Lizzo Says Body Positivity Movement Hijacked By Those Who Don’t Need It

Lizzo has spoken up about her thoughts on the changing body positivity movement, describing it as now being ‘commercialised and benefiting no-one’.

The 32-year-old Truth Hurts singer has long been held up as an icon of the movement, encouraging her fans to love their bodies and feel empowered by them.

However, despite being pleased that body positivity has become a mainstream topic, Lizzo feels that those the movement was originally created for are no longer benefitting from it.

It’s commercialized. Now, you look at the hashtag ‘body positive,’ and you see smaller-framed girls, curvier girls.

Lotta white girls. 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. What I don’t like is how the people that this term was created for are not benefiting from it.

Instead, Lizzo believes the moment has been changed since it has gained more mainstream media attention.

She continued:

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.

Considering her own take on the movement, Lizzo believes it would be ‘lazy’ and ‘easy’ for her to describe herself as being body positive at this point.

Instead, the Grammy award winner would like to be ‘body-normative’, explaining:

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. We have to make people uncomfortable again, so that we can continue to change. Change is always uncomfortable, right?

The body positivity movement was originally intended to celebrate bodies of all shapes and sizes, whether or not a person’s appearance fits with society’s expectations.

Many of those involved in the movement want to challenge how society views bodies outside of the ‘norm’, promoting acceptance, building confidence and addressing unrealistic standards of beauty.

However, the movement has also faced criticism over the past few years for becoming broader in definition, encompassing those with slimmer bodies who are not necessarily marginalised or judged on a daily basis.

Of course, everyone has a right to feel good about themselves and their appearance. However, this recent commercialisation has somewhat weakened the message of the body positivity movement in a way that many of its activists have found to be unhelpful and detrimental to their aims.