(ThySistas.com) There was Lizzo again, gliding through New York during fashion week this past Friday, wrapped in a Kim Shui number with a cutout that dared you to look and a slit that climbed clear up one thigh. The singer didn’t tiptoe onto anybody’s radar. She arrived. Cameras swarmed, the timeline lit up, and inside of an hour the commentary came rolling in like it always does.
Some folks clapped. Others clutched their pearls. A whole lot of them typed a verdict before the woman had even reached the end of the block.
I’ve been chewing on this pattern a good while now, and it’s worth stopping over, especially for those of us who are Black women out here living while the world keeps some quiet tally running on us. On purpose or by pure accident, what this artist keeps showing me is a thing I already knew down in my bones. You can live as loud as you please. Somebody else is still holding the mic.
You can’t answer everybody. Try it and you’ll just go hoarse.
Think about the road this sister’s walked. Back in 2019 she was stealing scenes in Hustlers, planted right in the frame next to J.Lo and not once getting swallowed up. Then came a turn on The Mandalorian, the cartoon voice work, an Emmy for that show where she went digging for dancers built like the rest of us. For a good long minute there, Lizzo was the summer. First Black woman since 1994 to take Record of the Year at the Grammys. Those hooks played in every grocery store and blasted out of car windows all season long.
Then 2023 hit. A lawsuit. Former dancers called the set a hostile place to work, and she swore none of it was true. Some claims have since been dismissed, but the dancers’ case has continued. Here’s the part most folks skip. Once a crowd makes up its mind, people hang onto the charge and let the denial slide right off. Overnight the beloved became the punchline. Late night bits, group chats, think pieces, the circus in full.
Here’s what I keep coming back to. When the internet decides who you are, what’s a woman supposed to do with the rest of her days? Spend them explaining? Draft a rebuttal for every keyboard with a grudge? There’s no end to that road. No statement’s ever long enough. No apology lands clean enough. That mob wasn’t really asking a question, so tell me, what exactly are you supposed to answer?
Earlier this year she got on TikTok and put it on the algorithm. The rollout got buried. The system was racist and fatphobic. Half her own people, she said, had no clue new music was even on the way. Maybe the complaint held water. That June studio album, her first in four years, landed with a thud and moved roughly 2,600 album-equivalent units its opening week. Some critics were unkind. That comeback everybody loves to root for just didn’t show up on time.
And I felt for her. Not because that album was any good, but because I know that posture too well. It’s the reflex to explain yourself all over again, dead sure the right words will finally win the jury over. A whole lot of us live right there. We drag it into the office and into our own kitchens, always out to prove we earned the seat, forever shrinking a size so nobody nearby has to feel some way about our shine.
Onlookers don’t get a vote on every chapter of your life. Let me say it again for the Sistas in the back who need it stitched on a pillow. They. Do. Not. Get. A. Vote.
Now look at what she pulled at fashion week. No slinking in with an apology. No sack, no lowered eyes, none of that begging pardon for daring to take up space. Girlfriend put on a gown built to be photographed and strutted in like the last three years hadn’t laid a glove on her. Debate the dress if you like. The message isn’t up for debate. Showing up as herself, on her own clock, Lizzo had clearly decided the peanut gallery doesn’t run her calendar.
Underneath all the hot takes sits the lesson.
I’ll be plain with you, because I’m not out here selling a fairy tale. Deciding that strangers don’t get a vote isn’t the same as pretending you never took a wrong turn. Accountability is a real thing. If you did people wrong on your watch, that reckoning is yours to sit in, with them, in rooms a whole lot quieter than any comment section. What I’m pointing at is a different animal. It’s that low steady hum that never lets up on Black women, coming for our bodies, our big laughs, the plain nerve it takes to want more than we were handed. That hum isn’t accountability. It’s hunger. It only wants to watch us make ourselves smaller.
Look where she may be headed next. Lizzo is attached to star as Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the godmother of rock and roll, in a film for Amazon MGM Studios with Forest Whitaker among the producers. She’s been taking guitar lessons while preparing for the role. Sit with that pairing a second. A woman the culture tried to toss out, stepping into the shoes of somebody the culture damn near erased, one of those bold Black women history keeps trying to lose, a gospel shouter who had an electric guitar wailing before Elvis became a household name. There’s poetry in that. And a quiet middle finger, too, aimed square at everybody who wrote her off.
So no, I’m not writing today to rule on whether the music slaps or the choices were wise. None of that is my business, and truth be told it shouldn’t be eating up yours either. I’m talking to the Sistas hauling that invisible scorecard around town, the ones up at 2 a.m. drafting a defense for people who never earned a word of it. Y’all are handing a room full of strangers the ruler, letting them measure out how much space you’re allowed to take up.
So set the pen down. Set the phone down too. Some folks are going to read you wrong no matter how careful you are with your own story, and that misreading is theirs to haul around, not yours.
In real time, Lizzo keeps teaching this same lesson, mess and music and all. You can burn your one wild life answering the internet, or you can go make something, wear what you please, and let the crowd holler at the back of your head while you keep on walking.
I know which way I’m leaning. The question, my Sistas, is what you’ll choose.
Staff Writer; Raven Jones
Raven writes about music, relationships, and the everyday ups and downs of Black women… She keeps it honest, encourages other sistas, and can be reached at RavenJ@ThySistas.com.