Lizzo says cancel culture is ‘appropriation’ and hopes we can ‘phase’ it out

The artist tweeted her frustration at the term and claimed it is being ‘misused’

Lizzo believes cancel culture is “appropriation” and has become a “trendy” and “misused” term.

On Sunday (8 January), the “Juice” star expressed her concerns about the phrase on her social media.

“This may be a random time to say this but it’s on my heart.. cancel culture is appropriation,” she wrote in a tweet.

“There was real outrage from truly marginalised people and now it’s become trendy, misused and misdirected.”

She continued: “I hope we can phase out of this and focus our outrage on the real problems.”

Cancel culture is the recent cultural trend in which a public figure  can become “cancelled” over a statement or their behaviour, which the majority of the public deems unfavourable or offensive.

The trend has been criticised by many who believe that it does not allow people to be fallible and learn from their mistakes.

Lizzo’s thoughts come shortly after she addressed body-shaming on Tiktok. 

After giving examples of the kind of comments she was receiving on her posts, Lizzo said: “Do you realise that artists are not here to fit into your beauty standards?

“Artists are here to make art. And this body is art. I’mma do whatever I want with this body.”

She added: “I wish that comments costed y’all money so we could see how much time we are f***ing wasting on the wrong thing. Can we leave that s*** back there please?”

‘Artists are here to make art. And this body is art. I’mma do whatever I want with this body,’ said the star on Tiktok (Getty Images)

The star recently admitted to being bullied at school for liking different music to her peers and dressing differently. 

“It was a Black school,” Lizzo said in an interview with Vanity Fair in October. “Mostly Black and brown, Caribbean, I had Nigerian friends... They were all listening to what was on the radio: Usher, Destiny’s Child, Ludacris, and I was into Radiohead’s OK Computer.”

“I kept it hidden, even when I was in a rock band, because I didn’t want to be made fun of by my peers – they’d yell, ‘White girl!’” she remembered at the time.

“I was wearing these flared bell-bottoms with embroidery down it – and they’d say, ‘You look like a white girl, why do you want to look like a hippie?’” she explained.

“I wanted to be accepted so bad; not fitting in really hurt,” the singer added.