“I think I have a really hot body! I’ma body icon, and I’m embracing that more and more every day,” says Lizzo, sitting down in the study of her home beneath a platinum record. The Grammy winner — and cover star of PEOPLE’s Women Changing the World issue — is clear that she has no problem talking about her body. Because, as she says, why should she?
“It may not be one person’s ideal body type just like, say,Kim Kardashianmight not be someone’s ideal, but she’s a body icon and has created a modern-day beauty standard,” she tells PEOPLE. “And whatI’mdoing is stepping into my confidence and my power to create my own beauty standard. And one day that will just bethestandard.”
For more on PEOPLE’s cover story with Lizzo, listen below to our daily podcast on PEOPLE Every Day.
Now 33, Lizzo lives high up on a hill above Los Angeles. It’s on one of those misleading, circuitous paths. Just when you think you’ve arrived, there’s another hill. Then one more. Then a big gate with a small, hidden door. That’s pretty much how her road to success has been, Lizzo says. Switchback turns. Trapdoors. No trail map. “I had to blaze a trail,” she says. “There was no Lizzo before Lizzo.”
Lizzo.Robin Harper
Nearly three years agoLizzoworked her way to the front of the pop culture scene—singing, dancing, rappingandplaying the flute onher first No. 1 song,“Truth Hurts”—and quickly became unstoppable.
“I deserve the spotlight,” Lizzo tells PEOPLE. “I deserve the attention. I’m talented, I’m young, I’m hot. You know? And I’ve worked hard.”
Her parents told her the truth about the Black experience in America. “I don’t think my dad wanted to tell us about the gruesome murders that happen to Black people all the time,” she says. “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 sawveryquickly how we treat fat people.”
Lizzo covers PEOPLE.Robin Harper
Lizzo admits becoming aware of it all made her “cynical” at first, but as she found success, she decided to flip the script. “I was like, ‘OK, what can I do with this? How can I make the best of this? I wasn’t supposed to survive. I wasn’t supposed to make it this far. I wasn’t supposed to be a millionaire. I wasn’t supposed to be a sex symbol. I wasn’t supposed to be on the cover ofPEOPLE,but I am. So how can I make this worthwhile? How can I make this not just a flash in the pan?’ "
In 2017 she released “Truth Hurts.” It took two years for the song to become a hit, after finding popularity on TikTok and being used in the Netflix movieSomeone Great. She added it to her third album, ‘Cuz I Love You(in the music video, she marries herself), and the song’s viral lyric “100 percent that bitch” became part of the cultural lexicon.
As Lizzo’s music took off—she’searned three Grammys, two Soul Train Awards and millions of fans—her body became a topic of conversation. “Okay, we all know I’m fat,” she says with a sigh. “I know I’m fat. It doesn’t bother me. I like being fat, andI’m beautiful and I’m healthy. So can we move on?”
Lizzo lists the stereotypes women like her face: “The funny, fat friend. I played that trope in high school. Or the friend who is gonna beat your ass ‘cause she’s big. Or it’s the big girl who’s insecure ‘cause she’s big.” She pauses. “I don’t think I’m the only kind of fat girl there is. I want us to be freed from that box we’ve been put in.”
For more from Lizzo and other Women Changing the World, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands everywhere Friday.
source: people.com
