At this year’s 25th Women in Hollywood event, Lady Gaga reminded us all what having BDE really means.

After being honoured at the celebration earlier this week, the pop icon – who has recently conquered cinema screens in Bradley Cooper’s directorial debut A Star is Born – delivered a brave and moving speech on her personal experiences of mental health and sexual assault.

Reflecting on what it means to be a woman in Hollywood today, the pop star explained how the current standards of red carpet dressing informed her outfit choice – a statement-making, oversized Marc Jacobs suit from the designer’s SS19 collection. “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.”

“‘But the Rodarte was so beautiful!’ one person said. ‘But the Raf Simons for Calvin Klein was so stunning on you!’ said another. ‘But what about the Brandon Maxwell?’ ‘What about the Dior?’ Lots of questions. They were all dresses. This was an oversized men’s suit made for a woman. Not a gown,” she continued. “And then I began to cry. In this suit, I felt like me today. In this suit, I felt the truth of who I am well up in my gut. And then wondering what I wanted to say tonight become very clear to me.”

As part of her twenty-minute long speech, she also discussed her ongoing fight against PTSD, Fibromyalgia, and mental health issues, as well as the sexual assault she was subjected to when she was 19. “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 said. “Today I wear the pants.”

Watch the full speech here.