or anything to succeed. Be you, and be relentlessly you. That’s the stuff of champions. Thank you so much everyone for supporting me.”
Let’s ignore the fact that Lady Gaga’s body is considered pretty incredible by most standards—we’re not here to talk about her body or all the problems with body "standards" in the first place. (Although Gaga, if you’re reading this, your spectacular thighs in those sparkly booty shorts gave me LIFE. So much life!)
Let’s ignore the endless things that are wrong with this entire body-shaming scenario. (OK, here's just one: Please show me a Super Bowl performance…or any performance…or anything, really…where a man did aerial stunts and then Twitter was like, “OMG, did you see his rolls?” Please.)
And let’s ignore all the headlines that claimed Gaga “clapped back” or “fired back” at her haters. She didn’t. These are terms used to spark drama and there was none of that. She didn’t even *address* her critics—she addressed us. That Instagram post was written for me and for you and for everyone out there who saw all this hate and felt hurt by it.
But here's what we're not going to ignore: that she brushed it all off like a boss and reminded us how insane it is that we even have to have this conversation. (Pretty insane.) And how insane it would be to be *anything* but proud of our bodies, ever.
And I'm officially done giving trolls way more attention than they deserved (none). Let's talk about something more important...
Like that bodysuit collection by Atelier Versace. Slay.
What are your thoughts on all this? Sound off in the comments below.
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