News

Someone Said Lady Liberty Might Be A Man And Twitter Went Wild

by Talia Koren
Sam BurtonE

We know the Statue of Liberty, which has been standing in the New York harbor since 1886, to be a woman. Or at least that's what we were all taught.

Apparently, after expert Elizabeth Mitchell, author of "Liberty's Torch: The Great Adventure To Build the Statue of Liberty," looked closer, she saw that it's possible Lady Liberty was modeled after a guy. That guy being Jean-Charles Bartholdi, the brother of Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, the sculptor.

Until recently, it was believed that the sculptor probably modeled the statue after his mother. But experts have also speculated that the statue was modeled after classical Greek and Roman sculpture and not any person in particular.

I guess we'll never really know for sure. Either way, people's reactions on Twitter make ridiculous news like this totally worth it.

But hey, let's not forget that it's a statue. It doesn't need to have a gender. It symbolizes freedom. OK, so we call it Lady Liberty but who cares if it was modeled after a guy, a girl, animal or maybe just imagined by the sculptor -- it's still an iconic statue.

Even though all this research is for a show on the Discovery Channel called "Secrets Of America's Favorite Places," I'm pretty sure no one actually cared whether or not the Statue of Liberty is based on a man or woman. Until now, that is.

This is what happened when Twitter heard this news.

This guy was a little too into it.

People thought about how this means the Statue of Liberty could be transgender. Because, of course.

These guys were not having it.

This guy considered the serious matters at hand.

My personal favorite.

People are ridiculous. I can't wait for people to speculate that maybe Mount Rushmore was actually created by a bunch of punks who wanted to take graffiti to the next level. Or maybe we'll find out that Alcatraz was actually an amusement park and not a prison back in the day.

Citations: Is The Statue Of Liberty A Man? (Huffington Post)