Lady Gaga’s Super Bowl performance has been fodder for water cooler conversations since last Sunday, when she jumped off the stadium’s roof, performed her LGBT-positive hit “Born This Way” and offered a bold message of unity.
But, pyrotechnics and spectacle aside, some spectators chose to focus their attention on the pop superstar’s stomach during the performance and accused her of having a tummy.
After a few days of nasty tweets and online scorn, Lady Gaga responded to the criticism with kindness.
“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,” Lady Gaga wrote in an Instagram post on Wednesday.
“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.”
The Sunday performance drew fresh attention to the “Bad Romance” singer, who released her last studio album, “Joanne,” in Oct. 2016. In the hours after the Super Bowl, Lady Gaga saw a 1,000 per cent spike in digital albums and song sales in the U.S. over the previous day.
Gaga’s halftime show drew an audience of 117.5 million, according to the Nielson company. That’s more than the entire viewership of last year’s game between Denver and Carolina, at 111.9 million viewers.
