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When You Are Both The Hero And The Villain In Your Story

Also Known As Black In Amerikkka

TaLynn Kel
5 min readAug 8, 2023
Image of Lizzo on the ad reading “Amazon Original Lizzo’s Watch Out For The Big Grrrls”

Navigating western culture is a never-ending study in power dynamics. They shift every time another person enters the room, because in western culture, power is everything. The ability to dominate and control other people is encoded into western life, and specifically amerikkkan life. Everyone needs to understand how power dynamics operate but most people won’t because that means admitting to the privilege they want to disguise as merit.

The lawsuit against Lizzo is a lesson in power dynamics, oppression, and the inhumanity of whiteness.

First things first, Lizzo made it clear that she did not want to be a fat activist. She wanted to sing, dance, and perform but because amerikkkan society openly hates on fat Black Marginalized Genders (MaGes), people began weaponizing Lizzo’s visibility. It has been primarily weaponized to push fatphobia, but because Lizzo is incredibly active, people have used her to defend fatness. None of this was with her consent but that is often the cost of visibility for marginalized people — we become caricatures and symbols, stripped of our humanity and individuality to serve a culture intent on consuming all of us. You become a target. Mistakes aren’t tolerated. Growth seems impossible. You are a product that everyone…

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TaLynn Kel
TaLynn Kel

Written by TaLynn Kel

Fat, Black, Femme Geek. I’m a writer & cosplayer. My blog is www.talynnkel.com. My books: Breaking Normal& Still Breaking Normal http://amzn.to/2FW5kl3

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