For Vanity Fair’s November issue, Lizzo talks body positivity and bodily autonomy, making history and why she writes for Black women.
Melissa Viviane Jefferson — better known as Lizzo — is no stranger to an artful clap-back. Look no further than her veiled response to
“Black women are hypersexualized all the time, and masculinized simultaneously. Because of the structure of racism, if you’re thinner and lighter, or your features are narrow, you’re closer to being a woman,” she notes.
In Vanity Fair’s cover story — which Campbell Addy photographed — Lizzo once again leans into the type of high-fashion fantasy typically not afforded fat, Black women, including rocking designer Bad Binch Tongtong’s octopus-inspired dress, making us long for her version of Ursula in “The Little Mermaid” (Melissa McCarthy will portray the villain in Disney’s upcoming live reboot). “Look, I’m having a great time, but the things that I’ve experienced that I have to debunk or clarify, just by simply existing, looking like me, is an indication of progress,” she says. “But it’s just the beginning of it.”
Nevertheless, whether being accused of “desecrating” President James Madison’s 200-year-old crystal flute while making history as the first known Black person to play it, or being called “corny” for making unapologetically boppy self-love anthems, Lizzo is learning to handle criticism quite well.
“I just ignore them,” she tells Vanity Fair. “My favorite thing is ‘You’re wrong.’ Your opinion wasn’t fact in the first place.”
And she has a word or two for those who wrongly accuse her of making music for white people. “I am a Black woman, I am making music from my Black experience, for me to heal myself [from] the experience we call life,” she explains. “It blows my mind when people say I’m not making music from a Black perspective — how could I not do that as a Black artist?”
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