About

Math Lady / Confused Lady refers to pictures or gifs of Brazilian actress Renata Sorrah 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. 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).





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 included it as a reaction image in a "top post" on July 29th. A popular post on 9Gag 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 asking about its origins.

Various Examples





Search Interest

Know Your Meme Store





External References