It's impossible not to feel good when listening to Lizzo's music [1] or watching an interview with the powerhouse musician. The 31-year-old singer [2] and flautist [3] truly radiates positivity — especially body positivity — all around, and it's something she's passionate about, but not the mainstream, sometimes disingenuous idea of it.
Lizzo expanded on self-love and body positivity [4] in an interview with NPR, saying she wasn't always as comfortable with her body as she is now. "I'm still not every day as comfortable as the day before. At a certain point I kind of realised that my body wasn't going to change unless I did something drastic, which I didn't have money [for]. When I started discovering my self-love and trying to be more positive about my body, this was like 10 years ago, and I was broke. I was like, I have no plastic surgery options, there's no crazy dieting options; I've been big my whole life. 'Just deal with it! Just accept your body!' I made a decision that I would eventually be happy about it, and it took a long time. Ten years later, I have a healthy relationship with my body [5]."
The widespread attention body positivity is getting now is overall a good thing, but Lizzo [7] recognises that "self-care" has become more of a commodity and a marketing tool than ever before. She said, "I say this on stage to everybody: 'I'm not gonna sell you the commercialized self-love. I'm not gonna sell you the hashtag self-care.' I'm not into that. I feel a responsibility as a pioneer in this wave of body positivity to push the narrative further. I'm not even gonna get into it, but they're just saying, like, 'self-care is all facials and mimosas,' and there are people using the term 'body positivity' but still posting, like, really gorgeous glamour shots. And I get it. That's fine. Everyone deserves to speak on it, everyone deserves to have ownership of their body positivity. But I'm not just gonna settle for that anymore. I think that there's something to emotions and vulnerability and expressing those emotions in a more vulnerable way to yourself that I think we haven't tapped into."