The Drop: Lizzo’s “Watch Out for the Big Grrrls” has Depth, Drama — and So Much Ass
The Drop is an ongoing series where Dani Janae and Shelli Nicole chat about Queer Black Pop Culture. This time they chat about Lizzo’s new show (streaming only on Amazon) Watch Out for the Big Grrrls. In the reality series, she brings 10 girls from all around the country out to L.A with the hopes that a few of them will join her on tour as her backup dancers. They chat through feelings about fat representation on reality TV, coded language about bodies, the amount of joy and ass on the series, and of course their thoughts on the show’s main babe — Lizzo.
Shelli Nicole: Hiya! Okay, so we got a sneak peek at the show and I am hella interested in hearing what you thought about it!
Dani Janae: Let’s get into it! So I was thinking, this is an Amazon show but, did you see much promo for it over the past couple weeks? I feel like I only saw it in passing.
Shelli Nicole: I had NEVER heard of it until it came across my virtual desk from some folks here at Autostraddle. That was hella confusing to me too because I actually do watch quite a bit of content on Amazon and still didn’t see anything about this. If there are government agents in our phones they would def have known that this is the show to recommend to me you know?
Dani Janae: Lol exactly! You got a reality TV show with a major pop star! You should be screaming about it.
Shelli Nicole: Had you heard of it? I feel like you hadn’t, ‘cos I follow you on social and you repost plenty of hot fat content and I feel like you would have shared this.
Dani Janae: I saw it a lil bit ago because a friend liked a video Lizzo posted of it on Twitter, but I was mindlessly scrolling and didn’t go back up to investigate. I thought she was just promoting a new music video or something.
Shelli Nicole:How do you feel about Lizzo in general? Are you a fan?
Dani Janae: I wouldn’t call myself a big fan. I like a few songs like Juice and some other big hits but I rarely listen to her music. I love her personality and the fact that she is such a champion of other fat people! She also has to deal with so much hate and I think she does it gracefully. I followed her on tiktok before I deleted the app, what about you?
Shelli Nicole: I dig her you know, like, we have some commonalities — we’re both fat talented hotties from Detroit — and I like her music. I’ve followed her career for a while but I think I learned more about her outside of that while watching this show honestly. I think we are on the same page about not wanting to have our bodies be so political to the entire world, but still wanting your presence to mean something to those who do look like you and inspire them in some way.
The show is about finding new backup dancers to go on tour with her, but I wanna pause on that and ask what you think about the term Big Girl?
I think it’s a very Black term, one that came before plus-size (I think?) and def before Thick but I —don’t like it? I’d much rather just use the word Fat or even Thiccc, but Big Girls low-key feels not great to me. I think it’s ‘cos it’s wrapped up in the ways it was used towards me in my childhood from mostly women family members or ladies at church, and of course the odd male commenting on a tween girl’s body…
Dani Janae: I also think it’s a very Black term! I didn’t mind it, there are of course more accepted ways to refer to fat women but I think Big Girls is less clunky than Plus-Size and less offensive than Fat. I use both those terms for myself, I think as a way to reclaim them, especially fat. But I can see how it would make people uncomfortable.
Shelli Nicole: That reclamation of the word is exactly what I think Lizzo is doing and that’s also why I wanted to ask you about it, I use a lot of the terms interchangeably too. I don’t think I purposely set out to use Fat as a way to come to reject the negative connotation that comes with it, I think it sort of just happened as I came to terms with my body, who I was, and how I looked you know?
Shelli Nicole: I also think it’s a thing between fat folks too, the gatekeeping of fatness within the community, especially from fat white folks, is so wild. Like, there are fat folks who will size check your fat body and tell you if you’re not X size you can’t use the word like — get out of here. BUT less on what I talk about in therapy and more on this show — I think it’s good, like… better than I thought it was going to be and a bit deeper than I thought it was going to be.
Dani Janae: I agree. I think it’s a super fun show that gave us a lil drama, lots of dance and rigor, and a glimpse into Lizzo as a woman and an artist that I hadn’t seen before. Like obviously you get her fun videos online and her music but like who she is as a person was still a bit of a mystery to me. I think her personality came through in the challenges she chose and the way she talked to the women on the show.What did you think of the women on the show?
Shelli Nicole: I liked most of them, but there were some that I just was not feeling and I LIKED that. It’s that drama that you’re talking about you know? Because they very well could have set this show up in a sorta coddled way and made it very woe is me, with everyone crying about being fat the whole time. Oftentimes people who create shows where fatness is the subject are like “Okay they are all already fat, we can’t bring on people who are mean or rude too.” but it’s like YES YOU CAN! You can be mean and fat lol, both of those things can be true!
Dani Janae: Lol yes exactly! I think there is often a tendency to infantilize fat people and be like “awww you’re a big teddy bear” And it’s like nah I can be mean too.
Shelli Nicole: Did you have a favorite episode? I really dug that each one was an hour long! The show def had a BUDGET which was so beautiful that they didn’t skimp on any of the details — including how fucking good Lizzo looked in every single one.
Dani Janae: Hmmm I really liked the one where the sensual movement artist came in and worked with them on connecting to their bodies, I loved that episode.And yes that show had BUDGET!!
Shelli Nicole: THAT EPISODE WAS MY FAVORITE TOO!!
Dani Janae: That was such a good episode. I loved seeing fat women get naked and vulnerable and get to see their bodies in a whole new beautiful light. There was a challenge on tiktok a few months ago that was like “watch the opening credits for nocturnal animals. It’s so GROSS!” And it was just fat people naked and dancing. So much media for us is like that. Being the butt of the joke. Being the gross factor. It was just so good to see women tapped into their bodies in a loving way and see the beautiful photos that resulted.
Shelli Nicole: It was incredible, I found myself getting mad that the one where they were the most vulnerable was my favorite. They shared their traumas around things and I didn’t want this episode — where they happened to be doing that — to be the one that folks focused on the most. Those are usually the only times that folks wanna listen to fat folks but…it was still so fucking beautiful.
I wrote down something someone shared in that episode that stuck with me. One of the girls was talking about her younger self, saying she would think, “If I’m fat, why I gotta be Black too?” referring to her complexion. That got me ‘cos WOW THAT WAS ME IN MIDDLE SCHOOL.
Dani Janae: Yesss!! Charity really touched my heart, especially with her being one of the older girls who struggled, but still tried really hard and was a fantastic dancer! I really loved that Moesha shared about being adopted and how that affected her perception of herself because girl SAME.
Shelli Nicole: I’m not the biggest fan of reality TV these days, so something needs to be either super trashy or super niche to bring me in and this def was doing that just a few episodes in. There’s also just — so much joy in the series.
Dani Janae: The joy was definitely palpable. I felt it through me when I was finished watching it. It made me want to do all the things the Big Girls were doing!
Shelli Nicole: In the house the girls are being playful and silly, folks are supportive but still quite competitive. There is so much laughter, smiling, and jumping around. They were actually happy and excited to be there, in this mansion just living their best lives!
Dani Janae: I loved how they were so supportive of each other and really championed each other. I was like, you can’t get that many people together in one house and not have lots of heads butting but they somehow avoided lots of drama and negativity.
Shelli Nicole: Also — the BAWDY in this show.
Dani Janae: Girl the sheer level of BODY. I was sweating in my apartment when it was like 60 degrees.
Shelli Nicole: Like BODY BODY too, from jump. Tummies, thighs, bare arms, and of course ASS. We were talking a few days ago about the show, and I didn’t believe you when you said there was so much ass but I should have because my goodness it was EVERYWHERE and I am not complaining ‘cos everyone is hot.
Dani Janae: Everyone is so fine, and I loved that it wasn’t just a standard body type across the cast, you of course had your hourglass, but there were women with big tummies and arms like you said. I was like “Okay this is so refreshing to see.”
Shelli Nicole: Did you feel like it was lacking anything? I ask because in the show, Lizzo says she had to liberate herself before she could help other people, and at the core of this show that’s what she is trying to do. She is trying to give them a chance to fulfill a dream, to see themselves as full bad bitches, she’s paying her own liberation forward and damn — isn’t that the dream, the goal? What a thing to be able to say you’ve truly done.
Dani Janae: Not really? I walked away from it feeling very satisfied, at the end of the day it gave me competition, which could have easily been sacrificed to appease people but like Lizzo said from the first episode, it’s an audition and not everyone was gonna make it. It had heart, emotion, laughs, and sexiness. It felt very well rounded.
Shelli Nicole: I feel the same, it could have just been another run-of-the-mill reality show — which honestly I would have been fine with because why do marginalized folks ALWAYS have to be expected to go above and beyond — but it also had layers, and those layers just so happened to be stuff that I could earnestly connect with. I know we can’t spoil it, but did any of your favs make it to the end?
Dani Janae:Yes!! One of my ultimate faves made it and I was so excited. What about yours?
Shelli Nicole: YES and I screamed because she deserved it! Wait, I know what could have made this even better. What if two of the girls in the house like started, crushing on each other? Dani Why am I always trying to make wholesome things dykey and naughty?
Dani Janae: Listen i was hoping for a lil dykin too!! Also, I wanna say more but I don’t want to spoil one of the funniest moments in the show lol
Shelli Nicole: So that just means we have to end this convo here so you can just text me and it can be our secret!
Dani Janae: LMAO yes!
Shelli Nicole: Thanks for talking to me again about cute fat hot girl shit!
Dani Janae: Yes, always love talking to you!
Sunday Funday Is Celebrating Lizzo’s Hallelujah Moments
Happy Sunday, little beavers! Happy Gemini season, aka chaos season!! I’m loving Gemini season and the abundance in chaotic energy. For instance, last night, I took out a Diva cup while wearing two-inch acrylic claws!! My friends and I also manifested, like, three different Black folks to the bar we went to last night, which is a big deal in Austin. The stars are aligning for chaotic good in my life and I hope you get some of it as well. LET’S GO SUMMER!!!!
+ The Gays are less likely to be religious than the straights. Makes sense, brunch is on Sundays.
+ In case you missed it, here’s the first teaser trailer for Pose’s second season.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPujB1Mi8yc
+ Nickelodeon Actor Michael D. Cohen talks about his transitioning in order to support trans rights. He transitioned nearly 20 years ago.
“This crazy backlash and oppression of rights is happening right in front of me. I can’t stay silent,” Cohen says. “The level of — let’s be polite — misunderstanding around trans issues is so profound and so destructive. When you disempower one population, you disempower everybody.”
+ Despite their devastation, the Dallas trans community is still living their truth.
+ Gillette’s new ad has folks verklempt.
https://twitter.com/MaskYouLiveIn/status/1132362516355354625?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1132362516355354625&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thedrum.com%2Fnews%2F2019%2F05%2F26%2Fgillette-lauded-groundbreaking-transgender-ad-champions-gender-inclusivity
+ When I saw “yee”, y’all saw “haw!” It’s gay rodeo season y’all!!!!!
+ Love Pride, hate the crowds? ABC7 will broadcast the LA Pride Parade this year for the first time.
+ Brazil’s highest court has voted to extend anti-discrimination protections to LGBTQ folks!
+ Here’s where you can get Pride swag that helps LGBTQ causes! (Don’t forget about the Autostraddle store!)
+ Judy Chicago on crowdfunding and collaborations.
+ How the Aladdin remake is making sure Jasmine is the true feminist icon we’ve always deserved!
“My girl’s a politician, do you know what I mean? She’s not just there to look pretty,” Scott said to People about her take on the role. “We took the kind of foundations of what was there from the iconic animation version where she was fighting for her own choice to marry, but now she’s fighting for the choice of others, which I think is way more powerful and her objective at the beginning of the movie is to lead.”
+ Lizzo on feminism, self love, and “Hallelujah moments” on stage. Gosh, I love this Black woman.
+ These unsung #MeToo heroes are getting their due.
Love y’all, mean it. Please take out your Diva Cup before getting acryllics! Please smell a cat belly today, if you can. Please take a sniff of the springtime air and relish in your one, perfect, brilliant life and everything you’ve done to get where you are. You’re a fucking rockstar babe.
Queer Art of Failure: Notes on Camp and the 2019 Met Gala
Last night, the baddest bitches went to the Metropolitan art museum in their baddest bitch clothes. This year’s Met Gala was arranged by Anna Wintour and was hosted by Lady Gaga, Serena Williams, and Harry Styles. Lena Waithe also sat on the planning committee.
As a whole, people didn’t read the essay and had no clue what “camp” was. There were lots of earnest trials and failures, however, and I think that’s the embodiment of camp! Straight people failing at camp is campier than I could’ve hoped for, friends. So overall, I’d say it was a success. Here are my favorite looks paired with my favorite sentences from Susan Sontag’s 1964 essay, “Notes on Camp.”
Also, Ciara and Big Freedia did…this together. It’s so campy I could quote the whole essay under it, so instead, here it is without commentary:
Janelle Monáe
“The whole point of Camp is to dethrone the serious.”
Billy Porter
https://www.instagram.com/p/BxIxp8zBW7A/
“So, not all homosexuals have Camp taste. But homosexuals, by and large, constitute the vanguard — and the most articulate audience — of Camp.”
Lady Gaga
https://www.instagram.com/p/BxJQjb_nHsU/
“For Camp art is often decorative art, emphasizing texture, sensuous surface, and style at the expense of content.”
Harry Styles
“To perceive Camp in objects and persons is to understand Being-as-Playing-a-Role.”
Céline Dion
“That way, the way of Camp, is not in terms of beauty, but in terms of the degree of artifice, of stylization.”
Katy Perry
“Camp is art that proposes itself seriously, but cannot be taken altogether seriously because it is ‘too much.'”
Gigi Hadid
“Camp is a woman walking around in a dress made of three million feathers.”
Miley Cyrus
“Without passion, one gets pseudo-Camp — what is merely decorative, safe, in a word, chic.”
Jared Leto
“The hallmark of Camp is the spirit of extravagance.”
Danai Gurira
“Camp is the answer to the problem: how to be a dandy in the age of mass culture.”
MJ Rodriguez
“One is drawn to Camp when one realizes that “sincerity” is not enough.”
Janet Mock
“Camp taste is, above all, a mode of enjoyment, of appreciation – not judgment.”
Robyn
“Camp is the triumph of the epicene style.”
Natasha Lyonne
“Camp responds particularly to the markedly attenuated and to the strongly exaggerated.”
Dominique Jackson
“To camp is a mode of seduction — one which employs flamboyant mannerisms susceptible of a double interpretation; gestures full of duplicity, with a witty meaning for cognoscenti and another, more impersonal, for outsiders.”
Yara Shahidi
https://www.instagram.com/p/BxJBnd0gg7U/
“Camp involves a new, more complex relation to “the serious.” One can be serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the serious.”
Dee Hilfiger
https://www.instagram.com/p/BxJEp9tB6rH/
“The Camp sensibility is disengaged, depoliticized — or at least apolitical.”
Tiffany Haddish
“Camp… makes no distinction between the unique object and the mass-produced object.”
Saoirse Ronan
https://www.instagram.com/p/BxJAAqKHB4p/
“Camp is a solvent of morality. It neutralizes moral indignation, sponsors playfulness.”
Jordan Roth
“It seems unlikely that much of the traditional opera repertoire could be such satisfying Camp if the melodramatic absurdities of most opera plots had not been taken seriously by their composers. One doesn’t need to know the artist’s private intentions. The work tells all.”
Zoe Saldana
“What the Camp eye appreciates is the unity, the force of the person.”
Awkwafina
Shine bright like @awkwafina #MetGala2019 #MetGala pic.twitter.com/mJ2KLLCn0J
— NYLON (@NylonMag) May 6, 2019
“Camp is the glorification of ‘character.'”
Whembley Sewell
MY KWEEN @whembleysewell <3 <3 pic.twitter.com/DXhafzCFCY
— gabe bergado (@gabebergado) May 6, 2019
“What is most beautiful in virile men is something feminine; what is most beautiful in feminine women is something masculine.”
Caroline Trentini
Caroline Trentini has amazing bone structure #metgala pic.twitter.com/EJ2tpDuyL1
— Margaret Cho (@margaretcho) May 6, 2019
“Only that which has the proper mixture of the exaggerated, the fantastic, the passionate, and the naïve.”
Hamish Bowles
“All Camp objects, and persons, contain a large element of artifice.”
Regina Hall
https://www.instagram.com/p/BxIz7GQnieP/
“Many examples of Camp are things which, from a “serious” point of view, are either bad art or kitsch.”
Serena Williams
https://www.instagram.com/p/BxJA_O3DypY/
“…In their relative unpretentiousness and vulgarity, they are more extreme and irresponsible in their fantasy – and therefore touching and quite enjoyable.”
Kacey Musgraves
https://www.instagram.com/p/BxJCjgUhhT5/
“Camp is as well a quality discoverable in objects and the behavior of persons.”
Tracee Ellis Ross
“Camp is either completely naive or else wholly conscious.”
Alicia Vikander
“Camp taste nourishes itself on the love that has gone into certain objects and personal style.”
Emma Stone
“It incarnates a victory of “style” over “content,” “aesthetics” over “morality,” of irony over tragedy.”
Zazie Beetz
“The androgyne is certainly one of the great images of Camp sensibility.”
Diane von Furstenberg
“Style is everything.”
Kerry Washington
“There is seriousness in Camp… But there is never, never tragedy.”
Sarah Paulson
https://www.instagram.com/p/BxJXQJXjFEI/
“There is a sense in which it is correct to say: “It’s too good to be Camp.” Or “too important,” not marginal enough.”
Kristen Stewart
“Camp refuses both the harmonies of traditional seriousness, and the risks of fully identifying with extreme states of feeling.”
Lily Collins
https://twitter.com/ohmazerunner/status/1125561095207444480
“[Camp]…is not a natural mode of sensibility, if there be any such.”
Jennifer Lopez
“Some art which can be approached as Camp… merits the most serious admiration and study.”
Dua Lipa
https://www.instagram.com/p/BxJYnOynFay/
“Camp asserts that good taste is not simply good taste; that there exists, indeed, a good taste of bad taste.”
Ciara
“Camp taste transcends the nausea of the replica.”
Hailee Steinfeld
“Camp introduces a new standard: artifice as an ideal, theatricality.”
Cardi B
“Pure Camp is always naive. Camp which knows itself to be Camp (“camping”) is usually less satisfying.”
Rupaul
“If tragedy is an experience of hyperinvolvement, comedy is an experience of underinvolvement, of detachment.”
Solange
“The new-style dandy, the lover of Camp, appreciates vulgarity.”
Cara Delevingne
“Camp proposes a comic vision of the world.”
Ezra Miller
“Camp taste identifies with what it is enjoying.”
Michael Urie
“[Camp] is the love of the exaggerated, the “off,” of things-being-what-they-are-not.”
Lena Waithe
“The relation of Camp taste to the past is extremely sentimental.”
Zendaya
“So many of the objects prized by Camp taste are old-fashioned, out-of-date, démodé.”
Tessa Thompson
“But since no authentic aristocrats in the old sense exist today to sponsor special tastes, who is the bearer of this taste? Answer: an improvised self-elected class, mainly homosexuals, who constitute themselves as aristocrats of taste.”
Lala Anthony
“Time liberates the work of art from moral relevance, delivering it over to the Camp sensibility.
Lizzo
“Camp is a tender feeling.”
Bette Midler
“Things are campy, not when they become old – but when we become less involved in them, and can enjoy, instead of be frustrated by, the failure of the attempt”
Lupita Nyong’o
“Successful Camp… even when it reveals self-parody, reeks of self-love.”
Indya Moore
INDYA MOORE.
thats it. thats the tweet. pic.twitter.com/g11XBBmauu— cuzzy (@cudegracah) May 7, 2019
“…The Camp sensibility is one that is alive to a double sense in which some things can be taken.”
Hari Nef
“And Camp is esoteric — something of a private code, a badge of identity even, among small urban cliques.”
Sunday Funday is Jamming to Juice and Lizzo’s Joy
Happy Sunday cuties! Three months ago today my cat died suddenly and that’s all I can think about so here’s some great news to take your mind and mine off of all the sadness in the world.
+ Get into it: A deep dive into Black culture’s intersection with camp in time for the Met Gala.
+ Here’s your Riot Grrrl essential listening guide
+ Getting into the queer afterhours scene in your 50s.
One late Friday night, while walking through a party, I was struck again by this sense of inclusion and safety, by the radicalness that is created inside these spaces. A group of women were dancing together, topless, three guys were making out, everyone was moving to the music. Jockstraps and dresses, leather and glittery velvet, all of us being elevated, pushed forward together. A young man grabbed me and started to kiss me. His eyes sparkled with glitter and makeup. He held my hand and led me up the stairs and onto the rooftop. Together we watched as the sun rose over Downtown.
+ Nonbinary hairstyles are as eclectic and cool as nonbinary people.
+ In case you missed it, the Tony Award nominations happened this week. Here’s who’s nominated (congrats to this season’s adorable queer musical Prom!!)
+ How Lizzo made “Juice” as joyful as she is:
+ The Rocklin school board has okayed textbooks that contain LGBTQ+ figures and history!
+ My home state of CT is celebrating pride for two months and they’ve got tons of events.
+ tbh, fuck the IAAF. All power to Caster Semenya and all Black lesbians all over the world. I love us.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UW-VgxlIZI
+ Dan/Danielle Owens-Reid discusses the rise of nonbinary fashion.
“I identify as genderqueer, and I’m not represented in fashion,” said Owens-Reid. “Anyone can wear a dress, anyone can wear trousers, anyone can wear a tee, anyone can wear a leopard-print jacket. Fashion is meant for all of us; ergo, we should all be represented in fashion.”
Besides the clothes Owens-Reid designs, Radimo represents 16 brands owned and operated by those who are queer, trans, people of color, black, plus-size, disabled, women, sex workers or nonbinary. Many of the owners are a cross section of identities, and most sell their items only online. “We bridge the gap between consumer and brand, allowing you to buy clothes, accessories, shoes and beauty products from someone who looks like you,” Owens-Reid said.
From each brand, Owens-Reid gets three to five items, putting together a campaign, photographing every item on three body types, skin tones and gender presentations. “This gives many people the first-ever opportunity to see themselves reflected in fashion,” Owens-Reid added.
+ Sam Smith spoke with GQ UK about coming out as nonbinary.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bw6fY0fATLH/
I have so many goals, and we have so many challenges. The first one is to build a political narrative completely aligned and substantiated with race and gender issues, and it all begins with making people understand that most inequalities affect those people. We can’t focus on a public security policy, for example, that doesn’t effectively prevent violence against those groups that are historically and institutionally more vulnerable. The black population is the most murdered and also women, both cisgender and transgender, are the most violated in all kinds of ways. Those people denounce a state that has failed them and they are not a part of the system of normativity. It is a goal to build public policies that break those cycles of structural violence.
+ Secret Diary of a Door Girl #8: Nite Dykez
+ If you and your homies have been trying to get on Beyoncé’s Instagram stories but can’t figure out the dance steps, here’s a tutorial for the #BeforeILetGoChallenge.
Here’s hoping your week is filled with sunshine and growth and love and everything you need. Has anyone told you just how great you’re doing lately? You’re doing so great. I see you out there trying new things and making new friends and accomplishing your goals and reaching your dreams. Keep it up, you amazing queer butterfly! I love you and I’ll see you soon (In exactly one month if you’ll be at A-Camp!!!).