#i am framing their appeals to said male validation as body positivity. like you can’t heal if you don’t see the wound

[brookheimer]

very funny that one of the main responses to the lizzo fat-shaming accusations is “but SHE’S fat!!!” as if internalized fatphobia doesn’t exist. like, you do realize that fat people have had that worldview beaten into them by literally every single person around them their entire lives, and famous fat people even more so. celebrity body positivity is so frequently performative — less about genuinely feeling positively about your body and other bodies that look like yours, more about trying to claw your way to having value in the eyes of society through any means possible. it’s out of spite and the desire to fit in. it’s not about conventional beauty not mattering, it’s about trying to expand the lens of societal atttactiveness to include you. lizzo was never trying to dismantle beauty standards as a concept, as a hierarchical way of perceiving society, as a value system. she just wanted to be valued within it — and that’s understandable, because we all want that, we all need to feel desired and worthwhile and valuable. but the best way for an outsider to become an insider is to know the hierarchy inside and out, then to enforce it yourself. if you’re able to gatekeep beauty and value from others, that implies you have access to it yourself. the only way for fat people to be valued within modern societal beauty constraints is to carve out a spot within that hierarchy and guard it with your life. i’m sorry if this is news to people, but so long as our perceptions of beauty remain the same, fat people will never be viewed as equally human — and especially fat women will never be viewed as equally woman. our beauty constraints are premised on a dehumanization of fatness. there is no way to exist as a fat person within that sphere without perpetuating those constraints yourself to prove to skinny people that you deserve to be there. this is why celebrity body positivity is so infrequently helpful long-term or big-picture — it’s not about setting all bodies equal to one another, it’s about raising your particular body equal to those at the top of the hierarchy. so of course lizzo bodyshamed her employees, her backup dancers, her assistants — that’s exactly what enabled her to become a “voice” for “body positivity.” without a position of power in that hierarchy, not only would her calls for body positivity not be heard, they likely wouldn’t exist in the first place; how are you going to feel positive about your body in our ever-competitive pyramid of beauty unless you have people below you to feel better than?

#admittedly i don’t know much about the lizzo drama but i’ve just seen so many tweets flabbergasted that she could possibly fatshame #guess those people just buy into celebrity body positivity wholeheartedly #actually i don’t know much about lizzo in general. i just know that no popstar in our current society has a worldview unaltered by female #beauty standards and that very much includes her. #if your body positivity is ‘i’m sexy too’ and not ‘why is my worth premised on my desirability’ then it’s not actual body positivity at all #like you are still maintaining that the male gaze is the determinant of worth. you are not revolutionary. you are insecure #and SO AM I! like i’m throwing bricks from a glass fucking house. i am the same exact way like i have a lot of issues w body stuff and zero #‘body positivity’ to speak of. but i am aware of my internalized preoccupation with male desire i am aware that i have a skewed perspective #rooted in misogyny i am aware and working on it. so it just drives me crazy to see women clearly as insecure & focused on male validation as #i am framing their appeals to said male validation as body positivity. like you can’t heal if you don’t see the wound #idk if any of this made sense. whatevs sorry #just rambling here #but yeah no it makes perfect sense to me that lizzo would body shame #why? because that is the only way to feel like you belong in a system that inherently excludes you #lizzo #long post