Lizzo says she didn't know about an ableist slur when she used it in one of her songs: 'I'd never heard it used as a slur against disabled people'

• Lizzo said she did not know "spaz" was an ableist slur when she included it in her song.

• "Using a slur is unauthentic to me, but I did not know it was a slur," the singer told Vanity Fair.

• She changed the lyrics from "…Hold my bag / Imma spaz" to "Do you see this shit / hold me back."

Lizzo says she had no idea that a word derived from "spastic" was an ableist slur when she included it in her song "Grrrls."

"I'd never heard it used as a slur against disabled people, never ever," she told Vanity Fair. "The music I make is in the business of feeling good and being authentic to me. Using a slur is unauthentic to me, but I did not know it was a slur."

She had included the word at the beginning of her song "Grrrls," singing "…Hold my bag / Imma spaz." After backlash on social media, Lizzo changed the lyrics to "Do you see this shit / hold me back."

"Let me make one thing clear: I never want to promote derogatory language," she wrote in a statement on Twitter at the time. "As a fat, Black woman in America, I've had many hurtful words used against me so I overstand the power words can have (whether intentionally or in my case, unintentionally)."

The slur "spaz" is derived from "spastic," Insider previously reported, which is used to describe someone born with a disability that makes it difficult for them to control their muscles, per Collins Dictionary.

According to the dictionary, the word is an "offensive" and an "old-fashioned" term for a person with cerebral palsy, especially in British English.

Lizzo told Vanity Fair she has heard the word mostly in rap songs "and with my Black friends and in my Black circles."

"It means to go off, turn up," Lizzo said. "I used [it as a] verb, not as a noun or adjective. I used it in the way that it's used in the Black community."

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