OPINION:
In 2019, Lizzo appeared to enter the mainstream with a simple mission: to bring back joy to a culture of misery.
Armed with a crystal-encrusted flute named Sasha and a seemingly unending supply of charm, she became a bastion of self-love and empowerment. And frankly, we needed her. We needed Lizzo not just because she spread joy as powerfully as disease, but because it had been so long since a fat woman of colour entered the limelight with a counter-narrative, providing an alternative representation of beauty.
In interviews, she always made her agenda plain. Lizzo’s music too has been characterised by its celebration of Blackness, women’s independence, and body positivity. With horns and major chords, it was almost unwaveringly ebullient, contagiously elated. It was part of Lizzo’s representational politics: to present to the world a woman who happened to be fat, Black, and happy about it. She was a Dove campaign shaped into a pop star.
Now, as workplace-related allegations have been filed against her by former dancers (all of which the singer herself has denied via a statement in which she insists she is not the “villain” she’s being portrayed as), Lizzo has come to represent the tragically hollow consequences of representation politics. She’s been rendered into a morality play; a lesson that heralding someone as a positive spokesperson may not uplift a community, but rather enable the representative’s own navel-gazing.
Is that the case with Lizzo? Or is it simply that, as a culture, we’re quick to stamp out joy? It’s true: We mistake cynicism for intelligence. We favor heartbreak anthems over love songs. We know that it simply takes more work to be happy and hopeful than it does to remain joyless and hopeless.
But no matter how you slice it, Lizzo’s demise seemed inevitable. What we once saw as a straightforward, good-hearted mission has since been complicated by a series of paradoxes. With a plethora of controversial brand partnerships, Lizzo has at once disrupted the normative image of beauty while commodifying her own diversity. Some are convinced that her self-empowerment has focused a little too much on the ‘self’, treating body positivity as an individual issue that can be fixed through consumption, rather than as a societal issue.
And above all, Lizzo’s all-loving, all-joyful stance has now been shaken by several allegations made by some of those who have worked in service of her which has deepened our suspicion of Lizzo’s once simple-seeming mission. Instead of moving the conversation forward, Lizzo has become a pawn for conversations surrounding the dark side of brand-friendly empowerment.
Professionally known as Lizzo, Melissa Viviane Jefferson was born in Detroit, Michigan on April 27, 1988. She was raised in Houston, Texas, where she also studied classical flute in college. Just after hitting her 20s, she dropped out of school and moved to Minneapolis to pursue music shortly after the death of her father. Lizzo’s development story wasn’t the parent-funded, industry plant-motivated one we’ve been used to. Instead, it was gritty, truly, DIY. She slept in her car, supported Sleater-Kinney and regularly performed on the underground Minneapolis circuit.
There, she quickly became a local celebrity before music supervisors helped introduce her to the masses. From 2016 onward, her music was slowly entering into popular consciousness, with synchs in high-profile slots across TV shows – her song Let ‘Em Say played a key role in the season three opening of popular US comedy Broad City – while more and more of her songs soundtracked national advertisements in the USA. During half-time on Super Bowl Sunday in 2018, HealthPartners soundtracked their advert with Lizzo’s song Good as Hell, which aired once again during the Grammy Awards advert breaks. If this were the 1990s, we may have called Lizzo a “sellout”.
In 2019, TikTok was largely responsible for helping her reach global fame. A soundbite from her single Truth Hurts, released two years prior, began making the rounds on the app due to the interactive potential of the line: “I just took a DNA test, turns out I’m 100 per cent that b****”. Cue millions of TikTokers swabbing their mouths with cotton buds.
As Lizzo’s star ascended, brands were desperate to capitalize on her propensity for viral fame and cultural relevance. Companies began filling in the blank to the notable lyrics, “I just took a DNA test turns out I’m 100 per cent ... ” on Twitter. Everyone, it seemed was taking a DNA test — from basketball teams to Walmart.
In fact, many of Lizzo’s hits launched in concert with enormous brands and corporations. In the spring of 2019, she teamed up with beer brand MillerCoors, first for its first ad campaign targeting mostly female consumers, to promote both a sparkling cocktail and her single Cuz I Love You.
Later on that year, she furthered her Juice agenda with brand Absolut to launch Absolut Juice in strawberry and apple flavours—a drink that purportedly encapsulated “self-love, self-empowerment, freedom, beauty and celebrating all body sizes and diversity.” Has Lizzo’s empowerment missive always been as hollow as a vodka marketing campaign?
It seems suspect that Lizzo’s star began to rise when companies’ advertising tactics drastically changed. Where companies once sought to gauge women’s insecurities, many of them now appeal to their potential to feel empowered. There’s money in women’s empowerment. Lots of it. In the past decade, facets of the body positivity movement have been appropriated by advertisers who’ve soundtracked their versions of joy and self-empowerment with Lizzo’s music, hoping that their female consumers will associate the positive feelings therein with the product they’re selling. We’ve been sold fake empowerment. And for some, the allegations filed against Lizzo – if true – prove that she’s been in on the scam all along.
Selling out aside, let’s face it: there are very few people with Lizzo’s level of success who are mentally and morally sound (although the former employees’ claims are yet to be proven). Think the allegations against Lizzo are bad? Watch how Madonna treats her dancers in the 1990s rockumentary Truth or Dare. Madonna appears to outright bully her dancers, overexerts them, and even accuses one of them of lying about her sexual assault.
But that’s the thing about pop stars: they can and should get to exist in a moral grey space. They get to be megalomaniacs. They are not our role models but rather glittered-up versions of our shadow selves. The qualities that led them to become talented stars do not automatically make them good people. But the difference here is that Lizzo has always tried to appeal to our best sides.
Hers was a message of joy, love, and continual self-improvement – one that has now been tarnished with accusations of all manners of shaming. When it comes to her, our scepticism and suspicions are far more heightened for a reason. But if we are to hold celebrities to these standards, let’s at least make sure that we’re just as self-accountable. If we can take anything from Lizzo’s mission, it’s that.
OPINION: Why Jaws isn't the villain in the film's blockbuster evolution.