Lizzo has always been candid about her struggles with body image and — just as she’s taken on body-shamers in the past — she’s calling out how the body positive movement has left behind the very people that began it all.
On Thursday, Lizzo responded to a TikTok video in which user @sheismarissamatthews addressed a comment that “everyone has time to lose weight.” @sheismarissamatthews replied, saying, “I really don’t understand why I can’t just exist in my body. Just let me f**king exist in my body!”
In her answering video, the “Juice” singer noted that the problem stems from the body positive movement being “co-opted” to represent all bodies rather than the marginalized people who began it. As media has begun celebrating all sizes, including “medium and small girls and people who occasionally get rolls,” Lizzo pointed out that the influx of attention has meant that “fat people are still getting the short end of this movement.”
“We’re still getting sh*t on — we’re still getting talked about, memed, shamed — and no one cares anymore because it’s like, ‘Body positivity is for everybody,'” she said. “The people who created this movement — big women, big Brown and Black women, queer women — are not benefiting from the mainstream success of it.”
The body positive movement began as a means for fat women, particularly Black women and other women of color, to support self-love and acceptance within those with marginalized bodies — a concept usually reserved for those with bodies uplifted within society’s ideal of beauty. But as the popularity of body positivity grows, the original idea gets overshadowed as fat women continually face the brunt of the backlash of health “concerns” and a societal problem with fatness.
In a video posted on Sunday, Lizzo followed up her previous statements with another stitch video featuring TikTok user @cocainecuban. In the original video, @cocainecuban noted that after seeing videos with skinny women telling stories of being shamed for being small, she was curious if they would trade bodies with fat women. “And I don’t mean BBW, I don’t mean thick bodies — I mean the heavy body that is not aesthetically pleasing to society,” she clarified. Admitting that she wouldn’t do so, even with all the bullying she endured for being skinny, @cocainecuban explained that she couldn’t handle “the hate” that fat women face.
Responding to the video, Lizzo noted how the question reminded her of Jane Elliott’s “Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes” anti-racism exercise to make white people understand discrimination and realize they wouldn’t trade places with Black people. Acknowledging that society “sucks” for all bodies because people have to “go through so much to love ourselves,” Lizzo asserted that most people wouldn’t trade places with fat people.
“You know there’s a whole system that oppresses fat people that you do not experience and that you will never experience,” she said. “Yes, we want to end harassment and shame but we also want to dismantle a system that oppresses fat people.”
But, to be clear, Lizzo isn’t asking for people to stay spreading acceptance for all bodies; she’s reminding everyone who started the movement and why. As she wrote in the caption for the original video, “Please use the body positive movement to empower yourself. But we need to protect and uplift the bodies it was created for and by.” And as she added at the end of that video: “Our bodies are none of your fking business or health is none of your fking business. All we ask is that you keep that same energy with these medium girls that you praise, keep the same f**king energy.”
