Some comebacks need a press release. Lizzo’s needed ten words and a trophy held over her head. On August 28, 2022, at the MTV VMAs in Newark, she accepted the Video for Good award for “About Damn Time” and turned a few seconds of the speech into an answer to everyone who had been discussing her body that week. Four years on, the conversation about Lizzo’s body has flipped completely, and she is still the person giving the best answers in it.
The comedian, the emoji and the week before the VMAs
Days before the ceremony, comedian Aries Spears went on the YouTube channel Art of Dialogue and said, as quoted by Bustle, “I can’t get past the fact that she looks like the sh*t emoji.” He went on to complain about women’s “hypocrisy and the contradiction” around body positivity and suggested women should tell Lizzo, “this ain’t it.” The clip travelled the way these clips always do, which is faster than anything the person in it has ever said about their actual work.
My read: Spears handed Lizzo the perfect setup. A man insulting a woman’s body a week before she walks onto the biggest pop stage of the summer is not commentary, it is scheduling.
Ten words on stage
At the Prudential Center, Lizzo started with the fans: the award was voted for, and she asked the same people to vote in elections too, “to change some of these laws that are oppressing us.” Then she borrowed a line Nicki Minaj made famous at the 2015 VMAs: “And now, to the b*tches that got something to say about me in the press…” She paused. “You know what, I’m not going to say nothing.” And then, award in hand: “Because b*tch I’m winning, ho! Big b*tch is winning, ho!”
Was it television-friendly? The censors would say no. Was it effective? Nobody remembers what Spears said next. The best insult response is the one that refuses to repeat the insult, and she did exactly that.
“I was addressing EVERYBODY”
The next morning the internet decided the speech was about Spears personally. Lizzo corrected that on Twitter, and the full tweet matters, because the short version that circulated (including in the first version of this article) only told half of it: “Lemme make one thing VERY clear— I wasn’t addressing anybody in my speech last night.. I was addressing EVERYBODY.”
That is a better point than a feud. One comedian is a news cycle. Everybody is the climate she had been working in since her breakout, and she knew it.
@brettalannelson Couture off the runway 🤷🏾♀️ @jeanpaulgaultier @glennmartens | @brettalannelson @iwantalexx @theshelbyswain @erierinailz
2023 to 2026: the lawsuits
A year later the story changed shape. In August 2023 three former dancers, Arianna Davis, Crystal Williams and Noelle Rodriguez, sued Lizzo, alleging sexual, religious and racial harassment and a hostile workplace. Lizzo denies the allegations. The fat-shaming claims were dismissed, and the dancers dropped their bid to revive them; the rest of the case has waited on Lizzo’s free-speech appeal. A separate suit by former stylist Asha Daniels was dismissed in federal court this September.
“I’m fighting the case because I know that it’s not true,” she told CBS News in May 2026, adding, “the truth will come out, and that’s why I’m not afraid of it.” On Sunday TODAY this October she sounded calmer: “I had to make peace with the fact that there’s a version of Lizzo that exists now that the world controls the narrative and I don’t.” I will leave the verdict to the court, which is where it belongs.
The “weight release” and the new critics
Here is the twist nobody at the 2022 VMAs saw coming. Lizzo, now 38, has lost weight, and calls it a release rather than a loss. “I released the anxiety I was going through. I released depression and I also released some weight on my body,” she told CBS, crediting “a calorie deficit, cardio and protein” and adding that she is “not a skinny person” and isn’t trying to be. Her fifth album, titled “Bitch,” followed on June 5, and in July she was a digital cover star for SI Swimsuit.
And the comments simply switched sides. On The Jason Lee Show on October 7, 2026, she said: “I think that I was extremely healthy at my highest weight. My blood was extremely healthy.” Her reason was work: “my back was hurting.” What surprised her was people claiming that getting smaller was hurting her brand. “When I was bigger and joyful, all they saw was fat,” she said. “So, I can be joyful no matter what size my body is.”
She has also not abandoned the cause she is accused of leaving: in a November 2025 essay she wrote, “We have a lot of work to do, to undo the effects of the Ozempic boom.” That is the position of someone who changed her body, not her mind.
My take
In 2022 the problem was that Lizzo was too big for some people. In 2026 the problem is that she is not big enough for others. Same audience, same certainty, opposite complaint, which tells you the comments were never really about her body. She answered both the same way, by talking about joy and going back to work. The trophy in Newark is four years old now, and the line still holds: she’s winning, and she is still addressing everybody.
Sources
- CBS Mornings on YouTube: extended interview with Lizzo (May 2026)
- TODAY on YouTube: Lizzo talks new children’s book, music stardom, 2023 lawsuits (October 4, 2026)
- CBS News: Lizzo interview on new music and the lawsuit (May 4, 2026)
- Complex: Lizzo on The Jason Lee Show (October 13, 2026)
- TheGrio: Lizzo’s TODAY interview (October 7, 2026)
- Lizzo, “About Damn Time” (official video)
- Lizzo on Instagram (@lizzobeeating)
- Bustle: Lizzo’s VMAs speech and her tweet (August 2022)
- Billboard: Lizzo responds at the 2022 VMAs
- Billboard: Lizzo’s free-speech appeal in the dancers’ lawsuit
- Digital Music News: stylist’s lawsuit dismissed (September 2026)
- Sports Illustrated Swimsuit: July 2026 digital cover
