Why Lizzo's Wrong - By Neha Gajwani

1. NEHA GAJWANI Why Lizzo's Wrong Before you come at me with weapons and/or beautiful lyrics, I want to tell you I just had a dance party in my apartment to “Juice”. NEHA GAJWANI · NOVEMBER 21, 2019 Lizzo’s empowering and I’m into it. But Lizzo, and many other empowering people, have an odd habit of jumping from: I don’t need a man to I don’t need anyone. The first one is true. The second one—not so much. And spreading the message that we don’t need other peoplejust because we don’t need a partner damages our health. We know that we’ve evolved to need people, and that despite what some self- help gurus preach, we release hormones that make us feel happiest when we interact with others. Nobel Prize winning economist Daniel Kahneman gave handheld computers to about a thousand working women. A few times a day, these computers asked them what they were doing and how happy they felt doing it. He found that they were happiest when socializing or having sex. While we have ways to do the latter on your own (I will not be going into that in this article), socializing requires others. Lizzo’s lyrics in "Soulmate" try to promote self-love, but sometimes veer into being anti-people. For example, she sings about how instead of being with a man, she’s by herself in New York drinking. She describes her attitude as being about herself. She talks about how true love is with yourself. This sounds exciting, but it actually promotes all-or-nothing thinking: that we can either have everything with one other person or with no one else. But where are the other options to feel love? When we believe we need no one, we focus our attention inward, which, studies have shown, leads to loneliness (even if we’re trying to celebrate ourselves). And loneliness is not just a sad state—it has very real effects on your physical health. We know we’re 50% more likely to die early if we experience chronic loneliness. Lizzo comes after a long line of people who advocate we only need ourselves. Don Miguel Ruiz wrote, “In your heart is all the love you need”. That is blatantly untrue. It’s comforting—if everything you need is within you, then you control everything you need. But just as if I told you that you could blink and appear dressed at work every day, it’s a convenient, very wrong thought. Focusing on yourself is also a lot less sweet.

2. When did we wipe away the ability to get really close to anyone else besides a partner? How weird is that? What if, when we don’t want a partner, we didn’t jump over all the other people in our lives, and assume we need no one? Regardless of whether or not you want a partner, maybe try shifting toward the other people in your life—friends and family. You need them, and they need you just as much. I wish Lizzo would sing about how some guy doesn’t deserve her, but her friends do. In the meantime, I’ll likely keep having dance parties singing her songs around my apartment. FACEBOOK 0 LINKEDIN 0 TWITTER STUMBLEUPON REDDIT TUMBLR PINTEREST 1 0 LIKES