Lizzo On Her Image: ‘I’m Not Trying To Sell You Me, I’m Trying To Sell You, You’
Lizzo is British Vogue’s latest cover girl, and she opens up about anxiety before hitting the stage, her start as a rapper, and embracing who she is.
Even though Lizzo is known for being very self-confident, she does admit she sometimes gets anxiety before shows. “When I get really, really anxious before a show, I just go harder and harder and harder when I’m performing and I just go crazy.” She adds, “I don’t know why, but my anxiety sometimes fuels who I am as a performer and who I am as an artist – and I know that is not the case for everyone.”
Lizzo’s rise to fame seems like it was overnight, but she explains that she’s been working and molding her craft for years. “I became a good singer touring as a rapper,” she explains. “All of the things that I would rap would turn into melodies and they would get real soulful and punchy. It was not a secret ace card in the pack; it was a tool that I was finely tuning and shaping.”
She also talks about growing up and not seeing role models that looked like her in the media. She explains, “I would watch things on television and I would look at magazines and I would not see myself. When you don’t see yourself, you start to think something’s wrong with you.” She then says, “Then you want to look like those things and when you realise it’s a physical impossibility, you start to think, ‘What the f— is wrong with me?’ I think that took a greater toll on me, psychologically, growing up than what anyone could have said to me.”
Lizzo explains that since then, she has learned to embrace who she is. She also adds that her body-positive message isn’t just something she’s selling as an act or for personal gain. She says, “I’m not trying to sell you me,” she says. “I’m trying to sell you, you.”
