Embracing a "Big, Black Ass" at a "Tiny, Tiny Ass Desk": Lizzo's Affective Performance of Choric Self-Love

Abstract

Abstract:This essay analyzes Lizzo's 2019 Tiny Desk Concert as an affective performance of call-and-response that provides insight into pleasurable transgressions of hegemonic boundaries to performatively spread love. Lizzo invites a transgression of these norms, eliciting a response from her physical and digital audiences to embrace the fat, Black, feminine abject as a means of self-love. Turning to the Black communicative technique of call-and-response, the essay illustrates the contours of the choric self-love Lizzo establishes with her audiences that transformatively reimagines a self-love that centers Black women's joy.