USUALLY when one of showbusiness’s more corpulent constituents is pictured “showcasing their incredible weight loss” you need a laser measure to verify it.
Like when Gemma Collins “flaunts her new figure” in some social media photobomb, she always looks the same size as she ever is, if not bigger.
So when I saw a headline about plus-sized popstar Lizzo’s “transformation” I eye-rolled so hard I could see my neck.
Then bam! There she was, a whole 1,000st lighter, looking more like that 200-year-old glass flute she famously played than the double bass of old.
Squeezed into a basque at the BET Awards in LA this week, she dropped jaws with a silhouette that wouldn’t look out of place from Kim K. Where the hell had the rest of her gone? Blame it on the juice diet?
Maybe. Because according to Lizzo, it wasn’t fashionable weight-loss jabs like Ozempic that cut 16 per cent of her body fat so quickly,
Nope. Definitely not. Instead, she claims, she’s been dipping into the tuck box less, getting her steps in and pumping iron on Instagram for what she calls her “weight release”.
OK. But the real mystery is why she’s lost the weight in the first place.
After all, this once spherical superstar was perfectly happy with her dramatic dimensions. We know this because she never stopped telling us.
Her whole vibe was about being a “body icon” for the bigger-boned, once declaring: “I know I’m fat. It doesn’t bother me. I like being fat, and I’m beautiful and I’m healthy.”
So happy was she with her curves she styled herself as a big bouncy beacon of hope for all the plus-sized girls out there.
A put-upon demographic she described as: “Girls with back fat, girls with bellies that hang, girls with thighs that aren’t separated, that overlap. Girls with stretch marks . . . girls who are in the 18-plus club.”
And with her Big Grrrls schtick and “thick b****” chat, Lizzo wasn’t just promoting “body positivity”. It went further.
Being fat was reframed as having a superpower and by extension more “real” than other body shapes, especially all those “skinny hos” (her words) who decorate the pop world.
She even launched her own Amazon Prime reality TV series, Watch Out For The Big Grrrls, which hunted for plus-sized backing dancers.
As she put it: “What I’m doing is stepping into my confidence and my power to create my own beauty standard. And one day that will just be the standard.”
So what are her devotees to think now? Is she finally admitting that perhaps her exuberant promotion of obesity was a bit, you know, irresponsible?
Phoney narcissist
Perhaps she’s subconsciously pointing fans to recent research that suggested people her age, 37, who are obese, have a 52 per cent higher chance of a premature death?
Or the huge rise in obesity-related cancers affecting the breast, uterus and — apologies for spoiling your breakfast — rectum.
Is that what you’re telling us, Lizzo?
Because so far, all we’ve heard is a load of claptrap about “new perspectives”.
It’s no surprise that the star’s fans have blasted her outrageous hypocrisy. They feel betrayed, sold a pup by someone who they admired and who they felt spoke for them but seems to have turned out to be another phoney narcissist.
One summed it up, saying: “She’s becoming exactly what she spent the past decade saying she would never be.”
Such is her Damascene conversion, she has even been accused of fat-shaming her own dancers, something she denies.
The new Small Grrrl Lizzo probably doesn’t care about any backlash.
A quadruple Grammy-winning star worth $40million, she is certainly not stupid and knows that while you can probably carry off being a 28st superstar when you’re 28, as you approach your forties you may soon find yourself dancing with death.
She does not want to sacrifice her lucrative career on the altar of her cynical virtual signalling. So hang the fans.
But what a con. Building a world for her followers that she has no intention of living in herself and refusing to be honest about why that is.
She owes her fans a proper explanation — and an apology.
It’s about damn time.
SHOW SENSE, SHEIKH
I’VE never been to Dubai and have very little interest in doing so.
Visiting a scorching hot sand pit packed with moronic Towie types is not a holiday, it’s a prison sentence.
And for British teenager Marcus Fakana, it literally is.
The 19-year-old lad was caught sleeping with a girl a few months younger than him during a trip there last year.
He was 18 at the time but the girl was only 17, so cops arrested him for breaching Dubai’s age of consent, which is 18, and sentenced him to a year in some godforsaken jail.
He has now submitted a plea imploring the state’s leader, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, to show him mercy.
I hope he gets it. What possible good does his incarceration do for anyone?
Our craven politicians – and royals (he was mates with the Queen) – roll out the red carpet when the oil-drenched Sheikh comes over here.
It’s time for him to return that goodwill and let poor Marcus come home.
ORLANDO BLOOMIN’ BONKERS
THE lesser-spotted actor Orlando Bloom has spent £10,000 trying to remove all the microplastics from his blood.
Wow, they saw him coming, didn’t they?
Doctors were quick to question the bizarre practice, with one sniping: “I am not sure that it removes anything from the patient other than a lot of cash.”
Ouch!
It got me thinking of that famous picture of Orlando, paddle-boarding with his missus Katy Perry, with his willy out.
We all assumed he was naked but perhaps he was just proudly wearing The Emperor’s New Wetsuit?
OLIA’S MOVING MEMOIR
RUSSIA’S barbaric war with Ukraine has so far displaced more than ten million citizens.
Two of those forced to flee were the parents of my very dear friend, the chef and food writer Olia Hercules.
They lost their cherished home in Kakhovka, southern Ukraine, after Russian troops stormed in in April 2022, seizing everything in their path.
Olia, who lives in London with her British husband and two kids, has written about the harrowing experience and how it reshaped her family, in her new memoir Strong Roots: A Ukrainian Family Story of War, Exile And Hope.
It is an important book you can’t put down, spanning several generations that brings to life what war and oppression does to proud people.
But it is also a beautifully written and inspiring story about the enduring power of the human spirit.
It’s released on Thursday and I cannot recommend it enough.
EIGHT hundred of Poundland’s stores have been sold for £1.
Finally, something you can get from them that does only cost a quid.
BEYONCE’S GONE A BIT ‘SPURSY’
POOR old Beyonce has been forced to find seat fillers for her UK stadium shows, after punters refused to pay up to £620 to watch her pretend to be a cowboy.
She’s booked in for six gigs at Tottenham Hotspur’s 62,850-capacity stadium but hasn’t sold out a single night.
Yikes!
Still, at least Mrs Carter can take some comfort from knowing that she’s not the only one to experience great disappointment at the home of the Premier League’s 17th best team.
WHAT’S THE COVER STORY SABRINA?
SABRINA Carpenter appears to have been watching too many Bonnie Blue videos.
How else to explain her crass new album cover, which sees her on all fours as some random bloke lifts up her hair while presumably demanding she Please Please Please him?
You can’t see his face but maybe it’s that Robin Thicke dude, who sleazed all over those naked models in his creepy Blurred Lines video.
After proudly loading up the image on Instagram and hitting “share”, Sabrina’s timeline exploded, with fans branding it “disgusting”, “misogynistic” and an insult to domestic abuse survivors.
I’m sure the increasingly sexualised Sabrina, desperate to shed her Disney puppet past, thinks it’s all on-brand and hey, it’s done the job – everyone is talking about it.
But what message does this lame cover send to her young fans, who presumably make up the bulk of her fanbase? Like my daughter, 11, who thinks she’s amazing.
What am I supposed to say when she asks: “Daddy, why is Sabrina on her knees like that?”
