Lizzo Reflects on ‘Commercialized’ Body Positivity Movement: ‘Inclusivity Is What My Message Is’
Lizzo is opening up about the body positivity movement and how she tries to promote inclusivity within it.
For Vogue’s October cover story, the 32-year-old artist said body positivity has been appropriated and “commercialized.”
“Now, you look at the hashtag ‘body positive,’ and you see smaller-framed girls, curvier girls. Lotta white girls,” she told the outlet. “And I feel no ways about that, because inclusivity is what my message is always about. I’m glad that this conversation is being included in the mainstream narrative.”
She continued, “What I don’t like is how the people that this term was created for are not benefiting from it. Girls with back fat, girls with bellies that hang, girls with thighs that aren’t separated, that overlap. Girls with stretch marks. You know, girls who are in the 18-plus club. They need to be benefiting from ... the mainstream effect of body positivity now. But with everything that goes mainstream, it gets changed. It gets — you know, it gets made acceptable.”
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The "Truth Hurts" singer went on to say in the interview that she doesn’t fully claim the term “body positive,” preferring “body-normative” instead.
“I think it’s lazy for me to just say I’m body positive at this point,” Lizzo said. “It’s easy. I would like to be body-normative. I want to normalize my body. And not just be like, ‘Ooh, look at this cool movement. Being fat is body positive.’ No, being fat is normal. I think now, I owe it to the people who started this to not just stop here.”
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“We have to make people uncomfortable again, so that we can continue to change,” she added. “Change is always uncomfortable, right?”
In a previous interview with Rolling Stone in January, the singer said she hopes people recognize she is "so much more than" her body. She said, "Because I actually present that [and] I have a whole career; it’s not a trend."
In addition to opening up about how she feels about body positivity in the new Vogue cover story, Lizzo also encouraged her fans and followers to vote in the upcoming presidential election: “I just want to encourage people to register to vote. That is the most important thing to me. Because there’s a lot of upset people, and there’s a lot of people who have power.”
“There’s a lot of voter suppression in Black communities,” she said to Vogue. “But there’s a lot of angry white kids now. And I’m like, ‘Yo, register to vote. Go out. You won’t get suppressed if you try to go to your ballot box.’ You know? I think it’s important to remind people of what they can do. My job isn’t to tell you how to vote. But my job is hopefully to inspire you to vote … to activate you, so that you can take your protest to the ballot box.”
