The web is many issues, however most of all it’s swift. On Tuesday, an employment lawyer representing Lizzo’s former backup dancers, Arianna Davis, Crystal Williams, and Noelle Rodriguez, despatched round a lawsuit filed towards their former employer. These dancers are alleging a number of issues towards the performer together with failure to stop sexual or non secular harassment, incapacity discrimination, and assault. (Lizzo didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.)
Hours after the preliminary headlines posted, Courtney Hollinquest, one other former dancer, who clarified she just isn’t a part of the lawsuit, voiced her support for people who sued. Quickly thereafter, Quinn Wilson, Lizzo’s former inventive director, echoed Hollinquest’s sentiments, including that “I haven’t been aside [sic] of that world for round three years for a motive.”
Round dinnertime, Sophia Nahli Allison, an Oscar-nominated filmmaker, who had been employed to make a documentary on Lizzo admitted that she walked away from the mission after two weeks. She mentioned she “witnessed how smug, self-centered, and unkind [Lizzo] is.”
By Tuesday night time, whereas in Boston, Beyoncé left the identify “Lizzo” out of her “Break My Soul” remix. The track used to go “Betty Davis, Solange Knowles / Badu, Lizzo, Kelly Rowl.” In movies from the group, it appears like she simply repeats “Badu.”
Davis and Williams joined Lizzo’s crew after competing as contestants on Lizzo’s Amazon Prime actuality present Lizzo’s Watch Out for the Large Grrrls in March 2021. Lizzo employed Rodriguez for her “Rumors” video and stored her on afterward. Davis and Williams had been fired within the spring of 2023, after which, Rodriguez resigned. Apart from itemizing Lizzo as a defendant, the go well with provides her manufacturing firm Large Grrrl Large Touring, Inc. (BGBT), and Shirlene Quigley, captain of her dance crew.
The go well with claims that Quigley, the dance captain, is a religious, proselytizing Christian, and have become obsessive about Davis’s virginity and “singled out“ Rodriguez as a “non-believer.” Quigley, they allege, didn’t imagine in premarital intercourse, however would communicate regularly about masturbation and simulated fellatio on a banana. Complaints about her, the lawsuit claims, would go unheeded.
They’re additionally accusing the manufacturing firm of providing them an unfair fee of 25% of full pay whereas they had been on retainer and barred from looking for different dance work (different performers had been allegedly paid a 50% fee for such a setup). Within the spring, administration agreed to a 50% retainer however by then its relationship with the dancers was “very strained,“ in response to the go well with. (Quigley and BGBT didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.)
The dancers, the lawsuit alleges, had been “uncovered to an overtly sexual environment that permeated their office,” the place outings with nudity and sexuality “had been a focus.” In Amsterdam, for instance, throughout an evening the dancers felt was compulsory to maintain their job, they attended the membership Bananenbar.
“Whereas at Bananenbar, issues rapidly bought out of hand,” the lawsuit reads. “Lizzo started inviting forged members to take turns touching the nude performers, catching dildos launched from the performers’ vaginas, and consuming bananas protruding from the performers’ vaginas. Lizzo then turned her consideration to Ms. Davis and started pressuring Ms. Davis to the touch the breasts of one of many nude ladies performing on the membership. Lizzo started main a chant goading Ms. Davis. Ms. Davis mentioned 3 times, loud sufficient for all to listen to, ‘I’m good,’ expressing her need to not contact the performer.”
Davis lastly did so. “Plaintiffs had been aghast with how little regard Lizzo confirmed for the bodily autonomy of her workers and people round her, particularly within the presence of many individuals whom she employed,” the go well with reads. Most paradoxically maybe, Davis’s lawyer claims that Lizzo’s public posture of weight inclusivity didn’t lengthen to the dancers. She felt she needed to “clarify her weight acquire and disclose intimate private particulars about her life to be able to hold her job,” the go well with claims.
Although this allegation could be surprising towards anybody, it’s particularly so towards Lizzo, who has made herself the face of physique positivity and inclusivity within the music world by way of self-love anthems like “Good as Hell” and “Juice.” She has a size-inclusive line of shapewear and has spoken at size about her personal relationship to her physique.
