LIZZO said twerking made her realize that her booty, her least favorite part of her body, is actually her greatest asset. She said, “The better I got the more I fell in love with what I had because damn, my a** can do magic.”

Welcome to her TED talk. No, she literally had a TED talk about the history of twerking and self-love. 

Lizzo said, “I always felt like my body type wasn’t the desirable one growing up, because I grew up in an era where having a big ass wasn’t mainstream . . .  I felt like the ‘a**’ odds were against me. But baby, this bedonkedonk was going places.”

She said twerking is a Black American collaboration of Black Southern culture and has roots in West African dances. “I want to do everything in my power to prevent the erasure of Blackness from twerking.”

Lizzo said she twerks because it’s “unique to the Black experience, my culture, and it means something real to me . . .Black women invented twerking, and twerking is part of the revolution.”

You can watch her TED talk here; just note the b word pops up at 11:30.

— Jenn