Lizzo [1] is celebrating the start of her birthday season in the most Lizzo way possible: with a photo of herself in her birthday suit. The Cuz I Love You singer, whose birthday is on 27 April, shared an unedited nude selfie to Instagram on April 20 as a way to not only ring in the start of Taurus season, but also to share an important message with her 10 million followers about self-esteem and beauty standards.

"WELCOME TO TAURUS SEASON," she wrote in the caption. "To celebrate I wanna give y'all this unedited selfie.. now normally I would fix my belly and smooth my skin but baby I wanted show u how I do it au natural."

Lizzo chose to keep her photo unfiltered because of her new partnership with Dove and "The Selfie Talk," a campaign that advocates against "digital distortion" and explores how social media has affected the way young people view themselves because of the unrealistic beauty standards it's created. "The Selfie Talk" examines the way that the increase in screen time — between Zoom calls and social media — over the last year has made young people even more critical of their appearance. We even saw evidence of this over the last several months with "Zoom dysmorphia" [2] and the spike in plastic surgery procedures [3] it may have contributed to.

"I love how this generation is so creative in the ways in which they express themselves. It's really inspiring to see how people are taking their identity and their beauty into their own hands," Lizzo said in a statement. "However, people are struggling with their self-image and self-confidence more than ever. This is amplified by the increasing pressure to show a digitally distorted version of ourselves, reinforcing the idea that our beauty in real life is not good enough or worthy of likes."

According to research conducted by Dove, 80 percent of girls surveyed for the Self-Esteem Project have used filters and editing apps on their photos by the time they turn 13, and 77 percent have tried to change or hide a body part before sharing a photo to social media.

Lizzo has been looked at as a champion for body positivity since the beginning of her career, so we can't think of a better person for Dove to have partnered with on this project.