Lizzo is back with another reminder to stop conflating exercise and healthy eating with a desire to lose weight.
As Glamour reported, the Special singer and body positivity activist recently posted a TikTok challenging the assumption that all plus-size people exercise for weight loss. Lizzo stitched a video about this common misconception from creator @tiffriahgrande.
“Heavy on the ‘not trying to escape fatness,'” she told her 26.9 million followers, echoing the original TikToker’s wording. “Heavy fucking on it.”
“I think a lot of people see a fat person that way and immediately just assume everything they are doing is to be thin,” the Grammy- and Emmy-winning artist continued. “I’m not trying to be thin. I don’t ever want to be thin.”
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Although Lizzo’s job as a singer and performer is very physically demanding, she repeated that her goal is never to lose weight. Instead, she takes a “holistic” approach to fitness, prioritizing food and forms of movement that make her feel happy.
“I just wanted to stitch this to show support to you because this creator specifically said, ‘I’m looking for people that I can resonate with,'” she concluded. “Very, very same.”
This assumption is steeped in fatphobia.
It’s no wonder that TikToker was looking for solidarity on the video-sharing app: The assumption she described is real and incredibly prevalent.
Beneath that assumption is the baseline notion that being plus-size is inherently undesirable and unhealthy. This, too, is a misconception — and a blatant example of fatphobia and diet culture at work. In reality, no body type is innately better than another, and people can be healthy at any size.
Do some plus-size people exercise to lose weight? Sure, but it isn’t fair or accurate to project that intention onto every plus-size person who hits the gym. People exercise for myriad reasons, including the mental health benefits Lizzo described.
Simply put, you can’t assume anything about a person’s health or fitness journey by looking at them. We give major props to Lizzo for elevating @tiffriahgrande’s important point.
This is just the latest example of Lizzo’s body-positive activism.
As a self-described “fat bitch,” Lizzo has always been a vocal advocate for body positivity, especially for other plus-size Black women. In fact, she kicked off 2023 with another key reminder about the negative impacts (and total futility) of body shaming celebrities.
“The discourse around [celebrities’] bodies is officially tired,” the “About Damn Time” singer told her 13 million Instagram followers in a video from January.
“Do we realize that artists are not here to fit into your beauty standards?” she continued. “Artists are here to make art, and this body is art. And I’m going to do whatever I want with this body. I wish that comments costed you all money, so we [could] see how much time we are fucking wasting on the wrong thing.”
Last fall, she also opened up about how many people mistakenly believe she eats a “very healthy” plant-based diet to lose weight.
“I’m not a vegan to lose weight,” she told Vanity Fair. “I just feel better when I eat plants.”
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