This week, Lizzo broke the Internet with her ass-centric and empowering performance at the 2019 VMAs.
The 31-year-old singer performed a medley featuring her bangers ‘Good As Hell’ and ‘Truth Hurts’ in front of a huge inflatable butt, stopping midway to make an important statement.
“I’m tired of the bullsh*t, and I don’t have to know your story to know that you’re tired of the bullsh*t, too,” she told the audience between songs. “It’s so hard loving yourself in a world that doesn’t love you back. Am I right? So I want to take this opportunity right now to just feel good as hell because you deserve to feel good as hell!”
It was a moment that would go down in VMAs history, but Lizzo has made it clear – it doesn’t make her “brave.”
In an interview with Glamour, she said, “When people look at my body and be like, ‘Oh my God, she’s so brave,’ it’s like, ‘No I’m not.’”
“I’m just fine. I’m just me. I’m just sexy,” she continued. “If you saw Anne Hathaway in a bikini on a billboard, you wouldn’t call her brave.”
Since Lizzo topped the charts with ‘Juice,’ the media and fans have praised her for exuding body positivity and self-love – but the singer doesn’t appreciate the shock and surprise that comes with it.
“I don’t like it when people think it’s hard for me to see myself as beautiful,” she said. “I don’t like it when people are shocked that I’m doing it.”
Lizzo’s sentiments echo that of Amy Schumer, who appeared nude in the 2016 Pirelli calendar. The comedienne joked, “when a nude photo of yourself goes viral, the word you don’t want people to use to describe it is ‘brave.’”
Schumer told news.com.au, “somebody photoshopped [the photo] right next to a picture of Aphrodite in the same position and our bodies were pretty similar.”
“So it was kind of cool to be like, ‘this is what (beauty) used to be before it was the image of a starving actress model who doesn’t eat as regularly as they would like’…I’m proud of it.”
Both Lizzo and Schumer are proof that beauty in 2019 isn’t a size 6 – but that doesn’t mean being bigger than a size 6 is “brave,” it’s just being confident and loving yourself. It’s time to forget the unrealistic beauty standards and catch up with reality.