You’re so special! Ariana Grande shared an inspiring message from pal Lizzo after clapping back at body-shamers who criticized her small frame.
The “Thank U, Next” singer, 29, took to social media on Thursday, April 13, to post a video of the “Good as Hell” songstress, 34, speaking on musical artists having to deal with comments about their body image.
“THIS BODY IS ART,” Grande captioned the clip via her Instagram Stories, adding an “ILYSM [I love you so much]” and tagging the rapper.
In the video, which was posted in January, Lizzo addressed the camera while lounging in a bikini poolside.
“The discourse around bodies is officially tired,” she explained. “I have seen comments go from, ‘Oh my gosh, I liked you when you were thick why’d you lose weight?’ to ‘Oh my gosh, why did you get a BBL I liked your body before’ to ‘Oh my gosh, you’re so big you need to lose weight but for your health’ or ‘Oh my gosh, you need to get ass or titties or something’ to ‘Oh my gosh, why did she get all that work done it’s just too much work.’ Are we OK?”
The Grammy winner then asked her followers if they saw the “delusion” that comes from commenting on people’s bodies. “Do we realize that artists are not here to fit into your beauty standards? Artists are here to make art. And this body is art. And I’m going to do whatever I want with this body,” she said before noting that “we’re f–king wasting on the wrong thing.”
Grande, for her part, posted a rare video via TikTok earlier this week asking fans to lead with kindness after receiving a deluge of negative remarks about her own physique.
“I don’t do this often. I don’t like it. I’m not good at it,” the “7 Rings” artist said in Tuesday, April 11, clip. “I just wanted to address your concerns about my body.”
Grande shared that she believes everyone needs to be “gentler and less comfortable commenting on people’s bodies no matter what,” adding that referring to someone as “sexy” can also be triggering.
“There are ways to compliment someone or to ignore something that you don’t like that I think we should help each other work towards,” she said. “Just to aim towards keeping each other safer. … There are many different kinds of beautiful. There are many different ways to look healthy and beautiful.”
The Wicked star explained that the body “you’ve been comparing to my current body” was actually the “unhealthiest version” of herself, as she was “on a lot of antidepressants and drinking on them and eating poorly” at the time.
Grande and Lizzo aren’t the only pop starlet’s to speak out against body shaming. Selena Gomez, who was diagnosed with lupus in 2014, has often been vocal about her experience with online trolls. In February, she took to social media to share that the medication she takes for her condition leads to her fluctuation in weight.
“I tend to hold a lot of water weight and that happens very normally. And then when I’m off of [my medication], I tend to lose weight,” the Wizards of Waverly Place alum, 30, explained during a February TikTok Live video. “I just wanted to say and encourage anyone out there who feels any sort of shame for exactly what they’re going for and nobody knows the real story — I just want people to know that you’re beautiful and you’re wonderful and, yeah, maybe we have days where we feel like s—t but I would much rather be healthy and take care of myself.”
During a March episode of the AppleTV+ docuseries Dear…, the Only Murders in the Building star got candid about how judgments around her looks affect her.
“I lied. I would go online and I would post a picture of myself and say [the negative comments] don’t matter, I’m not accepting what you’re saying — all the while being in the room posting that, crying my eyes out, because nobody deserves to hear those things,” Gomez explained. “I was posting these things saying it doesn’t bother me because I didn’t want it to bother other people who are experiencing the same thing — getting shamed for what they look like, who they are, who they love. I just think it’s so unfair. I don’t think that anybody deserves to feel less than.”
