The morbidly obese pop star Lizzo claims she is quitting the music business.
“I’m getting tired of putting up with being dragged by everyone in my life and on the internet,” she announced in a post on Instagram. “All I want is to make music and make people happy and help the world be a little better than how I found it. But I’m starting to feel like the world doesn’t want me in it.”
She added, “I’m constantly up against lies being told about me for clout & views... being the butt of the joke every single time because of how I look... my character being picked apart by people who don’t know me and disrespecting my name.”
“I didn’t sign up for this shit,” she continued, “I QUIT.”
I don’t know if she’s genuinely quitting the music business or just looking to get some pity. Perhaps this is really about the ongoing sexual harassment lawsuit against her. I don’t know. This is not the first time she’s talked about quitting, either, so who knows how serious she is? If she really is quitting, I hope she takes the body positivity movement with her.
When Lizzo’s name comes up, I don’t think of her music career. To this day, I couldn’t tell you the name of a single song of hers, nor can I say with certainty that I’ve ever heard one. If she’s genuinely leaving the music business, it will have zero impact on my life. Why? Because her focus on embracing her enormous girth and challenging societal norms regarding weight is the foundation of her brand, which casts an enormously large shadow over her music career.
It wasn’t all that long ago that there was widespread concern over the unrealistic beauty standards promoted by Hollywood and the modeling industry, with discussions about the link between these standards and increased rates of anorexia and bulimia among adolescent girls. However, in recent years, there has been a seismic shift. Advertisements, once dominated by thin models, now feature overweight models. With this destructive overcorrection, pop culture abandoned the celebration of one unhealthy lifestyle in favor of promoting another unhealthy lifestyle under the guise of inclusivity and body positivity. While most people don’t look like magazine cover models, celebrating obesity isn’t better than glorifying extreme thinness.
In 2022, Lizzo launched her own line of “size-inclusive” or “body-positive” shapewear called Yitty. The brand prided itself on being “based on the principles of self-love, radical inner confidence, and effortless, everyday wear” and boasts an “industry first: no-shame, smile-inducing shapewear designed for all body types from size 6X to XS, centered around self-love.”
Make no mistake: the lack of “shame” in popular culture is the problem. We should warn people about unhealthy lifestyles and encourage them to better themselves. When influential figures like Lizzo promote obesity as sexy and something to aspire to, it hurts society as a whole.
When people like Lizzo normalize and celebrate obesity and insist it is healthy and normal, they are promoting a lifestyle that is literally killing people. Body positivity influencers on social media have found out the hard way that this lifestyle was killing them, and at least four have died in the last year and a half. (RELATED: Yes, the Body Positivity Movement Is Killing People)
According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), approximately 42% of American adults are categorized as obese. Think that’s bad? Well, an unfortunate 77% fall into the overweight category. This means that Americans within a healthy weight range are in the minority. The obesity epidemic is also affecting the younger generation, as one in five children is overweight or obese. Lizzo and the body positivity movement may not be responsible for this trend, but their quest to destigmatize obesity is no doubt making it worse—particularly for the younger generations.
So, if Lizzo is quitting, good riddance to her.
I miss her already…