Math Lady / Confused Lady

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Part of a series on Reaction Images. [View Related Entries]

About

Math Lady / Confused Lady refers to pictures or gifs of Brazilian actress Renata Sorrah^[1] playing Nazaré Tedesco in a scene from the telenovela, Senhora do Destino. The pictures are often used as reaction images to express confusion.

Origin

Tedesco is a very popular character from the telenovela Senhora do Destino in Brazil. A clip of her intensely thinking about a situation inspired the meme (shown below, left).

Because of her comical personality, images of her have been photoshopped into reaction images and image macros. On Facebook, there is a fan page devoted to posting such pictures of her.^[2] The earliest known example of the original gif being used as a reaction image is from October 31st, 2013, when UKMix forum poster CrazyCrazy posted the gif with the caption "I'm sure there is better music to hear while you wait for Beywance…" (shown below, right).^[3]

Spread

The gif saw light use as a reaction image over the next two and a half years. It began growing in popularity around the summer of 2016. Buzzfeed Portugal^[4] included it as a reaction image in a "top post" on July 29th. A popular post on 9Gag ^[5] featured four screenshots from the gif of Sorrah with math equations over her face, captioned "when she tells you she's 29 weeks pregnant." The post has over 33,000 points as of October 11th, 2016.

After the math symbols were added, the image and gif surged in popularity, particularly on Brazilian parts of social media, before it grew popular worldwide. On October 2nd, a thread appeared on the subreddit /r/OutOfTheLoop^[6] asking about its origins.

Renata Sorrah Came Out As Bisexual

On May 10th, 2023, the actress Renata Sorrah came out as bisexual^[7]. The news became a trending topic on social media, with users resurfacing the "confused lady" meme and giving it a new meaning. For example, Twitter^[8] user @OneTopicAtATime posted on May 22nd, 2023, a screenshot of a Tumblr post with the caption "incredible bisexual breaking news." The post (seen below) garnered 127,000 likes and 20,500 retweets in a day.

Brazilians also brought back a scene in which the villain portrayed by the actress spots two lesbians and says "Dykes…I can smell their lesbian scent from here." Twitter^[9] user @DigaBittencourt posted the scene on May 10th, imagining how the character would've reacted to the news. The post (seen below) received 11 likes and 3 retweets in two weeks.