Raise your hand if you’re a Pats fan. Yeah, me too. Raise your hand if you think it’s acceptable to criticize Lady Gaga’s body during her Super Bowl halftime performance. *cricket, cricket* Not so eager to own up to that one, huh?
During Gaga’s stunning performance, she had multiple wardrobe changes and one of the outfits revealed her midriff. No big deal, right? Wrong.
Twitter trolls ripped Gaga apart for showing her “flabby” stomach on national television. Three offensive tweets were shown on CNN’s website on Feb. 8.
“Lady Gaga needs to do some crunches if she wants to show her flabby belly,” one read. Another one stated, “Tried to enjoy [Lady Gaga’s] performance but was distracted by the flab on her stomach swinging around.” And finally, “Was waiting for a surprise guest, but just got Lady Gaga’s gut.”
Of course, this is not the first time a celebrity has been ridiculed for having some fat on their body, and it is not just females that are mocked. Males often get body shamed for lack of muscles and abs.
Most recently, Rob Kardashian, Jonah Hill, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jay Cutler, quarterback for the Chicago Bears, were body-shamed online.
DiCaprio was vacationing in Bora Bora and was called “bloated,” according to Men’s Health magazine. He was also called “The Great Fatsby.”
One tweeter called Jonah Hill the “whale of wall street,” according to Men’s Health magazine.
Although the criticism that Gaga and many of these other celebrities received was hurtful, Gaga’s response to the negative comments was inspiring. She proved once again to be an example for young people on how to handle themselves in similar situations.
“I heard my body is a topic of conversation so I wanted to say, I’m proud of my body and you should be proud of yours too,” Gaga responded on Instagram. “No matter who you are or what you do. 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. I love you guys,” according to nme.com.
Gaga shows girls and boys all over the world that the only thing that matters is how you see your body and your success. If that is a positive image for you, no one else’s opinion should have an impact, according to Gaga.
How your body looks doesn’t matter. Raw talent, hard work and dedication are much more important, because these things result in better payoffs.
Just two days after her performance, Gaga’s music sales increased by 2,000 percent, according to USA Today. She sold 125,000 song downloads and 23,000 albums on Sunday. Her newest song, “A Millions Reasons,” had its best sales week ever.
Over the past years, there has been monumental push for improvement in women’s confidence across the country, thanks to leaders like Michelle Obama and her Let Girls Learn initiative, which teaches young women the importance of their education and their brains. Now, in this hectic time of confusion and doubt for our country, girls and boys need to know how smart, beautiful and important they are.
America should be teaching young girls and boys how to be confident and sassy in their own skins, the importance of building one another up and how to focus on the things that truly matter, like selling over 23,000 song albums in one day after a kickass performance on national television.
There needs to be a change. There needs to be one person with a voice and an idea. I’m volunteering to be that person, and here is my idea.
Instead of turning to social media to insult someone who doesn’t care about your opinion, work on taking that anger (wherever it stems from) and make positive changes in your own life and in the lives of people surrounding you.
That will probably make you feel a hell of a lot better about yourself than insulting a mega popstar who doesn’t know you exist, just saying.
