Lizzo revealed that she was “deeply offended” by how women’s bodies were a topic of discussion as well as objectification in the media during the late 1990s and 2000s.
The 37-year-old artist made her statement on shifting beauty standards and changing mindsets as she had a heart to heart with Bill Clinton’s former mistress Monica Lewinsky on the Reclaiming podcast.
Monica has a history of being publicly mocked and caricatured, hence as the podcast host discussed one of her caricatures that made her sob “for hours,” it made the singer emotional.
Lizzo then discussed how women are critically scrutinized by public and media, recalling the time Jessica Simpson became a victim of cruel headlines and media criticism because of her high-waisted “mom jeans” in 2009 and how it “ruined the stage” for the singer.
The About Damn Time singer added she now wears similar styles herself, describing them as “the only jeans that I wear” adding, “I’ll say first, the way that we talk about bodies in the media and the standard of what a thin body or a larger body is has changed so dramatically.”
Lizzo continued, “Sometimes I’m actually, like, deeply offended by how the media talked about y’all’s bodies or talked about Jessica Simpson’s mom jeans.”
“I don’t think this new generation understands how intense and how strict and harsh society is, and was, on women’s bodies – especially bodies that, by today’s standards, people would say present as thin or smaller and wouldn’t put in the same category,” she explained.
Lizzo proceeded to share, “I think that’s when – when I came out, people were like, ‘Wait a minute. We didn’t know they could get this big.’”
“I had to be undeniable – like undeniably talented, undeniably beautiful, undeniably likeable, undeniably myself. Because this was all it took for them to want to deny me… they would deny me at the door based off my body alone,” she said, explaining the enormous amount of pressure on her.
“I think when my body changed … there were some people who were like, ‘Am I not allowed to be empowered anymore? Did you not love yourself, actually?’”
Lizzo continued: “When the truth is I really love myself to be able to do this.
“Mine came from changing certain habits in my life and so I can enjoy being in my body physically, and I think that you can only achieve that by loving yourself,” the artist clarified.
“Your body is going to change and you should embrace that change. Every single day, you change… you have to keep up with that. And that’s what body positivity is,” Lizzo expressed as she talked about her point of view on body positivity.
