PHILIP-DANIEL DUCASSEThis page: behind the
scenes of the New York
shoot, on which Alec
Maxwell of Kloss Films
also created a video of
Lizzo for Vogue.co.uk.
Opposite: silk tuxedo suit,
to order, Ralph Lauren
Collection. Bra, £44, Savage
x Fenty. Velvet sandals,
£585, Giuseppe Zanotti.
Diamond necklace,
Chopard. Ruby and
diamond ring. Gold,
platinum and diamond
ring. Both Verdura.
Prices on request unless
otherwise stated.
For stockists, all pages,
see Vogue Information.
Hair: Yusef. Make-up: Renee
Garnes. Nails: Mar y Sol
Inzerillo. Production:
Honor Hellon Production.
Digital artwork: Dtouch
New York. With thanks
to YouTube Studios(“Woke up feelin’ like I just might run for president/Even if
there ain’t no precedent”) and “Good As Hell” (“If he don’t
love you anymore/Just walk your fine ass out the door”). But
this is hard-won confidence, nurtured from her childhood.
“I have a lot of memories of me,” she says, taking a deep
breath, “feeling kind of different and bullied or teased. Kids
can be really mean.” After gym class, her middle-school
classmates would hide her clothes in the locker room.
“I was like, why is it just my clothes?” Plus, all the other
girls had already started shaving their legs and Lizzo hadn’t.
“I was just this hairy-legged, stinky middle schooler, so they
probably got a real good laugh out of that.” The most popular
boy was also on a mission to make her daily bus ride
miserable. “Every morning he’d be like, ‘What’s up, fat ass?’
Like, every morning for school. I was like, ‘Damn, you don’t
got a better word?’”
As a child, she idolised Roald Dahl’s Matilda, the misfit
who uses special powers to stand up to her bullies. Lizzo,
too, found a way to deal with her tormentors: “I realised that
they could have really hurt me if I allowed them to,” she says.
“But I took it and it just meant nothing to me at a certain
point. I was sad about it, and then I just turned those words
into something else.” In high school, she even ended up being
friends with the boy from the bus.She’s far more caustic about the role of the mainstream
media on her self-esteem. “I would watch things on television
and I would look at magazines and I would not see myself,”
she says. “When you don’t see yourself, you start to think
something’s wrong with you. Then you want to look like
those things and when you realise it’s a physical impossibility,
you start to think, ‘What the f**k is wrong with me?’ I think
that took a greater toll on me, psychologically, growing
up than what anyone could have said to me.”
In June, Lizzo opened up about her mental health, posting
on Instagram: “I’m depressed and there’s no one I can talk
to because there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Life
hurts.” She added in the caption: “But this too shall pass.”
“I do have anxiety and it’s an interesting part of my
experience,” she says with uncharacteristic understatement.
Her anxiety is a “fast-paced thing” that comes out in
intimidating social situations or when she has to meet a lot
of people. “My heart is racing and my brain is firing off and
I’m just making all these jokes and then I’m like, actually
spiralling. The louder and funnier I am, you should probably
ask me if I’m OK,” she laughs.
“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 says, talking rapidly now. “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. I don’t know if my body just, like, out of
a desperate need to find a place for my anxiety or find a use
for it, takes it and puts it there.”
She ended up getting it under control with a mix of
acupuncture, meditation and breathing exercises. “I think if
I was 21 right now, I would not be able to maintain this
lifestyle without having major anxiety and panic attacks.
But thank God, my journey is all about self-care and finding
that love for yourself and nurturing yourself. Because that’s
what artists need more than anything.”
It was at 21 that things finally came to a head for Lizzo.
Her father had passed away just before her birthday; her
remaining family had moved to another city. She spent some
nights sleeping in her car, or on friends’ floors. “I think that
when you have nothing and you’re stripped down to nothing,
you’re kind of stuck with yourself,” she says. “I think that was
when I was kind of facing myself for the first time without
anything to distract me.”
Lizzo’s social conscience and honesty have seen her
crowned this generation’s queen of body-positive pop. You
sense the label grates a little on her. After all, there should
technically be nothing revolutionary about a woman over a
size 14 singing about loving herself. And it’s the same reason
so many women see themselves in Lizzo. In today’s image-
obsessed age, she is a megawatt beacon of self-assurance – so
utterly herself that it is impossible for it not to rub off on
you. Those crowds grew from 100 to 30,000 for good reason.
“Anybody that uses body positivity to sell something is
using it for their personal gain. That’s just it,” Lizzo says. “We
weren’t selling anything in the beginning. We were just selling
ourselves and selling ourselves on the idea – selling ourselves
on ourselves, you know?” She may be smiling, but it’s clear
that her final message is a serious one. “I’m not trying to sell
you me,” she says. “I’m trying to sell you, you.” Q23812-19-WELL-Lizzo.indd 238 14/10/2019 12:24