Lately, the world has been revolving non-stop around Lady Gaga after all the massive success surrounding A Star Is Born. Earlier this week, all eyes were on the global icon while she attended Elle magazine's 25th annual Women in Hollywood celebration. For the event, she wore an oversized suit fresh out of the Marc Jacobs Spring/Summer 2019 collection. It wasn't until she took to the stage to deliver a powerful speech that the audience found out that this look had a deeper meaning behind it. In typical Gaga fashion, she used her 25 minutes as a window to make an important statement about sexual assault and mental illness.
"I tried on dress after dress today getting ready for this event, one tight corset after another, one heel after another, a diamond, a feather, thousands of beaded fabrics and the most beautiful silks in the world," she said. "To be honest, I felt sick to my stomach. And I asked myself, 'What does it really mean to be a woman in Hollywood?' We are not just objects to entertain the world. We are not simply images to bring smiles or grimaces to people’s faces. We are not members of a giant beauty pageant meant to be pit against one another for the pleasure of the public. We women in Hollywood, we are voices. We have deep thoughts and ideas and beliefs and values about the world, and we have the power to speak and be heard and fight back when we are silenced."
From there, Gaga got extremely vulnerable as she touched on her traumatic experience as a survivor of sexual assault. She concluded by urging everyone to continue to "fight for justice" and "be a force for change" within the industry by using their platforms to help others.
"As a sexual assault survivor by someone in the entertainment industry, as a woman who is still not brave enough to say his name, as a woman who lives with chronic pain, as a woman who was conditioned at a very young age to listen to what men told me to do, I decided today I wanted to take the power back," she added. "Today I wear the pants."
Watch a clip from the speech in the post below.
In other news, Kadhja Bonet premiered her new B-Side “The Watch” right here.
