This cover is so joyous and festive and fun (and the editorial snaps inside are great too). It was just a pleasure to see this zip past me on Twitter yesterday, amid the piles of bad news — a little bit of zing.
The profile is a fun and interesting read, pinned to the fact that Lizzo has a reality show on Amazon coming out called “Watch Out for the Big Grrrls,” which is about the process of her choosing her backup dancers (who are named The Big Grrrls), and which sounds fun and which I didn’t know was happening, so it’s also service-y. I also found this thoughtful:
How would you describe what it was like for you becoming famous?
Fame happens to you, and it’s more of an observation of you. People become famous, and it’s like — my DNA didn’t change. Nothing changed about me. My anxiety didn’t go away. My depression didn’t go away. The things that I love didn’t go away. I’m still myself. But the way y’all look at me and perceive me has changed. It’s a very weird, kind of formless thing.
I don’t want to seem ungrateful. It was sad, and I had to talk to my therapist about the loss of who I was. Most famous people have been famous just as long as they’ve been a person, so they have acclimated more to it. I was going into dive bars and getting shitfaced in 2018. And nobody knew who I was, and nobody was bothering me. By 2019, I noticed I couldn’t go to restaurants with my dancers and stuff.
I had to call security, and they had to call a car, and we had to sit and wait. And I was like, “Damn. I’m just a burden to my friends, and things are different now.” It bummed me out, because you do lose a sense of your privacy and yourself, the old self. I’m good with it now. I’m fine. I’m young. I’m talented. I deserve the attention.
I actually think there are a lot of people who haven’t been famous as long as they’ve been a person and can probably relate to this, and don’t internally feel acclimated at all, but I also think it’s reasonable for any one person to feel like everyone else is dealing easy-breezy with the weirdness of being in the public eye. (Maybe famous people need a group therapy meeting to talk about this. I’m not being glib! This would probably be helpful. And interesting. Maybe Heather and I should write a book called Celebrity Group Therapy.) Regardless, it’s always refreshing to read this kind of honesty in a celebrity profile; the whole thing is an interesting read.
