Lizzo is TIME’s “Entertainer of the Year,” and this truth doesn’t hurt
Even though she has been hard at work for much of the past decade, 2019 was definitely Lizzo’s year to shine. And the fine folks at TIME agree, because they just named her “Entertainer of the Year”—a decision we’d call, ahem, good as hell.
We’ve been fans of Lizzo and her powerful self-care anthems for years. But it wasn’t until 2019 when her constant stream of self-empowerment and body positivity truly propelled her into the spotlight—something she thinks happened because of a shift in culture.
As she told TIME in her feature interview, prior to this year, "There were a lot of things that weren’t popular but existed, like body positivity, which at first was a form of protest for fat bodies and black women and has now become a trendy, commercialized thing. Now I’ve seen it reach the mainstream. Suddenly I’m mainstream!"
Of her success, she added, “How could we have guessed something like this would happen when we’ve never seen anything like this before?”
.@lizzo is TIME's 2019 Entertainer of the Year #TIMEPOY https://t.co/ILo2CDwuQZ pic.twitter.com/5tnfRTXpiJ
— TIME (@TIME) December 11, 2019
Her recent celebrity is the result of a perfect storm. A mix of good timing, great music, and the need for a role model to perfectly embody the societal shift out of the want for perfectionism and into loving what we’ve already got, put Lizzo into the spotlight. And despite being a sudden A-lister who can’t travel through the airport without a security team or go to the grocery store in her pajamas, as she divulged to TIME, Lizzo still makes it a priority to be honest with her fans about what she’s going through—even when she’s not exactly loving herself as much as we love her.
She admitted that fame can be hard for her, adding that this year, she was “experiencing a little bit of unhappiness.”
She said, "I was not happy with the way I felt to my body. I didn’t feel sexy, and I didn’t know when it was going to end. There were times when I would go onstage and be like, 'Y’all, I’m not going to lie. I’m not feeling myself.' Sometimes I’d break down and cry. Sometimes the audience would just cheer to make me feel better. I was getting sick a lot. I was like, What the f-ck is going on? I need to fall back in love with my body."
She’s on the same self-love journey as the rest of us. And she’s not afraid to show us when she’s taking steps back rather than forward.
Lizzo joins a roster of other women honored by TIME for their achievements this year, including 16-year-old climate change activist Greta Thunberg, who was named TIME’s Person of the Year thanks to her passion for the current environmental crisis and her activism to get people to care, and the entire U.S. Women’s Soccer Team, who were dubbed the Athlete of the Year after (finally) suing their bosses for gender discrimination on International Women’s Day 2019.
Thanks to the accomplishments of Lizzo, Thunberg, and the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team in 2019, we have a feeling 2020 is going to start off on the right foot.