Your affection for Lizzo’s third album will all depend on how well acquainted you are with it. If you absolutely love it then you’re almost certainly a recent convert to the Lizzo cause. Maybe as recently as October, a friend advised you that a few spins of the record really ‘takes the edge off’ a fentanyl binge the night before. You try it out and- you know what??- it really does! Its infectious and unashamedly boisterous confidence acts as a vital kick start to your vital organs. “‘The only exes that I care about are in my fucking chromosomes ‘!!* That’s so true!!”, you announce to yourself, before curling up into a ball on the floor and weeping as you consider how ashamed your mother must be of you.
(*obviously, you’d say this out loud, so that pun would make a lot more sense)
Maybe you appreciate it in moderation. This will because you were first introduced to it back in July, after Tempo soundtracked your particularly memorable sexual experience, after it happened to be playing on the radio of the Audi A4 you were carjacking at the time, and these things tend to stick with you. You’re always happy to give Lizzo a listen and appreciate what stellar pop songs the album’s highlights are, but can rarely stomach a full 42 minutes at any one time. You’ve started to cringe ever so slightly at Lizzo’s constant, overbearing shtick of ‘I DON’T NEED NOBODY I KNOW I’M AWESOME NO MATTER WHAT I’M GOING TO DATE MYSELF KNOCK KNOCK WHO’S THERE I’M FUCKING AMAZING THAT’S WHO JET FUEL DOESN’T MELT STEEL RT IF YOU LOVE KEANU REEVES IS EVERYBODY HAVING A GOOD TIME?!?!’ , plus the fact that a good 45% of her lyrics are simply viral Tweets that she liked (and, erm, then attempted to trademark) ensures the the love you briefly held for it after first hearing it has now cooled significantly. Yeah, I know, you have to really read between the lines for that jet fuel stuff, but it’s there.
Or, you’ve been listening to it since it was released in April. You definitely really liked it at some point, but by now it’s probably among the, if not the most listened to album of 2019, you generally skip every song that shuffle throws your way by this point (and for some reason, shuffle loves this album) and by now you can’t even stand to sit and listen to more than a few songs when you’re writing your end of year list. You (and we’re still talking about you here) award it an extremely commendable placing in the list chiefly because of that time, many moons ago, when you really liked the album, but nevertheless by December 2019 you never want to hear Lizzo ever again. But then what do you (you! Fucking you!) do when you’ve got an entry on Lizzo to write? That’s right- you just talk about overweight people.
Lol! Fat people, ammi right?? Hilarious! Rolling down the street, blocking out the sun, yo’ Momma, internet meme, internet meme, jpeg of fan man eating cake etc etc, wash and repeat. I have a friend who’s fat, but she’d be the first to tell you that she’s in on the joke! She so jolly! She loves to laugh at herself, which is important, I think. In a perfect world, wouldn’t we all just feel a lot better if we all relaxed enough to just laugh at ourselves! And my ‘ourselves’ I mean ‘fat people. Or the gays. Or the nig-nogs.
Ah, but we don’t laugh at fat people any more, do we? No, we’ve all accepted that’s needlessly cruel and intolerant, as a society we’ve accepted that it’s not nice to tease fat people. Or the gays. Or nig-nogs. Of course, this doesn’t mean we’ve properly accepted them, of course not, I mean look at them! How do you let yourself get like that?! No, nowadays we know that being overweight is no laughing matter, it’s actually deadly serious. Emphasis on the word ‘deadly’. These people are killing themselves. They’re disgusting, continuously self-immolating insults to the human form that with each and every mastication of their beloved deep fried arsenic injected validity substitute are sliding their tubby hooves one step along the plank into oblivion! Nowadays, we’ve all accepted that, rather than laugh at these hideous freaks whose very existence makes us physically sick, we should make it clear to these nauseating slabs of decaying flesh that we’re on their side! We want them to get healthy as much as anyone else! Because then we wouldn’t have to look at you! Because that makes us vomit! Now, we don’t mock fatty bombatties, we just explain to them how, actually, being that disgustingly fat is, actually, really unhealthy and, actually, they should really consider not being such a roly poly tub of congealed misery. The problem is fat people just aren’t aware of how bad it is to be fat.
This does seem to be the prevailing wisdom among people these days, that as a culture we actually let obese people have it too easy throughout the 20th century, and gave them far too many overweight role models like Norm from Cheers, the uncle from Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Wario. Children obviously grow up not being bullied enough, as schoolchildren are notoriously progressive when it comes to embracing different body types, or they are seeing inspirational overweight figures like Captain Underpants and then deciding to be fat, much like the only reason I’m ginger is because I watched too much Rugrats when I was too young to properly process it emotionally and wanted so bad to be Chuckie. Because he was always presented as being so cool. I have heard and read reviews of ‘Cuz I Love You’, occasionally from people I generally respect (or at least don’t aggresively hate), that are reticent in their praise because Lizzo’s unbridled positivity and gregarious self-love presents too positive an image for what is, actually, a really unhealthy ‘lifestyle’. Because being overweight is just a lifestyle choice in the same way homosexuality and alcoholism is. These can be put alongside hundreds of other articles that wring their hands that we’re being too nice to fat people, and if we don’t teach them to hate themselves 24 hours a day then they might just start being happy in their own skin, and that’s no use to anybody. I mean, sure, have a bit of fun, but don’t forget you’re going to die soon and you might be killing our children. Possibly by eating them. This line from the Spectator sums it up quite likely.
“In ‘Water Me,’ she sings ‘thank god, thank god, I’m gettin’ thicker.’ Maybe someone should tell her obesity makes it more likely that you develop heart disease, strokes, diabetes, arthritis, and cancer.”
Here’s the thing: Firstly, shut the fuck up, every last one of you, I hope you know that your lifestyle choice of being an utter cunt means you are 3500% more likely to be punched in the face. Secondly, nobody chooses to be fat. Unless they’re Robert De Niro preparing for a role, everyone just became fat through no choice of their own and they were likely born fat (which, when you think about it, means their mother deserves the most sympathy). They might later learn to be happy with the way they are, but we don’t need to worry too much about that, because we’re already surrounded by a society and culture that reminds them what disgusting failures they are every second of the day. Maybe Ms Davis and her cohorts are right about the higher chances of these diseases, I don’t really care, but she’ll be happy to know that such fat shaming leads higher-weight patients avoiding doctors more, fearing the rolling eyes of Ms Davises of the medical profession. Partially because of this, studies have shown that fat women are more likely to die from breast and cervical cancers than non-fat women, so maybe it all evens out! Thin women, Harrop discovered, take around three years to be diagnosed as anorexic and get into treatment, while larger participants spent an average of 13 and a half years waiting for their disorders to be addressed. And anyway, according to a 2015 study, fat people who feel discriminated against have shorter life expectancies than fat people who don’t, so at least you’re all trying your very best to kill them all off.
At least a group that’s being discriminated against can always band together and appeal to their community though? Nope, our culture of obese hate is so pernicious that overweight people hate overweight people too, and usually for the same reasons. In a 2005 study, the words obese participants used to classify other obese people included gluttonous, unclean and sluggish. We have drilled it into them to despise themselves and then to hate everyone like themselves for the same reason. The Huffington Post article I linked to contains the story of ‘Andrea’, a retired nurse from Boston:
“She knows how hard it is to slim down, knows what women larger than her are going through, but she still struggles not to pass judgment when she sees them in public. “I think, ‘How did they let it happen?’” she says. “It’s more like fear. Because if I let myself go, I’ll be that big too.””
We’ve indoctrinated a culture of fat shaming so successfully that even overweight people hate other overweight people, isolating the victims from each other and ensuring that there’s no threat of togetherness. Then, when one woman makes it big while not wanting to commit suicide because of her weight obviously enough for our liking, we lose our shit because we worry it’ll give the population the impression that we don’t hate fat people. Jesus Christ, give it a fucking rest, yeah? And for fuck’s sake, let Lizzo smile a bit and do some dumb happy songs, will you?
But just, like, can she do it over there somewhere? Near people who aren’t sick to death of this fucking album yet? Thanks
Metacritic: 84
necessaryevil.blog 
3 thoughts on “73 Lizzo: Cuz I Love You”