Leave Lizzo Alone: Who gives you the right to bully plus-size women for existing?
By Danea Patterson // Opinion // EEW Magazine Online
Photo—Steve Jennings/WireImage/Illustration—EEW Magazine Online
This is a public service announcement: stop making remarks about other women’s bodies and worry about your own. Trolling, criticizing, and shaming someone for being plus-size is disgusting, judgmental, and unbecoming, especially for a Christian.
Grammy-winning artist, Lizzo, is drawing headlines—again—for being body-shamed by insensitive, fatphobic social media users that think they are well within their rights to smear, mock, and target persons in bigger bodies.
On Wednesday, May 31, the “Truth Hurts” songstress shared a screenshot of a hurtful tweet in which she was ostracized for being fat. The critic tweeted, “How is Lizzo still THIS fat when she’s constantly moving this much on stage?! I wonder what she must be eating.”
Grammy-winning singer Lizzo is often the subject of ridicule for being plus-size as a high-visibility performer.
In response, the co-founder of the shapewear brand, Yitty, said she sees similar posts about her “on a daily basis.” And though some would assume based on her skin-baring image, confident song lyrics, and unbothered social media posts that she is anesthetized to the pain of social ridicule, she isn’t. “It’s really starting to make me hate the world,” she said.
Isn’t it about time to leave Lizzo alone and quit bullying plus-size women in general simply for existing?
Unfortunately, there will always be negative, abusive, ignorant, insensitive voices that will be amplified through social media apps that easily help anyone’s viewpoint—no matter how asinine or disrespectful—go viral.
Even though Lizzo owes no one an explanation or justification of her health and lifestyle choices, she explained, “I literally stopped eating fast food years ago.”
In a follow-up tweet, she continued, “I’m literally just trying to live and be healthy. This is what my body looks like even when I’m eating super clean and working out!”
The talented singer and classically trained flute player, who got her start in the church, said all the “hate” she receives has her contemplating “giving up on everyone and quitting and enjoying my money and my man” and choosing instead to live quietly on a farm.
To insulate herself from the hurtful criticism, Lizzo has set her once public Twitter account to private and blocked those who continuously attack her.
Look, whatever you think of Lizzo, it is never okay to spew injurious insults and use your words recklessly without regard for what it does to her soul.
So, what if you don’t love her music or support her brand. No one cares about whether you believe in the “body positivity” or “health at every size” movement. Your worldview, specifically your ideas about health and wellness, don’t give you the right to abuse those who do not look or live the way you do.
Again, leave Lizzo alone. And if you aren’t spreading love, for everyone’s sake, just be quiet.
