Pop icon Lady Gaga recently claimed she was sexually abused as a teenager by a record producer during an interview with Howard Stern.
During the interview, Gaga revealed that her song “Swine” from the 2013 self-produced album?Artpop is about a sexual assault she experienced as a teenager. After a controversial performance of the song in which she choreographed an artist vomiting paint on her, Lady Gaga told Stern that the song is about “demoralization.”?This explanation of the deep meaning behind the song prompted Stern to ask the star if she had ever been sexually abused.
The singer replied:
“I went through some horrific things that I’m able to laugh at now, because I’ve gone through a lot of mental and physical therapy and emotional therapy to heal over the years. My music has been wonderful for me.”
When asked why she did nothing to report it, she answered:
“I was a shell of my former self at one point. I was not myself. To be fair, I was about 19. I went to Catholic school and then all this crazy stuff happened, and I was going ‘Oh, is this just the way adults are?’ I was very naive.”
The most powerful answer, however, came when Lady Gaga was asked why she chose not to report the incident. She stated that, at first, it was because she had not yet come to terms with the abuse herself, only fully doing so four or five years later. As time went on, she determined that she would not be defined by the incident and told Stern:
“I’ll be damned if somebody is gonna say that every creatively intelligent thing I ever did is boiled down to one d***head that did that to me.”
That, to me, is a very inspiring answer. People are assaulted every single day. Sexually, non-sexually, men, women, etc. Yes, reporting assault is important and essential to achieving justice for the victim(s). However, what is even more important than reporting assault is the ability to move past it. Being able to come to terms with the assault and not allowing it to define you as a person is essential to individual healing.
Lady Gaga, alongside countless pop culture icons, is a role model. She now has the opportunity to turn something terrible that happened to her into something amazing to share with her fans. She can share strength. She can share the the fact that being a victim is not a life sentence. Most importantly, she can share the knowledge that it is okay to move on.
Check out the interview below!
