A couple weeks ago, Lizzo posted a photo on Instagram that sent all the thin, white women that follow her in a tailspin of disappointment. The photo itself is a beautifully posed photo of Lizzo, it was the caption that sent everyone in a tizzy. Evidently, over the previous few days, she had completed some smoothie diet type fast.
Marker Transfer, 2021
I will be honest, I had a reaction. Not the disappointment that many others voiced in the comment section, but concern. If your liver is functioning properly, your body is detoxing just fine. We’ve all changed our eating habits after a holiday or vacation though. I know I’ve consumed more vegetables, drank a few more protein shakes, and ate less bread over the last few days, after the holiday season. However, I don’t know Lizzo, I’m not her (or a) nutritionist, she doesn’t owe me any sort of explanation for what or why she decided to drink smoothies for 10 days. I hope she was working under the guidance of a dietitian or nutritionist (which I think she was), and was doing this for her.
We have to remember that Lizzo is a human. A very talented human and I’d love to be her friend, but a human nonetheless. Most of the people who expressed huge amounts of disappointment were (from what I could tell from their photos), thin, straight-sized, white women. Not Black women. Not fat women. Not Black fat women… Thin, white women. A group of women, who by and large, are usually disgusted and disappointed by a body like Lizzo’s in the first place.
What Lizzo represents, to most of us who love her, is the ability to love our bodies, ourselves, and she has built a safe place for all of us to feel that. We all struggle, in some way, with our body image. However being fat not only comes with your own struggle, but with commentary from the world as well. It’s especially louder for them if they’re fat and Black.
After my wave of concern washed over me, I wondered how all these commenters would have felt if this was a post by a fat white person. Would they be getting praise for taking steps to “better” their body? There is this expectation put on Black people, in this case Lizzo, to carry the banner for all of us in the movement for body positivity, as we do for many movements in our history. Black people are at the head of almost every movement that has ever taken place. They don’t owe us that, but we owe them our gratitude, not our criticism.
When concern faded away, I fell deep into a pit of despair. There were a few reasons. Black women built the body positivity movement that we know today. It has been hijacked by straight-sized white women over the last few years. Not that all people aren’t allowed body positivity, but the movement was created for bodies that often fall outside of societal standards of beauty (And I’ve been reading where standards of beauty came from….whew). And also that no matter what a fat person does, they can never just be. If we ever post photos of us working out, it’s praise for “wanting to be thinner” or criticism for not doing it right. Damned if we do, damned if we don’t.
I’ve been doing a lot of reading about the history of body positivity, beauty standards, and the history of body image. It’s rocking my world. I’ve had to untangle a lot of my own thoughts on beauty, bodies, and most importantly, how diet culture and beauty standards are anti-Black.
So as we are dodging the detox teas, diets, fasts, gym memberships, and body shaming that’s going to be happening over the next few weeks for “new year, new you”; please remember that there’s so much more to unpack that just a few pounds. Enjoy the smoothie or the cheeseburger, and don’t listen to all the noise.