Lady Gaga is known worldwide for being a powerful, eccentric force for awareness and progress.
Also the meat dress.
But mostly that first thing.
While we all stan the queen in 2020, 2011 was a whole other ballgame.
A resurfaced interview is proving just how much people questioned Lady Gaga in 2011—to an absolutely inappropriate level. It also gives us a master class in bada$ery as Gaga's answer is perfection.
Gaga burst onto the scene with her Fame/Fame Monster albums. Her over the top looks and personality started countless rumors about who she is as a person.
A few years later she released the Born This Way album, and plenty of people mistook that album as a sort of confession. Specifically, a confession that she was trans or a drag queen.
The rumor that Gaga was "really a man" became such a pervasive thing that she addressed it at the beginning of her video for her 2010 hit "Telephone." But the cheeky response wasn't enough to put the rumors to rest.
Which is how, in 2011, we ended up with Anderson Cooper straight up asking Lady Gaga about her genitals in an interview. Awkward, uncomfortable, inappropriate... it was a lot of question to ask and would likely get a lesser-known reporter fired.
It also would likely have shaken another interviewee to the point of losing their composure.
For sure you're getting at least this face.
If You Say So Reaction GIF by IdentityGiphy
But Lady Gaga didn't even flinch.
She hit Anderson with a response that people are still applauding almost a decade later.
Not only did she refuse to answer the question, she pointed out that it absolutely doesn't matter what her genitals are like—not to her or her fans or anyone who matters, anyway.
Gaga straight up asked Anderson "would it be so bad?" if she had a penis, flipping the uncomfortable question right back onto him. She then drove her point home even further by asking him why anyone really thought she would "waste time" making a press release on whether or not she had a penis.
Direct and invasive questions about genitalia are incredibly inappropriate, but trans people get them constantly. To many of her fans, Gaga's choice to not deny having a penis and instead point out that the question was ridiculous and the answer doesn't matter was a way of aligning herself with them.
She kept her cool, flipped it back, and stood fearlessly with her fans in the way that she answered the question. Oh, and she did it while casually sucking on a diamond like it was a piece of candy... because Gaga.
The internet LIVES for this moment every time it comes up.
Gaga was a real one from the beginning, and we love that about her. Like we said, we stan a queen.
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