Lizzo addressed a wave of hate comments directed at her over the weekend following the release of her latest single, tearfully calling some of the criticism out for being “fatphobic” and “racist.”
Lizzo released the song “Rumors” with Cardi B on Friday, simultaneously releasing a music video that has been viewed more than 10 million times as of Monday afternoon. The song lyrics themselves address “haters,” with Lizzo singing in one verse “Why you spending all your time trying to break a woman down?”
The three-time Grammy winner told fans Sunday that while normally hateful comments don’t bother her, her tolerance for them was low after working so hard on her latest music.
“It's fatphobic, it's racist and it's hurtful," Lizzo said. "What I won't accept is y'all doing this to Black women over and over and over again, especially us big Black girls. When we don't fit into the box that you want to put us in, you just unleash hatred onto us. It's not cool.”
Lizzo added that while she focuses on providing positivity through her platforms, she sometimes feels like the world “doesn’t love me back,” according to a video of the livestream posted online.
Cardi B, her “Rumors” collaborator, came to the singer’s defense on Twitter Sunday, calling haters “nerds” who are looking on to the “popular table.” In one tweet, she said that “body shaming and callin her mammy is mean & racist as f---.”
“When you stand up for yourself they claim your problematic & sensitive,” Cardi B tweeted. “When you don’t they tear you apart until you crying like this. Whether you skinny,big,plastic, they going to always try to put their insecurities on you.”
Lizzo also spoke about some of her critics on her TikTok account over the weekend, addressing those on the internet who accused her of playing into a “Mammy” stereotype.
The “Mammy” trope is a racist caricature of an overtly happy, heavyset Black woman who worked in a subservient role to white people. It was often used to push a false narrative that Black people were happy to be enslaved or otherwise serving their bosses.
“These people who are saying this are probably the same people who are mad when I'm being hyper sexual and the mammy trope is actually completelys desexualized,” Lizzo said. “So it can't both be true — make it make sense. I really think people are just mad to see a fat Black woman that makes pop music and is happy.”
"The Daily Show with Trevor Noah" reposted an interview with Lizzo from 2019 on Sunday, where Lizzo discussed how people called her "brave" for having confidence in her body. She told Noah prior to the "body positivity" movement, she was simply just making music about her body "that was positive."
"At this point, I realize that my mere existence is a form of activism," she said at the time.
