‘You are too fat to have cheese!’ the woman roared at me – The Irish Times

“Self love is not a trend, it is a radical act of revolution” –

The T-shirt arrived in the post one day when I was feeling low. As a pick-me-up it worked a treat. ’s beautiful face and body on a T-shirt sent me skipping back to her music, her words of joy and empowerment, her mood-elevating songs. “I’ve been so down and under pressure. I’m way too fine to be this stressed, yeah,” she declares in her -winning song About Damn Time.

“That’s right”, I told myself, faking it in the hope I might make it. “I am way too fine to be this stressed.” Pulling on the T-shirt, I gave thanks to my past self for her thoughtfulness. Sometimes after too much wine I’ve been known to indulge in a . I didn’t remember clicking a button to purchase this Lizzo T-shirt but I must have done, because there it was.

My friend texted a few days later. “Did you get my present?” she asked. “No, what present?” I replied. “Feck, I sent you something to cheer you up but it must have got lost,” she said and went off to hassle the couriers. It took a few hours but gradually it dawned on me that maybe I didn’t purchase a Lizzo T-shirt in a tipsy haze. Maybe had sent me Lizzo in the post. “I think I got your present,” I texted, adding a slightly embarrassed smiley face emoji.

Lizzo started to become a sort of mentor to me when she talked about her fitness regime a few years ago around the time I had started to exercise regularly for the first time in my life

I’ve been following Lizzo’s ascent to award-winning, chart-topping, TikTok- dominating queendom for a while now. It started, for me, with Good As Hell, one of the most cheering songs written. (Put it on now for an instant musical boost.) The 34-year-old American became an overnight success after 10 years of hard graft that included a…

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