Photo courtesy of Chicago Defender
Lizzo discussed with ESSENCE Magazine recently the ills of thin privilege and the body positivity movement that she says has been hijacked.
On her social media page she posed the question, “Would you wake up and trade places with someone that’s on the heavier side?”
She asked it and spoke out about feeling like the body positivity movement has been, in so many words, taken from “fat” people and no longer is useful to them, according to the article.
“I’m glad she asked because this is giving me very much when that sociologist, Dr. Jane [Elliott], asked that room full of white people, ‘raise your hand if you want to be treated like how Black people are treated in this country.’ Or ‘raise your hand if you would wake up and be Black tomorrow,’ and nobody raised their hand. And that’s because they know there’s some systemic bullsh-t that happens to Black people that does not happen to them and would never happen to white people,” according to the article.
She compared that experience (white privilege and not going through what Black people face) similar to how smaller person do not have to deal with the sometimes insensitive treatment targeted at bigger people.
“Yes, please be positive about your body,” she said in the article. “Please use our movement to empower yourselves. That’s the point. But the people who created this movement — big women, big brown and Black women, queer women — are not benefiting from the mainstream success of it.”
Read the full story here.
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