Lizzo Pens Essay On Being ‘Cancelled’: “Sensitivity Is At an All-Time High”
The Grammy-winning star lists the moments she’s been at the center controversy in Substack post.
Lizzo at the Christian Siriano fashion show as part of Spring/Summer 2026 New York Fashion Week held at Macy's Herald Square on September 12, 2025 in New York, New York. (Photo by Gilbert Flores/WWD via Getty Images)
Photo by Gilbert Flores/WWD via Getty Images.
Lizzo is reflecting on what it means to be “cancelled.” The Grammy winner has been at the center of a few controversies throughout her career, and in a Substack essay published Monday, Dec. 1, she shared her thoughts on why “everyone should get cancelled at least once” and growing a thicker skin.
Called CANCEL ME (AGAIN): A ‘cancelled’ woman’s take on why everyone should get cancelled at least once, the essay features Lizzo acknowledging how she’s learned a lot about herself in the midst of public criticism.
“I was raised in the Pentecostal COGIC church in Detroit, Michigan, where the idea of hell was very real,” she writes. “If you disobeyed God, or were considered a 'bad person,' you were on a first-class flight to eternal damnation in a lake of fire.”
After explaining her childhood, she also shares that she became overly accommodating as an adult.
“I spent most of my 20s turning the other cheek. Childhood friends would say biting comments to me like, ‘stop singing, you won’t be a singer,’ or would ditch me stranded in a foreign city after promising I could stay with them, leaving me to hitchhike in the back of a pickup truck to get home. And I’d just… let it go.”
She then lists moments where she’s been “cancelled,” including her appearance at a 2019 Laker game in an outfit that appeared to expose her buttocks. “All those years of being a good person doesn’t matter to the internet,” she writes. “The internet doesn’t know that I faithfully turn the other cheek in the face of hate. The internet doesn’t care about what really happened to someone. It only cares about believing the hype. And if I’ve learned one thing about the internet, it is this: lies are easy to believe, and the truth is hard to prove.”
Over the years, Lizzo has been scrutinized for her weight; she faced criticism for using the word “sp*z” in a lyric, and she was sued by former dancers for what they deemed inappropriate and abusive conduct. In her essay, Lizzo lands on the conclusion that you can’t be preoccupied with being “cancelled.”
“You know what I’ve learned? F**k It. You aren’t getting out of this thing without unintentionally hurting someone’s feelings. Society is a big bleeding heart. Sensitivity is at an all-time high, and because of personalized algorithms, any content you see that doesn’t cater to you personally feels like an attack on your identity. It's left us in a state of paralysis, unable to make mistakes because the court of public opinion is always ready to be judge, jury and executioner.”
