Lizzo would rather have hired her dancers through an agency. But, as she says in the first episode of her new show that premiered last month on Amazon Prime Video, “Girls who look like me just aren’t represented.”
She talks about ‘representation’ in the professional sense. But broader questions of representation loom in “Lizzo’s Watch Out for the Big Grrrls.” The eight-episode show follows a group of aspiring plus-size dancers who recently competed for a chance to support Lizzo onstage and possibly join her tour as one of her “Big Grrrl” dancers.
Lizzo tells the dancers that if they don’t take the opportunity, she’ll send them home — or maybe not. A few episodes later, she tells them that maybe they can all stay.
“Most importantly, I didn’t want to eliminate every week,” Lizzo said in a Zoom interview.
“I’m looking for dancers, not dancers,” she said, emphasizing the plural. If she took out a woman every week, she said, she would have no one in the end.
A reality TV competition that doesn’t cut contestants may seem like a paradox. But Lizzo’s career always has surprising and somewhat contradictory combinations. She regularly appears naked and with her hair when called “brave” for it. Emphasizing the inherent value of fat bodies, she has started a shapewear line. She twerks and she plays the flute.
In the world of Lizzo
The Grammy-winning singer is known for her fierce lyrics, fashion and personality.
“I don’t have to fit into the archetypes created before, like Tyra Banks or Puff Daddy,” Lizzo said. “They all did it their own way, and that’s what I do.” Lizzo’s persona as a TV host is part demanding queen, part nurturing mentor. Several times during the show, she delivers imperious one-liners to the camera, holds it for a few seconds and then bursts out laughing.
Lizzo’s warmer and more supportive moments are tempered by her choreographer Tanisha Scott, who brings tough love and exactingness to her rehearsals.
“I can talk to them from my own personal experience, not to give up nor to feel sorry for yourself in any way,” Ms. Scott said in a Zoom interview. Ms. Scott began her career as an untrained dancer with an above average physique and has gone on to become a rare success in her industry. She said she had to work 10 times harder than other dancers to get where she is.
“So I wouldn’t be sweet and easy and ‘this is a bunch of roses’ and ‘we all have this,'” she said. “No. You have to work for it.”
Mrs. Scott credits Lizzo with opening the door to the greater commercial viability of greater dancers. “She’s not making this a trend or a novelty, she’s making it a business,” she said.
One of the unique elements of Lizzo’s show is how seriously it takes both the talents and struggles of its aspiring “Big Grrrls”. Each episode features athletic feats performed by above-average bodies, most notably including breathtaking acrobatics from one of the contestants, Jayla Sullivan. But the show doesn’t shy away from the dancers’ injuries, insecurities and occasional food problems.
Tonally, the show lives somewhere between body positivity – a concept that has fully permeated certain corners of marketing – and body neutrality, a newer idea that encourages people to accept and respect their bodies. The entertainment and dance industries are also in a transitional moment in their attitude towards bigger bodies.
“There’s a movement of plus-sized women emerging as lead roles, as stars,” said Nneka Onuorah, who directed the show and appears in one episode. “This show is just the tip of the iceberg about that.”
Lizzo said she’s seen the change “on a commercial level, where bigger girls are welcomed into casting rooms.” “I’ll even hear things about ‘Oh, we need a Lizzo type,’ which is really inspiring,” she said.
Still, Lizzo said there are still far fewer casting opportunities for great dancers. “I’ve seen big girls cast in music videos almost as a joke, not taken seriously,” she said. “So I guess it hasn’t infiltrated the dance industry.”
Jessica Judd, who runs an organization in the Bay Area called Big Moves that focuses on making dance accessible to people of all shapes and sizes, agrees. Her group worked closely with choreographers in the mainstream dance world for years, until they became disillusioned with a pattern of fat-phobic comments and empty words surrounding body diversity.
“They definitely know what to say — they definitely know they probably shouldn’t say it” hard on that they only want size 4 or less,” Ms Judd said, “but then you see who gets cast.”
She recalled the comments people made about plus-size dancers being “brave” to get on stage (“that’s not the compliment you think it is,” she said) and the feeling that mainstream producers or choreographers worked with them to tick a diversity box, then they go back to their uniform casts.
“I don’t want to be a perpetual support for the mainstream dance world trying to solve their problems around fatness and bodies,” said Ms Judd.
For Ms. Judd, Lizzo’s show is a big win for representation, but doesn’t necessarily mean anything for the wider dance world, where she’s seen a lot of lip service to body positivity, but little substantial change.
“In the end,” she said, “not many presenters, directors, producers, and choreographers are necessarily invested in getting fat people involved in their organization.”
Lizzo agrees that there is still a long way to go before great dancers are taken seriously and treated well in the dance industry. In the meantime, she concentrates on her own work.
“I just want people to know that this is above all an incredible TV show,” she said, working through a list of the crew members she worked with.
“I’m just fat,” she added. “And I’m just making a show about what I need.”