In a tearful Instagram Live on Sunday, Lizzo addressed online messages about her body after the release of her new single, “Rumors,” featuring Cardi B.
“On the days I feel I should be the happiest … I feel so down,” the three-time Grammy winner began, tears rolling down her face. “Like, I hurt so hard.”
“Sometimes I feel like the world just don’t love me back,” she continued. “It’s like it doesn’t matter how much positive energy you put into the world, you’re still going to have people who have … something mean to say about you. And for the most part, it doesn’t hurt my feelings; I don’t care. I just think when I’m working this hard, my tolerance gets lower. My patience is lower. I’m more sensitive, and it gets to me.”
In the tearful 12-minute long video message, she bemoaned still being judged more for her body type than her body of work.
“People saying s*** about me that just doesn’t even make sense,” she vented. “It’s fat-phobic, and it’s racist, and it’s hurtful. If you don’t like my music, cool. If you don’t like ‘Rumors’ the song, cool. But a lot of people don’t like me because of the way I look.”
Her rap-star friend and “Rumors” collaborator Cardi B responded to Lizzo’s detractors directly on Twitter.
“Rumors is doing great,” she tweeted. “Stop trying to say the song is flopping to dismiss a woman emotions on bullying or acting like they need sympathy. The song is top 10 on all platforms. Body shaming and callin her mammy is mean & racist as f**k.”
She responded to another on Twitter, writing, “But the song is doing great!! On all platforms. When people callin you ‘mammy’ cause your a black woman makin pop music and thousands of people callin you names it gets to you. Your bio says ‘black everything’ I guess it don’t apply to black women emotions huh?”
As previously reported, Lizzo said Sunday in her candid video, “I think I’m just overwhelmed. I think I’ve been in shock ever since the song came out… and I haven’t really been able to sit and just congratulate myself. Like, I did it. I dropped a song, I said everything I wanted to say, I make music that I like, that’s important to me, and I make music that I hope helps people. Period.”
Days earlier, the 33-year-old singer did an interview with radio host Zane Lowe of Apple Music’s New Music Daily in which she said that as a Black, plus-sized woman in the public spotlight, she has never had the “luxury of hiding behind anything.”
“I feel like fat is the worst thing people can say about me at this point,” Lizzo said. “This is the biggest insecurity. It’s like, ‘How dare a pop star be fat?’ … I had to own that.”
“I feel like other people who were put on that pedestal, or who become pop stars, probably have other insecurities or have other flaws, but they can hide it behind a veneer of being sexy and being marketable,” she added.
The official video of “Rumors” currently has more than 10,000,000 views on YouTube.
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