- Lady Gaga has addressed the reason she never shut down rumors that she is actually a man, which circulated early in her career
- Thanks to a doctored image, the singer was plagued with questions from interviewers about her biological body
- Gaga says she kept quiet out of solidarity with trans fans
She’s one of the biggest stars on the planet, selling an estimated 170 million records worldwide.
But at the start of her career, Lady Gaga was battling the most bizarre rumor.
The singer, 38, shot to fame back in 2008 with her debut album, The Fame, which produced number-one hit singles Just Dance and Poker Face.
And while many wanted to celebrate her success, Gaga was also plagued with questions about her personal life – including whether or not she was biologically a woman.
Beginning after her 2009 Glastonbury performance, when a photo appearing to show a bulge in her underwear – which Gaga says was doctored – went viral, the singer had to deal with whispers and much more direct questions about her anatomy.
In one example, during an interview with Anderson Cooper in 2011, the star – who is set to hit the big-screen in Joker: Folie à Deux next month – was asked, “There was a rumor that you had a male appendage, that you were a hermaphrodite … A lot of artists would have put out some sort of statement saying, ‘This is absolutely not true’, but you have fun with it.”
The pop icon famously shut down the question, and said, “Why the hell am I going to waste my time and give a press release about whether or not I have a penis? My fans don’t care and neither do I.”
‘Fixing the rumor was not in the best interest of other people’
Now, Gaga has spoken out about her feelings at the time.
Appearing in the second episode of What’s Next? The Future With Bill Gates, she explained her decision not to speak out against the rumors.
“When I was in my early 20s there was a rumor that I was a man,” Gaga told Gates. “I went all over the world. I traveled for tours and for promoting my records and almost every interview I sat in they said – there was this imagery on the internet that had been doctored – they’d say, ‘There’s rumors that you’re a man. What do you have to say about that?’
“The reason why I didn’t answer the question is because I didn’t feel like a victim with that lie and I thought, ‘What about a kid who is being accused of that who would think that a public figure like me would feel shame?’”
Gaga continued, “I’ve been in situations where fixing a rumor was not in the best interest of the well being of other people. In that case, I tried to be thought provoking and disruptive in another way. I tried to use the misinformation to create another disruptive point.
“I’ve been used to lies being printed about me since I was 20 years old. I’m a performer. I think it’s kind of funny.”
‘You can’t give up when people put you down’
Gaga has had quite the month of shutting down the haters.
Last week, the Shallows singer – who is the proud recipient of 13 Grammy Awards, 18 MTV Video Music Awards, two Golden Globes, an Oscar, and an accolade from the Songwriters Hall of Fame, to name a few – addressed a now-infamous Facebook group which was set up to try and dissuade her from her dreams.
Addressing Gaga by her real name, the social media page was cruelly titled ‘Stefani Germanotta, you will never be famous’. While it only had 12 members, it has since been deleted.
While the page has been public knowledge for a long time, Gaga herself has never spoken about it – until now.
Commenting on a TikTok video about the group – which put a screenshot of it side-by-side with a list of Gaga’s many accolades – she wrote, “Some people I went to college [with] made this way back when. This is why you can’t give up when people doubt you or put you down — gotta keep going.”
