'Where Did All the Big Girls Go?' Lizzo Sounds Alarm on Ozempic Culture

Lizzo has opened up about her dramatic weight loss, her mental health struggles, and her fears that plus-size women are being 'erased' by the global boom in weight-loss drugs — a cultural shift she says is reshaping everything from fashion to representation.

The 37-year-old singer shared her reflections in a lengthy personal essay published on Substack on 23 November, titled 'Why is everybody losing weight and what do we do? Sincerely, a person who's lost weight.' The Grammy winner revealed she currently weighs more than 200 lbs and remains, in her words, 'a proud big girl,' but one who is watching the world around her change at a rapid pace.

Lizzo: Plus-Size Women Are Being 'Erased'

In her essay, Lizzo said she feels that the visibility of plus-size women in mainstream culture has sharply declined, driven in part by the popularity of weight-loss drugs such as Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro.

'Extended sizes are being magically erased from websites,' she wrote. 'Plus-sized models are no longer getting booked for modelling gigs. And all of our big girls are not-so-big anymore.'

She warned that the Ozempic boom is leaving behind the very communities that built the body-positive movement.

'We have a lot of work to do to undo the effects of the Ozempic boom,' she said. 'I am still a proud big girl ... but the bigger girls are getting smaller because they're tired of being judged.'

Her Weight Loss Began in Crisis

Lizzo also revealed that her own weight loss began not as a fitness decision but during one of the darkest periods of her life. She said she started slimming down in late 2023, when she was 'severely depressed' and struggling under the pressure of a scandal that left her feeling isolated and suicidal.

'I had been the subject of vicious scandal, and it felt like the whole world turned its back on me,' she wrote. 'I became deeply suicidal. I cut off all my loved ones ... I couldn't tell the world the truth because no one would believe me.'

Rather than turning to binge eating, a coping mechanism she said she relied on in the past, she found herself unable to do so.

'This time I just didn't feel like doing that ... I didn't care about my body,' she wrote. 'In my self-loathing and self-neglect I began to rot.'

Pilates, Therapy and "Releasing" Weight

The singer said she eventually began Pilates as a way to 'process my pain through my body,' working exclusively with Black women instructors. She also went to therapy, where she uncovered why her weight had long served as a form of emotional armour.

'My weight had been a protective shield ... a joyful comfort zone ... even a superhero suit,' she wrote. 'I wanted to release myself from it.'

Because of this, she said she does not describe herself as having "lost" weight — but as having 'released' it.

'It was never about being thin,' Lizzo stressed. 'I will always have the stretch and the skin of a woman who carries great weight.'

Frustrations With the Body-Positive Movement

Lizzo voiced frustration that the body-positive movement she helped mainstream has been commercialised, and is now dominated by thin or mid-size influencers.

'When it was our little movement back in 2013, it was freedom,' she wrote. 'But then it became big business ... It's no longer for the size 16 and up community.'

She also expressed disappointment that some body-positive advocates criticised her when she posted her own before-and-after photos.

'It reminded me of the box the commercialization of body positivity had put me in,' she wrote. 'But if a woman wants to change, she should be allowed to change.'

A Call for Nuance

Lizzo ended her essay with a plea for more honest conversations around weight, health, and identity, ones that acknowledge complexity rather than forcing women into ideological corners.

'We release ourselves from the illusion that there is only good and bad,' she wrote. 'I want us to allow the body positive movement to expand and grow far away from the commercial slop it's become. Because movements move.'