Lizzo Talks About Her Relationship With Her Body in New Interview

Lizzo Performs Live From Miami Beach At The Platinum Studio For American Express UNSTAGED Final 2021 Performance — (Image credit: Getty/Bryan Bedder)

Lizzo is shaking up the status quo when it comes to body acceptance, and it's truly amazing to witness.

In a world that wants people in larger bodies to make themselves smaller, literally, figuratively and by every means imaginable, the "Rumors" singer is standing taller and speaking louder.

In a new interview with People, Lizzo described her relationship to her body—and it sounds like a very healthy one. "I think I have a really hot body! I'm a body icon, and I'm embracing that more and more every day," she told the magazine.

Of course, because Lizzo is a woman in the public eye, trolls have nasty things to say about her body, but the star is learning to love herself without lending importance to those comments.

"It may not be one person's ideal body type just like, say, Kim Kardashian might not be someone's ideal, but she's a body icon and has created a modern-day beauty standard," she added. "And what I'm doing is stepping into my confidence and my power to create my own beauty standard. And one day that will just be the standard." [insert frenzied clapping and cheering]

Lizzo has worked hard to achieve the success she enjoys today, and she wants people to acknowledge it. "I had to blaze a trail," she said. "There was no Lizzo before Lizzo."

She continued, "I deserve the spotlight. I deserve the attention. I'm talented, I'm young, I'm hot. You know? And I've worked hard."

The star also addressed three of the major barriers that stood in the way of her success as an artist: her Blackness, her gender, and her size. "I don't think my dad wanted to tell us about the gruesome murders that happen to Black people all the time," she told People. "But Black parents have this responsibility to let their children know what can happen. They taught me at a very young age how America treats Black people. How it treats Black women. And I saw very quickly how we treat fat people."

But Lizzo won't let the body-shaming get in her way—and she's "blazing a trail" for other women in fat bodies, too, by posing nude on Instagram for instance, but most notably by launching a reality show to find her new backup dancers, "girls that look like her."

If that premise sounds like the best thing ever (because it is), it's called Watch Out for the Big Grrrls and it premieres on Amazon Prime on March 25.

Iris Goldsztajn is a London-based journalist, editor and author. She is the morning editor at Marie Claire, and her work has appeared in the likes of British Vogue, InStyle, Cosmopolitan, Refinery29 and SELF. Iris writes about everything from celebrity news and relationship advice to the pitfalls of diet culture and the joys of exercise. She has many opinions on Harry Styles, and can typically be found eating her body weight in cheap chocolate.