Lizzo's New Era: Body Positivity is Out, But What About Those Lawsuits?
After months out of the spotlight, Lizzo addresses body neutrality and business success but remains silent on ongoing legal battles.
Is Lizzo slowly making her way back into public life? Word dropped today that the Minnesota native, neé Melissa Jefferson, will campaign with Kamala Harris in Michigan this weekend.
On Monday, she spoke at the Fortune Most Powerful Summit after being mostly absent from public events since last fall.
(Though I must say, she ate this leather look the hell up at the Grammys in February.)
Lizzo sat down with the magazine's Deputy Editorial Director, Ellie Austin, for a twenty-minute-long chat about her business, body, and politics.
Notably, she avoided discussing the lawsuits filed against her by three former dancers and a former wardrobe designer. Clips of her evasiveness are floating around social media, but a few things in the conversation caught my attention.
Lizzo traded "body positivity" for "body neutrality"
Lizzo has entered a new era, which requires limiting how strangers engage with her body.
Her inclusive shapewear line, Yitty, is a massive success (I suppose here is where I must disclose that Yitty sent me a PR box around the time of its launch, and I like the products way more than Skims), but she's no longer willing to discuss how she feels about her own body publicly.
"Well, for years now, I have evolved from talking about body positivity into body neutrality, which means my body is nobody's business," she said.
This wasn't the first time she's endorsed the concept. In March, Lizzo told the New York Times the "mainstream antiquated conception" of body positivity no longer serves her after years of being held up as a beacon of fat acceptance.
Is it fair to point out that the business of her body served as a launchpad for a 9-figure-generating consumer goods brand? I think so, but there is no need to hyper-fixate on that fact. Reasonable people can change their minds.
Now, Lizzo shares details of her weight loss journey on social media (she's reportedly down 60 pounds), and I’m curious to see if she’ll discuss body image at any point.
Lizzo’s evolution reflects a broader cultural turn that’s been discussed ad nauseum. Since the flutist, singer, and rapper broke into the mainstream in 2019 with her number one hit "Truth Hurts" (a banger that goes right TF off to this day), she's become a lightning rod for criticism due to her bold, frank discussions of body size and self-image.
In a 2020 Rolling Stone cover story, writer Brittany Spanos described her newfound fame:
She has become, at 31, a new kind of superstar: a plus-size black singer and rapper dominating the largely white and skinny pop space, all while being relentlessly uplifting and openly sexual on her own terms. Her story is just as remarkable and radical as her stardom: years of self-doubt and struggle, followed by an unorthodox but swift ascent jump-started by “Truth Hurts,” a two-year-old song that wasn’t even on her new album.
I’m still amazed that it took years for one of her signature songs to finally gain traction.
There's something to be said for timing.
Lizzo’s career crested just as normie audiences began to accept the existence of structural fatphobia and its consequences.
This moment also birthed Lizzo’s Watch Out for the Big Grrrls, a dance competition show that brought new and welcome energy to the genre.
Even the fashion world pretended to like fat people for a minute.
Years later, we're almost back to where we started culturally. Thus Lizzo's political shift is unsurprising. After spending years on life support, Ozempic killed body positivity.
After spending years on life support, Ozempic killed body positivity.
Lizzo Understands and Admires Chappell Roan
Few things warm my heart like pop girls celebrating pop girls. Lizzo went on to praise Diary of a Midwest Princess and compare her career trajectory to Chappell Roan's.
"I see a lot of parallels to her in my career," Lizzo explained. "We had the same kind of rise, and it was so quick."
I’m honestly embarrassed I hadn’t already made the connection. They’re culturally significant in similar ways.
Lizzo commended Chappell on having what appears to be the best boundaries in pop music. "I look up to her, and I respect her a lot for how she handles herself."
Pop culture has reached a tipping point as celebrities re-evaluate their relationship to fame and fandom.
I've been a Lizzo apologist for years because a Black pop star embracing fatness while selling records and winning awards was brand new territory in North America. Of course, there have been fat, Black, joyful music artists before her, but they've never penetrated the zeitgeist like Lizzo.
With the success of Cuz I Love You, the power of representation elevated her into the role of self-love guru. Trolls called it "mammying" (A racist, fatphobic, misogynistic trope. Triple homicide!); however, musicians become vehicles for myriad expressions of pleasure, joy, and pain all the time.
She hasn’t always gotten it right, but I love how Lizzo leaned into the disgust and outrage of onlookers. The audacity of her antics was thrilling, but she doesn’t pretend like the arrows slung never hit their target. I appreciate that, too.
But that level of transparency was a dead end.
Lizzo is one of the stars (like Doja Cat and Cardi B) who seemed to underestimate the downsides of giving strangers too much access to your vulnerabilities.
In her case, I suspect she thought her social media presence could blunt the impact of the internet's nastiness. That might work temporarily, but fame grinds people down, and humans get tired.
Lizzo doesn't want to discuss those lawsuits, but she needs to.
Everything I said above is true, but let's be real. Lizzo's year of withdrawal from big stages probably wasn't spurred by the relentless body shaming.
Last fall, three former dancers and a former wardrobe designer filed lawsuits accusing her and her high-level staff of fostering a hostile, sexually degrading workplace.
Lizzo has vigorously denied the claims.
Fortune's Ellie Austin did her journalistic duty this week by attempting to get her on the record about the ongoing legal fights.
"You had a difficult year last year," Austin began. "You had some allegations against you of sexual harassment and creating a hostile work environment, all of which you have denied...How did you feel when that news came to light?"
Lizzo shut down the prodding in an unsatisfying way.
"You know, I don’t want to talk about things like that. This isn’t the space. We’re celebrating female CEOs and powerful women. This isn’t really the space to talk about the negative things that happen to us because so much negative stuff happens to powerful women."
Yikes.
I’m biased here, but after reviewing the plaintiffs' claims, anyone except the most willfully blind stan could see that the behavior they describe is inexcusable.
From Billboard:
In one particularly vivid allegation, Lizzo’s accusers claimed she pushed them to attend a live sex show at a venue in Amsterdam’s famed Red Light District called Bananenbar, and then pressured them to engage with the performers, including “eating bananas protruding from the performers’ vaginas.” After Lizzo herself allegedly led a chant “goading” Davis to touch one performer’s breasts, the lawsuit says, Davis eventually did so.
Y'all. That's disgusting.
I understand how litigation works. There's little chance Lizzo could've waded into the details of these claims without creating more problems for herself, but I recoiled when I heard her frame these allegations as "negative things" that happen to "powerful women."
As if all powerful women stand accused of participating in sexually explicit group chats with employees.
To be fair, several dancers who've worked with Lizzo offered public support last year. However, that’s not absolution.
The quick brush-off felt like an attempt to use identity to evade accountability, and she's been good about admitting fault before. (Remember the incident with the Postmates driver?)
Lizzo hasn't been found liable for any wrongdoing. She has the resources to drag this out for years, and her legal team appears to be doing that. It’s standard practice but incredibly distasteful because, as Yasmin Nair noted in In These Times, the issues raised are workplace rights violations. Seeing someone you like on the wrong side of a labor fight is a bummer.
My most charitable and admittedly speculative read of the situation is that this stems from carelessness, not malice. I have great empathy for people who want to do creative things and end up being a boss because it mostly sucks. Truly. Earning money from what lights you up is the ultimate cheat code to life, but being the boss is awful. It’s so bad even the girlboss lady gave up on it. Now, she gives other people money to do the bossing.
I'm not a Punitive Patty. To my mind, this woman isn't Diddy. I’m just a fan who's previously seen Lizzo display a desire to be community-minded, and you can’t have a community without accountability.
I have great empathy for people who want to do creative things and end up being a boss because it mostly sucks. Truly. Earning money from what lights you up is the ultimate cheat code to life, but being the boss is awful.
Loosely Related Thoughts
Brands built on "positivity" are destined to fail. Sustaining the facade goes against human nature. It crumbled for Ellen, and Kamala’s campaign has adroitly moved on from “happy, happy, joy, joy” messaging.
The way the lawyers on both sides of the Lizzo lawsuits have gone back and forth in the media is incredibly tacky.
If I were on Lizzo's team, I would be pissed about the title of the Fortune interview on YouTube, "Lizzo Dodges Question About Toxic Workplace Allegation." She inartfully dodged the question, but sheesh. Let's have some couth.
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I've been saying for a while now that Lizzo and Chappell remind me of each other in terms of their rises to fame. Chappell is setting her boundaries much earlier though. This was a really great read Kim.
The comparison to Chappell makes a lot of sense, but it also reminds me of how differently Black and white women are discussed in media.