In my dissertation, I take up Cheryl Glenn's call to feminist scholars in rhetoric to "widen who and what can be defined as rhetorical" (2018, p. 210). Glenn pushes us to study not only the often-overlooked rhetorical contributions of women outside of the oral and written rhetorical traditions but also overlooked genres. Feminist rhetoricians have begun studying feminist musicians like Lauryn Hill (McGee, 2019) and Beyoncé (McGee, 2024; Fain, 2021), and I want to add to this new area of inquiry by analyzing how another feminist artist, Lizzo, performs her feminism within her feminist anthems—the songs themselves and their music videos. Tita Baumlin (1998); Rich Lane (1997); Patricia Sullivan (1998) studied the implications of using music videos in the composition classroom in the 1990s; other than that, music videos remain largely understudied in rhetoric and composition. My work broadens our understanding of music and music videos as rhetorical texts. I argue that, through her music videos, Lizzo seeks to enhance agency for her listeners, practice activism, and change the social order by expressing critical subjectivity, resisting and critiquing patriarchal gender norms, subverting sexual norms, and enacting feminist circulation. I write about the ways in which Lizzo's identity as a Black, self-proclaimed fat woman affects the feminist rhetorical strategies she takes up in her music videos, focusing on: "Truth Hurts" (2017), "Fitness" (2018), and "Rumors" (2021). I argue that through the employment of linguistic and visual modes of communication that evoke feminist rhetorical strategies—including but not limited to pathos, material experience as evidence, and queer ethos—Lizzo's feminist anthems work to challenge pernicious narratives often inscribed on Black women's personalities and bodies, like the angry Black woman, the Jezebel, and Hottentot Venus. My dissertation expands what we identify as sites for potential feminist rhetorical inquiry, and it illuminates how the contemporary feminist icon Lizzo defines her feminism and employs feminist rhetorical strategies in her songs and music videos.
