Lizzo has always been a trailblazer. She gained mainstream success at the age of 31 – an age many pop stars are considering retiring – she’s a plus-sized woman in an industry where there’s much pressure to be impossibly thin, and she’s not afraid to speak out. But with her success comes the unfortunate consequence of attracting criticism. Something which , causing the singer to call out the comments.
“It's fatphobic, it's racist and it's hurtful," on an online livestream on her Instagram. "What I won't accept is y'all doing this to Black women over and over and over again, especially us big Black girls. When we don't fit into the box that you want to put us in, you just unleash hatred onto us. It's not cool.”
The comments came after Lizzo and Cardi-B collaborated on her latest single ‘Rumors’ which came out on Friday last week.
Seeing Lizzo in tears on her Instagram made Cardi-B come to her defence, : “Body shaming and callin her mammy is mean & racist”
She also tweeted: “Whether you skinny, big, plastic, they going to always try to put their insecurities on you.”
Lizzo is always going to stand out for being different but this is the reason we all love her.
Rolling Stone magazine “a new kind of superstar: a plus-size black singer and rapper dominating the largely white and skinny pop space, all while being relentlessly uplifting and openly sexual on her own terms.”
Despite mainstream success coming recently, Lizzo has had a career spanning over a decade. It was the song ‘Truth Hurts’ that she released in 2017 to limited success that ultimately became her chart-topping hit in 2019. Lizzo told Rolling Stone: "When we were making it we knew it was ahead of its time. Now we have the proof that these songs are timeless. They will connect when they need to connect."
Catchy songs aside, it’s Lizzo’s uplifting personality that’s really helped her connect with audiences. Her message on body positivity has resonated with many of her fans, though the singer recently said that the body positivity movement wasn’t helping everyone.
“Now the body positivity has been co-opted by all bodies, and people are finally celebrating medium and small girls and people who occasionally get rolls; fat people are still getting the short end of this movement,” , before going on to say. “But the people who created this movement: Big women, big Brown and Black women, queer women are not benefiting from the mainstream success of it.”
Lizzo how she had to own her insecurities under the glare of celebrity success.. “I feel like fat is the worst thing people can say about me at this point. This is the biggest insecurity. It’s like, ‘How dare a pop star be fat?’…I had to own that.”
In an op-ed for NBC News the singer wrote about self-care, saying: “I don't think that loving yourself is a choice. I think that it's a decision that has to be made for survival; it was in my case.” She went on to write: “That's the first step: Acceptance. And acceptance is hard. I'm still accepting myself every day; I'm still working on it.”
Online criticism is nothing new for the star. She’s before. But even a powerhouse like Lizzo has her limits and it seems they were breached when the online comments about her latest video ‘Rumors’ got too much.
Since breaking down in tears on her Instagram Live, Lizzo went on to address what made her upset. “People are like, don't let them see you with your head down," she said. "My head is always up, even when I'm upset, and even when I'm crying, my head is up. But I know it's my job as an artist to reflect the times, and this s—t should not fly. This shouldn't be okay.”
The singer has received lots of love from her fans as well as celebrities such as Missy Elliot and . Despite the haters, a singer like Lizzo is not going to be brought down. She seems back to her usual positive self, judging by her latest social media posts.
And as Lizzo herself said on Good Morning America, self-love is a journey. “There are gonna be beautiful days where you're lookin' in the mirror like, 'ooh', and then there's days where you're like, 'uh-uh,' but all of those days is an opportunity to love yourself.”
Saman Shad is a freelance writer.
