Posing on the cover of Rolling Stone, Lizzo looks beautiful and self-confident. Wearing a sheer floral bodysuit and a green veil, she’s standing in a forest with two nude men at her feet. She’s positively glowing.
But in the accompanying interview, the pop star shared that her confidence wasn’t always this strong. She opened up about her journey to self-love in a society that taught her to hate her body and her skin.
In her late teens and early twenties, Lizzo explained, she was in a relationship with someone who said he wanted to date someone thin. “Skinny guys like me,” she said. “But I remember he was like, ‘I’m a little guy. I need a little girl.’ ” She found herself trying to mimic Zooey Deschanel — “I can’t just wake up and be a white girl,” she said. When the relationship ended, she asked herself, “How can you be in love with someone when you’re not even you?”
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“As f***ed up as it sounds, I needed that heartbreak experience,” she said. “I’m not sad, because I use the pain so constructively. It’s inevitable. The pain is human experience.”
After that breakup, Lizzo began working on her low self-esteem. “I’ve come to terms with body dysmorphia and evolved,” she said. “The body-positive movement is doing the same thing. We’re growing together, and it’s growing pains, but I’m just glad that I’m attached to something so organic and alive.”
But Lizzo also added that there’s her work deserves recognition regardless of her body — something some critics and interviewers miss. “I’m so much more than that. Because I actually present that, I have a whole career,” she said. “It’s not a trend.”
Now, Lizzo helps that her music helps others discover self-love. “As a Black woman, I make music for people, from an experience that is from a Black woman,” she said. “I’m making music that hopefully makes other people feel good and helps me discover self-love. That message I want to go directly to Black women, big Black women, Black trans women. Period.”
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