Lizzo as the Mother Mary of Hip-Hop

Visual by Natasha Arnowitz

The cover page of Rolling Stone’s February 2020 issue depicts Mother Mary stripped of all of those unnecessary robes and undergarments (all of that extra fabric had to be too hot for the nativity anyway). She is relieved of the prodding underwires that dig further and further into her left boob and stands in her purest form—a curvaceous black woman. Lizzo’s angelic frame is smothered in a bouquet of white calla lilies and kneeling men. She radiates an energy so all-consuming that even the prophets can’t help but twerk at the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. 

There is a certain spiritual experience that you undergo when you hear “Good as Hell” on the radio, but why is this? Has a gospel choir just landed in your backseat? Certainly you are wondering how Lizzo came to be the face of a movement much bigger than herself. An evolution of sorts where women are grabbing their lives by the thick of their thighs. No matter how many times Lizzo’s weight is dragged by jealous women and celebrity fitness trainers, nobody can deny that Lizzo is making a religion of her own—one that does not involve body shaming or social media posers in its scriptures. In an interview with Trevor Noah, Lizzo claims that “before the term body positivity was a mainstream thing, [she] was just making music about [her] body that was positive.” Why does Lizzo have to be brave if she wants to write a song about touching herself? Are those songs reserved for the skinny girls? Why does everybody have to ask all these damn questions? The ideology around Lizzo’s religion not only includes embracing your body, but also entails embracing your body as a colored woman, and, for some odd reason, that seems to be a tough pill to swallow. 

A few months ago, Lizzo tweeted, “2009 was the year my daddy died. 2009 was the year I lived in my car & cried myself to sleep on Thanksgiving. 2019 is the year my album & song went #1. 2019 is the year I told my mama I can buy her a house. Anything can happen in a decade.” When Lizzo’s father died, she felt as if she had no purpose to create music anymore. He was the one who had encouraged her from the beginning, showing her off to his friends and saying “watch how fast she can play the flute.” It wasn’t until a few years later that she realized that all her father was doing was for her, so why couldn’t she write songs for herself? It was then that Lizzo started to develop a new genre of music—one that incorporates classical flute, rap, and a big black girl centerstage.  

In Lizzo’s music video for the song “Cuz I Love You,” Lizzo is fittingly sitting in a confession booth with a line of men in wife beater shirts standing on the other side. In doing this, she is drawing a perfect parallel between church and a jail cell. In other words, she is showing that it is in our nature to sin and ask for forgiveness. Everybody has flaws, whether they can be seen or not. Lizzo makes it very clear that although she is singing “I’m crying because I love you,” she is not only addressing herself and other women, but she is also speaking for gay men, straight men, and everyone in between. The last clip of the music video is a close-up of the men in muscle shirts crying, but through all of this, Lizzo remains a holy figure to them. All of the faces melt into the black and white background and Lizzo’s face is lit in the center. Instead of glancing up at the camera in a seductive manner, Lizzo stares head on into the lens of the camera. Suddenly, the audience becomes the display, and Lizzo takes on the role of the observer. 

Women have been put on display ever since the Renaissance era and continue to be objectified today. In one of the most famous paintings of the Virgin Mary, The Aldobrandini Madonna by Raphael created in 1510, the Virgin Mary’s head is tilted downward, and she appears to be looking off to the side as if she is being chastised by the viewer. Why doesn’t Mother Mary possess the agency of looking? Her painting stands tall in The National Gallery of London, yet she is drawn as less than the man who painted her. The male gaze thrives off of this passiveness, these artificial images that create inaccurate illusions of reality, and Lizzo’s song lyrics, as well as her music videos, are beginning to discredit this misconception. The “Cuz I Love You” music video resides among many examples of Lizzo crushing the perpetuated stereotype of the male gaze in the pop culture industry. Lizzo’s hit single, “Truth Hurts,” opens with the line: “Why men great till they gotta be great?” This in and of itself tears down the ideology of men moving through life as deep-thinking individuals versus women who are seen as two-dimensional and static. 

Unlike other artists whom I will not name, Lizzo is able to make fun of her flaws and uses comedic relief when singing about her exes. Instead of holding onto the past like some kind of unripe lime, she receives worship for her music videos and wins Grammy Awards. The meat of the matter is that Lizzo’s newfound religion goes beyond spreading body positivity and even self love. Lizzo preaches in a pair of thongs, singing for the women who are unsung.