Lizzo might not be the pro-fat heroine her fans have made her out to be.
A new lawsuit filed Tuesday accuses the “body-positive” singer of fat-shaming dancers, among a slew of other abuses that plaintiffs say fostered a hostile work environment.
NBC News reported on the lawsuit provided by the law firm representing three of Lizzo’s ex-sidekicks.
“The dancers accused Lizzo — a performer known for embracing body positivity and celebrating her physique — of calling attention to one dancer’s weight gain and later berating, then firing, that dancer after she recorded a meeting because of a health condition,” NBC reported.
According to the lawsuit, Lizzo apparently brought up the dancer’s weight after appearing at the South by Southwest (SXSW) music festival.
“The singer and her choreographer later told the dancer, Arianna Davis, that she seemed ‘less committed’ to her role — a comment the suit describes as a ‘thinly veiled’ concern about Davis’ weight,” NBC wrote.
How explicit Lizzo was about Davis’s weight remains an open question, one that will likely be answered in a Los Angeles courtroom if the suit goes to trial. The culture created by the “body positivity” movement for which Lizzo has become a mascot, however, has radically lowered the bar for what followers might consider body shaming. Any mention of Lizzo’s weight, for example, triggers routine condemnation as fat shaming of the singer who’s built her music career on the destigmatization of excess weight. Lizzo herself often claps back against the criticism that
