Lizzo's Lakers Outfit Isn't the Problem, Hatred of Fat Black Women Is

"This is about Lizzo’s audacity to be fat and not just comfortable with it, but proud of it."
Lizzo looking good as hell.
Getty Images

In this op-ed, Aurielle Marie why Lizzo's Lakers outfit isn't the real source of outrage swirling around the singer right now.

On the eve of 2018, I made a new year’s resolution to stop counting my stretch-marks. I had just turned 24, and I was sick of succumbing to the pressure of anti-fat body politics: the yo-yo dieting, weighing myself constantly, looking wistfully at photos of years prior in envy of my younger and smaller body. I was tired of turning away from my girlfriend to unzip my pants before we made love. I was tired, and am still tired, of the way fat bodies are both demonized and hyper-sexualized until they aren’t even valued as the bodies of humans, but a mass of evidence of gluttony or laziness, stupidity, or… the list goes on. In reality, my body is simply that: mine. However, in a society that assigns a moral value to thinness, it is assumed that by the very virtue of our size, fat folks have somehow given up ownership of our bodies. We are inundated with violent reminders of just how little people think we matter, be it in our twitter DMs, while eating in public, or even as we try to enjoy ourselves at a basketball game. I had never seen a body like mine celebrated in pop culture — especially not a Black femme who celebrated both her body and her Blackness.

Ironically, when Lizzo shimmied her fabulous Black, fat, and unapologetic self onto the scene as a burgeoning pop star, I felt mortified instead of enthusiastic. Belting power ballads with her whole chest and shouting down the rafters in concerts at intimate venues, Lizzo’s confidence struck me as confrontational and made me feel more small. Why her? I thought as her hit single, Truth Hurts blasted from my speakers. Who the f*ck does she think she is? I remember thinking while watching her flirt with the host of a late-night show. Even as I built a body practice for myself that moved away from hollow “body positive” Instagram quotes and ever-closer to a fully realized freedom in my skin, I felt an urge to speak about her body and her value in ways the closely resembled how I’ve often encountered people speaking about mine. Lizzo made me uncomfortable: her lyrics and her attitude didn’t play nice with body politics and I felt shame that I didn’t love my body as much as she clearly adored her own plus-sized frame. Instead of celebrating “one of us” defying the ceiling fatphobia built over our heads, I envied her. Instead of pride, I felt insignificant.

I’ve worked to overcome my own body shame, by listening to fat-positive experts like the brilliant Sonalee Rashatwar and Ericka Hart. I fill my Instagram feed with diverse bodies by following Ashleigh Shackelford, TheBodyIsNotAnApology, Naomi Chaput, Kelly Augustine, and Sesali Bowen. Instead of weighing myself, I focused on activities that fed both my body and my spirit. The shame that I fought to put down is, I suspect, the same energy driving the outrage over a butt-baring outfit Lizzo wore to a recent LA Lakers game. Sitting courtside, she rocked a black t-shirt dress with a hole cut in the back, exposing her butt cheeks and a black thong. During the game, the star got up to twerk when her hit Juice came on, celebrating herself and her hit record.

The image of Lizzo shaking her bare ass at a basketball game quickly went viral, and with that came heaps of criticism. I watched hundreds of people weigh in on Lizzo’s right to wear clothing she owned in a public place, a right no one has the authority (or, frankly, the funds) to bestow or deny. Who the f*ck does Lizzo think she is?, people asked, she knows better than to show her ass like that. Another commented Why do bitches like Lizzo think they can wear whatever they want? Questions that are violent, dehumanizing, and so familiar.

Immediately, discourse on social media became anti-Black and fatphobic. Sure, most of us don’t wear dresses that expose our ass via a circular cut out. But if it were a slim white woman wearing the outfit, would we be having the same discussion about her worth, her morals, and her value? ? Would people have asked who “bitches like” that think they are? What this discussion on large bodies is and has always been missing is a reality check: People are not mad that Lizzo showed her backside, they hate fat bodies and the Black girls housed in them. And they hate us even more when they can’t control us, limit our social mobility, or dictate when and where and we are allowed to celebrate who we are and how we look. We look good as hell, and we know it. That’s exactly what pisses folks off.

The hateful questions launched at Lizzo because of her outfit are some of the same ones I asked myself when confronted with Lizzo’s love for herself. As essayist Da’Shaun Harrison writes, “We are safe bodies for thin people to dump on, but are never taken to the safehouse with them; things capable only of offering emotional support; mammies whose bosoms don’t need a break with minds that only ever exist to teach; holes meant only to provide relief.” My own acceptance of fatness was, at one point, dependent upon the social acceptance of large bodies. Even while trying to affirm myself, I still held body size in a value system, and had judged Lizzo based on my own insecurities. I was afraid to let another big girl thrive, because I was scared of what would happen if I divorced my own sense of worth from my body size. Despite that fear, I did stop thinking of my size as a measure of my self-worth, and I now wonder if others’ inability to do so is what makes them so mad. Whether you feel pressure to spend your time dieting, drop money on harmful “detox” teas or shape wear, or waste energy worrying about whether people think your body is worthy of love — all for a size-22 fat girl to walk in public with her ass out and still have the nerve to smile and call herself a bad bitch. And if she does indeed think herself a bad bitch, would it threaten how you judge your own self-worth?

I know we’ve been told otherwise, but thinness isn’t a personality trait. Similarly Lizzo’s fatness, my fatness, or anyone else’s isn’t a demerit or evidence of our lack of intelligence or wit — or sexuality, either. Neither Lizzo nor any other fat Black girl out here is beholden to the toxic ideals of a culture that considers itself morally superior to plus sized people, a culture that is inherently built on a lie. It is a lie indeed, that fatness is something to be ashamed of. Or quiet about. Or avoided. It is a lie that the sight of someone’s hips or belly, or bare ass on a jumbotron is in any way inappropriate.

Lizzo responded to the criticism around her outfit in an Instagram live, saying that the negative comments have no impact on her.

“I don’t ever want to censor myself…I’m not going to quiet myself. I’m not going to shrink myself because somebody thinks that I’m not sexy to them," she said, “It doesn’t really matter what goes on on the internet, nothing really breaks my joy. I’m a really solid, grounded person, and I know that I’m shocking because you’ve never seen — in a long time — a body like mine doing whatever it wants to do and dressing the way that it dresses and moving the way that it moves.”

That's exactly it. The beef isn’t with Lizzo's Lakers outfit, Lizzo herself. The issue is not with the sight of someone’s backside in front of children, as many argued was inappropriate and cited as their issue with the outfit. No one is this offended by a dress simply because it’s ugly, as others claimed. Celebrities wear ugly outfits everyday, and kids see more ass at the pool in summer. This is about Lizzo’s audacity to be fat and not just comfortable with it, but proud of it. People are mad because they’ve already decided how much of her body will be tolerated, and where, and when, and how. They’re angry that she is not interested in playing the respectability game, that she has decided to break all of those silly rules.

If the critique of Lizzo’s body was in defense of morality, I would argue that we spend less time on her thighs and bum, and maybe focus on moral issues that are more urgent, and more lethal: racism and fatphobia come to mind. If the critique of Lizzo’s body is in defense of the innocence of children, then I’d argue that our time would be better spent tackling police violence, gun control, and climate change. No one’s body should be dehumanized and turned into a spectacle, and too often fat people are hyper scrutinized for doing things that bring us joy, or make us feel good, things that thin people never have to think twice about. I spent too long hating Lizzo because she forced me to see myself, but I’m thankful for her audacity and willingness to bear the burden that this world makes of her body. She should be allowed, like all of us, to exist gloriously as herself without worrying about being discarded. It’s time to be honest about why we won’t let her.