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Award-winning artist and cultural figure Lizzo has sparked a heated public discourse regarding the rapid virality of the new GLP-1 weight-loss medications, such as Ozempic and Wegovy. In a personal and candid essay shared on her Substack platform, the singer argues that the widespread use of these drugs is actively contributing to the alarming “erasure” of plus-size women from public life and the fashion industry.
The essay, titled "Why is everybody losing weight and what do we do? Sincerely, a person who’s lost weight,” serves as both a cultural critique and a personal reflection. Lizzo, who has long identified as a “proud big girl,” expressed profound concern that the medications are fundamentally and rapidly shifting the body positivity landscape back toward an unattainable ideal of thinness.
Lizzo provided tangible examples of this cultural retraction, stating, “extended sizes are being magically erased from websites. Plus-sized models are no longer getting booked for modeling gigs. And all of our big girls are not-so-big anymore.” She pointedly concluded that society has “a lot of work to do, to undo the effects of the Ozempic boom.”
Lizzo also used the platform to offer necessary context for her own recent weight loss, a topic that has generated substantial public scrutiny. She revealed that her physical change began during a severe bout of depression in 2023. She clarified that her motivation for “releasing” pounds was a deeply personal desire to process emotional trauma and achieve a more stable mental state, rather than a conscious effort to conform to conventional beauty standards. The Grammy winner lamented the constant scrutiny she faced, where her talent and success were often overshadowed by people “accusing me of making ‘being fat’ my whole personality.”
Ultimately, the singer issued a powerful call for the body positivity movement to reclaim its original, nuanced and radical roots. She urged her readers to allow the movement to “expand and grow far away from the commercial slop it’s become,” emphasizing that the critical issue is not the individual choice to lose weight, but the rapidly shrinking visibility, professional opportunity and social acceptance afforded to larger bodies in the public sphere. Her essay stresses that true body positivity must defend and celebrate bodies of all sizes, particularly in the face of pharmaceutical trends driving a singular aesthetic ideal.
