I remember the first time I came across Melissa Viviane Jefferson, otherwise known as the force that is Lizzo. It was 2017 and I’d been scrolling down my Instagram feed looking for plus-size outfit inspiration, when all of a sudden she burst up, wearing a black PVC catsuit with fishnet tights and stripper heels. ‘This woman is my new queen,’ I thought to myself.
Cut to 2019, and I’m watching Lizzo on stage in London. Halfway through her performance, while everyone else is singing along, I’m in the middle of the dance floor crying my eyes out, due to the shock of seeing someone who is shaped like me and absolutely killing it. A member of her record label caught sight of me and asked if I’d like to meet Lizzo backstage. I did – and cried again when I met her. Her unapologetic boldness was the representation of what I, as a fat Black teenager, needed to see growing up. She was successful, strong and beautiful.
But in January, Lizzo told Rolling Stone that she was ‘tired of talking about her body’. Which was understandable, given that even as the first Black plus-size woman on the cover of Vogue, she was still subject to trolling and furious debates about whether she actually deserved that cover.
READ MORE: Lizzo Is Right – We Shouldn’t Call People "Brave" For Loving Their Bodies
That doesn’t surprise me – there is a huge stigma surrounding fat Black bodies. Growing up, I didn’t see myself represented on any kind of public forum. When I’d watch TV shows and music videos, I was constantly met with slim white women, curvy Latina women, or very curvy lighter- skinned Black women. It was exceptionally rare to see plus-size darker-skinned women on TV – and when we did, they were always playing either slaves, maids or other supporting characters, with either no character arc or an arc that made fun of their weight and lack of love/social life.
I began to develop a huge complex about my body, and would often seek to punish myself via self-harm, negative self-talk and frequent extreme dieting. On top of that, I was exposed to fatphobic and negative body-image talk around friends, family and at school. I would constantly hear the disgust in someone’s voice when describing the amount of weight they’d put on, or I would be questioned on my food choices come lunch time. In my mind, conforming to the standard of beauty (which meant being slim or the ‘right’ kind of curvy) was the key to unlocking my beauty.
Aged 23, I decided to lose a huge amount of weight because I wanted to be able to fit into a bikini and frolic at the beach. As I was approaching the weight loss from a place of self-hate, I began incorporating toxic methods, such as weight loss pills, laxatives, starvation and binge- eating, which caused me to lose close to 100lbs. Even though I had lost the weight, the self-hate over what I’d forced my body to undertake had been cemented in my brain. My mental health suffered greatly because of this, and I became physically ill.
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It was at that point that I realised that I had been trying to lose weight in order to gain approval from others. I felt like my beauty could only be validated through the pounds shed and, once I realised that I had been subjecting my body to so much pain and abuse, I decided to make an effort to learn how to love it. I started by writing a five-page letter to my body, apologising for treating it horribly and subjecting it to unfair conditions, starvation and various eating disorders. I decided then and there that it was time for me to be grateful for my body for keeping me alive and sustaining me throughout, and to look after it.
One of the bigger ways that I set out to achieve self-love was to involve myself with the body positivity movement, which was rampant on social media platforms such as Tumblr at the time.
It was a movement started in part by Black plus-size women (an offshoot of the fat acceptance movement). For us, it was a safe space where we could celebrate our bodies, talk about our journeys to self-love and normalise our body types. It was a space for us to love ourselves loudly.
In this space, we were able to talk about clothes, show off our lingerie and bikini pieces, review holiday destinations that were ‘fat friendly’ and exchange our tragic-yet-hilarious experiences of dating while Black and fat. It was our space to be unapologetic and free.
But once the movement hit the mainstream, it spawned its own standard of beauty, which in turn excluded the very bodies that helped it achieve prominence. All of a sudden, the spokesmodels and voices were extremely beautiful, acceptably curvy white women, who highlighted their own voices and privilege over those who needed the movement more. Just like that, a whole community was displaced from a movement they had helped create.
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Bodies such as mine were put on the back-burner and ‘othered’, due to this new standard of beauty. The thoughts and perspectives that we were once able to share had gone, in favour of lean, athletic women – bending over to create a minute belly roll to ‘prove’ that their bodies were normal.
For us to get to a point where fat people – and, by extension, Black fat women – are treated with the kindness, dignity, respect and love that we deserve, it is important to have the representation needed within all aspects of media and pop culture, so our bodies can be normalised.
There cannot be a situation in which only Lizzo is exalted while the rest of us fat Black women are continually disrespected, abused, harassed and maltreated. Instead of casting fat characters as sidekicks and villains, make us the love interests, the heroes, characters who are successful in their jobs. Stop casting us as slaves, maids and the depressed characters down on their luck. Listen to us when we talk about the injustices within representation and inclusivity.
We all deserve to feel seen, wanted and secure in our bodies. Lizzo is the catalyst who gave the world a glimpse of the many things we can accomplish. But she should by no means be the only one doing the work. We have to all do the work, together.
Stephanie’s book, ‘Fattily Ever After: A Black Fat Girl’s Guide To Living Life’ is out now.
Stephanie joins Grazia as a contributing editor and will be writing about style, beauty and more in the coming months