Don’t Call Lizzo ‘Brave’ for Being Confident

Every pop star has a career-defining performance. For Madonna, it was "Like a Virgin" at the 1984 MTV Video Music Awards. For Britney Spears, it was "I'm a Slave 4 U" at the same show, 17 years later. And for Lizzo, inarguably 2019's buzziest breakout star, it was "Truth Hurts" at the BET Awards this past June.

Clad in a bridal getup and flanked by 11 dancers, also dressed in white, Lizzo delivered a spellbinding rendition of her smash hit, which reached number three on Billboard's Hot 100. She sang live. She danced. She played the damn flute (which, if you're a Lizzo fan, shouldn't come as a surprise). Her performance was so good Rihanna herself gave it a standing ovation.

Fans are still talking about it months later. Just look at these YouTube comments as proof. They're all positive—or at least, that's the intention—but there's a caveat. See if you can figure it out:

"Lizzo is the proof y'all. A confident woman is always the most attractive person everywhere."

"Wow, she sang, rapped, danced, twerked, and then played the flute whilst twerking and yelling 'Bitch!' She's amazing and I wish I had her confidence."

"Once I get Lizzo’s confidence, it’s over for all y’all"

"She makes me feel confident about my body. If that sounds offensive, I don't mean for it to. I love her."

"I love how much confidence she has. it blows me away and I hope she keeps it up. She is so beautiful and strong. It's inspiring."

Each one of these remarks seems to express surprise at Lizzo's confidence, as if it's something that shouldn't be inherent. When Madonna and Britney delivered those aforementioned performances, people didn't marvel at their strength. They're thin women, and our culture expects them to have a certain base level of confidence. Meanwhile, it's viewed as shocking or novel when a plus-size woman like Lizzo displays the same agency.

"When people look at my body and be like, 'Oh my God, she's so brave,' it's like, 'No, I'm not,'" Lizzo, 31, tells Glamour. "I'm just fine. I'm just me. I'm just sexy. If you saw Anne Hathaway in a bikini on a billboard, you wouldn't call her brave. I just think there's a double standard when it comes to women."

A byproduct of Lizzo's meteoric rise to fame is that she's become a face of the body-positivity movement. She embraces it but wishes people would stop thinking it's miraculous for a plus-size woman to have confidence.

"I don't like it when people think it's hard for me to see myself as beautiful," she says. "I don't like it when people are shocked that I'm doing it."

And so Lizzo keeps working to normalize the image of a sexy, confident plus-size woman. Posing nearly nude in glossy magazine profiles. Starring in major makeup campaigns. And most recently, repping Absolut Vodka's new Juice line with a message that's all about women of many shapes, sizes, and colors having fun and being sexy. Most important, it doesn't make a thing out of that.

"The creative had the big girls in it. It was juicy, like me, and fun, like me," Lizzo says. "For someone like me to get a campaign with Absolut and to be wearing a bikini and to be jumping around and dancing and having fun—Absolut saw me on Instagram, saw how I like to dress, saw how I liked to party with my girls, and they came up with that creative."

Lizzo gives partial credit to social media (and the internet in general) for changing the narrative around size and giving visibility to women like her. As she said, it's why Absolut plucked her for its Juice campaign. And it's how, she thinks, people can find themselves represented if they feel failed by movies and TV.

"Back in the day, all you really had were the modeling agencies," Lizzo says. "I think that's why it made everything so limited for what was considered beautiful. It was controlled from this one space. But now we have the internet. So if you want to see somebody who's beautiful who looks like you, go on the internet and just type something in. Type in blue hair. Type in thick thighs. Type in back fat. You'll find yourself reflected. That's what I did to help find the beauty in myself."

Seeing yourself reflected is only half the battle, though. Lizzo says real change on the body-positivity front will come when we begin making space for people to live their life with authentic joy. Maybe then it won't be considered "surprising" when a plus-size woman finds herself sexy.

"Let's just make space for these women," she says. "Make space for me. Make space for this generation of artists who are really fearless in self-love. They're out here. They want to be free. I think allowing that space to be made is really what's going to shift the narrative in the future. Let's stop talking about it and make more space for people who are about it."

Christopher Rosa is the staff entertainment writer at Glamour. Follow him on Twitter @chrisrosa92.