What Does Lizzo Owe Us?
By: Jackie Gualtieri
Tags: Women, Lizzo, Fat, Body Positive, Feminism

What Does Lizzo Owe Us?

Did a detox “betray” the body positivity movement?

Photo courtesy of @lizzobeeating on Instagram

Anyone who listens to Lizzo’s music or follows her social media channels knows that she marches to the beat of her own drum. For some, when Lizzo arrived on the scene, it was shocking. A big girl twerking in a thong dress at a Lakers’ game? A big girl openly talking about her sexual desires and sexual past?

For many of us, what Lizzo did was liberating. Because skinny girls twerking doesn’t make headlines. Skinny girls talking about their sexual desires don’t make headlines. But when a big girl does, it’s suddenly news.

But Lizzo’s existence is a double-edged sword, as is the existence of any big girl in the public eye, as the songstress learned when she shared that she was detoxing.

First, let’s address the term detox.

The word “detox” makes a lot of people scoff. And rightfully so, because it’s a term that has been co-opted (primarily by skinny people) to mean drinking something like the Master Cleanse. That is, detox to many means not putting any solid food in your body and just drinking water to “flush out toxins.” It should be noted that there’s no magic reset button on your body that appears because you did a detox or cleanse. Your body can flush out toxins on its own.

Some detoxes can indeed be dangerous and they should never be done just because you saw it on TikTok. Never, ever undergo a drastic change in your diet without a doctor’s knowledge and approval. Even then, though, as fat people are aware that many doctors exhibit weight bias, it’s best to do your own thorough research as well.

Like Lizzo did before she began her detox.

Why did Lizzo detox?

On Dec. 14, Lizzo, who is often on TikTok sharing snippets of her life with fans, posted a “What I Eat in a Day” video. In the very first clip, she shared that she was working with a nutritionist and warned others not to try the detox at home without similar research. The detox in question is called the J.J. Smith 10-Day Smoothie Cleanse.

If the words “cleanse” or “detox” immediately turn you off, I hear you, they do for me too. But it’s important to keep in mind that, according to Lizzo’s own video, she wasn’t just drinking smoothies and water. She was eating solid fruits, vegetables, nuts, and peanut butter. And also, again, she was engaging in a “detox” that was nutritionist-approved and self-researched.

And yet, here are just a few of the comments the seemingly-innocuous video received.

“So much for body positive. Detox’s [sic] don’t work and they go against all actual body positivity. I’m so disappointed.” “When she first came out she was so body positive and I loved it. Now it kinda hurts how bad she’s been feeling.” “Lizzo baby no please eat, this isn’t healthy for anybody.” “Noooo I’m so upset! Another person lost to diet culture.” “I hate when we have a celebrity telling to love our bodies and later on they end up doing dieting and surgeries to lose all their body weight.” “It’s almost like people who were concerned about your health were right! And you shouldn’t have promoted being overweight.” “Lizzo, I’m so disappointed. What are you doing girl?”

This needs to be said: Lizzo is not body positive.

And I’m not saying that because of any actions she’s taken. I’m saying that because of her actual words.

“The body-positive movement is the body-positive movement, and we high five. We’re parallel. But my movement is my movement,” Lizzo told Allure in 2019. “When all the dust has settled on the groundbreaking-ness, I’m going to still be doing this. I’m not going to suddenly change. I’m going to still be telling my life story through music. And if that’s body positive to you, amen. That’s feminist to you, amen. If that’s pro-black to you, amen. Because ma’am, I’m all of those things.”

But a year later, she moved further away from the body positivity movement. Lizzo wants body normativity. “I think it’s lazy for me to just say I’m body positive at this point,” Lizzo told Vogue. “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.”

So, if Lizzo embraces being fat, why would she do a detox to lose weight? Simple. She didn’t. She followed her video up by saying that she suffers from gastrointestinal issues and her diet while on vacation hurt her stomach. The detox was meant to help her stop stress eating and doing “things that were kind of self-harming.”

She then followed that video up with another one saying that people assume that when big girls do things like detox that “when you are doing something for health, that you’re doing it for a dramatic weight loss, and that is not the case.”

What’s one of the top comments on that video? “Girl, loosing [sic] weight is not for beauty, it’s for health. People should not criticize no one for their bodys [sic]. Be proud of you.”

Lizzo neither owes you a “weight loss success story” nor a “body positivity icon.”

Lizzo did not detox to lose weight, although that notion, unfortunately, went over a lot of people’s heads. Although she sometimes posts about feeling down in her body, that doesn’t mean that she should or has to lose weight. We all have down moments in our bodies.

But if she wants to lose weight, we need to not think about it as a personal betrayal. Lizzo did not arrive in the music industry screaming that she was the role model for body positivity. We put that moniker on her because she’s a big girl in Hollywood and, sadly, we still consider that to be brave. No one is walking around saying that Taylor Swift or Selena Gomez or Camila Cabello have to be role models for skinny girls. We put an extra burden on Lizzo because she’s a big girl, and that’s not a fair tax for her to have to pay.

This year has been ripe with celebrities who have debuted weight losses, from Rebel Wilson to Adele. And each time they come out with their new weight, it seems we have the same bad takes over and over again.

We put an extra burden on Lizzo because she’s a big girl, and that’s not a fair tax for her to have to pay.

The first take is that it’s some kind of betrayal. How dare they take away our fat representation? As if they aren’t people. They’re just symbols we can hold up.

The second take is the one that screams back at the first one. “How dare you be mad at her for getting healthy?” It’s this take that personally infuriates me, as someone who was fat and lost weight through an eating disorder. Losing weight is not the same thing as getting healthy. This take is another way of trying to use a formerly fat person as a symbol. “Look!” cries a fatphobic society. “She lost weight so you all can too!” In this way, it becomes a little easier to see why a fat person would feel like a celebrity losing weight is a betrayal.

But both of these takes are not helping to further a conversation that would move any body positivity or body normativity movement beyond where it is today. If Lizzo decides to lose weight, why is she not allowed to feel positive in her body every step of the way? At the same time, she doesn’t have to shout it from the rooftops that she’s losing weight in order to show the world “how great she looks” according to societal standards.

The next time Lizzo posts about doing a detox, the proper response is nothing. No comments of disappointment, no comments of congrats. Just, nothing. Regardless of why she’s engaging in any diet change, it is no one’s business and none of us should have a stake in it. Normalize her body, at any size. Lizzo is right that the body positivity movement doesn’t go far enough, because we are still othering Lizzo. She’s still different, so we prop her up and say how amazing she is. Why? For existing in her body? Lizzo said it herself on My Next Guest Needs No Introduction: “I’m sick of being an activist just because I’m fat and Black.”

Our movement needs to be to allow Lizzo to just exist. No more headlines about a big girl in a thong dress, no more attempting to claim her as a body positive queen. Just let her exist.