The “Truth Hurts” singer, 32, never holds back from supporting the body positive movement and for her latest push to shift conventional beauty ideals, she’s sharing (and baring) it all.
She captioned the picture on Instagram: “WELCOME TO TAURUS SEASON To celebrate I wanna give y’all this unedited selfie.. now normally I would fix my belly and smooth my skin but baby I wanted show u how I do it au natural — I am excited to be partnering with @dove and the #DoveSelfEsteemProject which is helping to reverse the negative effects of social media and changing the conversation about beauty
Lozzo – ‘The Selfie Talk‘ campaign
The ‘Truth Hurts’ hitmaker has joined Dove as a brand ambassador for ‘The Selfie Talk‘ campaign, and shared the naked selfie to inspire her millions of followers to embrace their natural beauty.
“As most people know I did an interview about What’s Underneath Project years ago and I took off all my clothes. I took my wig off and talked about the things I loved about myself. I was like, if anybody wants to see how I really look, all they got to do is go to YouTube,” Lizzo said during a Zoom conversation hosted by Dove for the brand’s Self-Esteem Project.
“From then on, I was like, I have nothing to hide. There’s no shame anymore. I just post myself. It’s like, you take me as I am. You don’t have to love me,” the star continued.
he Grammy-winner has promoted body positivity since soaring to the top of the charts, but she recently revealed that she would rather be recognised for her music and beliefs as opposed to her figure.
And true to her word, Lizzo shared an empowering, unedited nude photo on Instagram ahead of her chat with the beauty giant on Tuesday to inspire others to embrace their Photoshop- and filter-free selves.
For Lizzo, self-love wasn’t a choice, it “was literal survival,” she explained. “I’m going to continue to live in this body and survive in this body and be happy and actually enjoy life, I need to find a way to like myself. I was body negative for a long time.”
It started by taking a step back and paying closer attention to the “negative self-speak” she would tell herself. “Most people are taught that body negativity is normal, right? Then I became body positive, which is the opposite of that. It’s disruptive,” said Lizzo. “I believe everything I say about my body. But to push this conversation forward, we need to normalize it.”
Lizzo’s ultimate goal is to foster a world where bodies of all shapes and sizes are accepted and body positive statements don’t need to be big moments anymore.
“It’s not a political statement. It’s just my body. When you see it, keep it pushing. Keep that same energy that you keep with all the other bodies you see. That’s what body normative really means to me,” the singer said. “I’m here, don’t say anything. It’s not a statement. It’s my body.”
As part of Lizzo’s partnership with Dove, she’s challenging the ever-present issue of photo manipulation. (Research in Dove’s Reverse Selfie film found that 80% of girls have applied filters on their photos by age 13.)
“The scary thing about [it] is when I was their age, the girls now who are 12 or 13, I felt the same way. I remember waking up and wanting to be someone else, change my body, change my eye color, my hair texture, the shape of my body and the color of my skin,” Lizzo said. “I didn’t have photo retouching or filters. It scares me to think that now there is a tool that actually cashes in on that insecurity and it makes it bigger. It feeds the monster.”
A positive stride that has helped Lizzo’s mindset has been “following people who looked like me” on social media.
“I was following people before who I thought were beautiful and they were society’s beauty standard. Looking at them made me have this desire to edit or to change or think that I wasn’t worthy. I don’t want one person’s beauty to diminish the other,” she said.
“One day I stumbled upon Gabi Fresh. She had the first bikinis for fat girls. I was so excited. I was like, ‘She looks like me, right?’ I hit that follow button so hard,” Lizzo continued. “That led me to this beautiful world of women who looked like me.”
Lizzo explained: “It bothered me for a long time that all people could talk about or think about was my size.
“I didn’t like it when people condemned me for it and kind of rubbed me the wrong way when I was praised. Like ‘you’re so brave!’
“They thought they were complimenting me by saying I was unapologetic. I was like ‘What do I have to apologise for?'”
The 32-year-old musician also declared she was “sick of being an activist because [she’s] fat and black”.
She said: “I want to be an activist because I’m intelligent, because I care about issues, because my music is good, because I want to help the world.”
