LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Lizzo is facing a lot of backlash after being sued by three of her former backup dancers for sexual harassment and creating a hostile work environment while working with the singer. The dancers, Crystal Williams, Arianna Davis and Noelle Rodriguez, filed the civil lawsuit against the pop singer, her production company, Big Grrrl Big Touring, Inc, and Shirlene Quigley, her dance team captain in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Tuesday, August 1.
In the lawsuit, the trio claimed that they were subjected to weight shaming while working with Lizzo. They alleged that she invited "cast members to take turns touching the nude performers," inside a strip club in Amsterdam. The complaint also accused Lizzo of encouraging inappropriate behavior, including "catching dildos launched from the performers' vaginas and eating bananas protruding from the performers' vaginas.” As per Newsweek, the lawsuit included several other allegations of religious and racial harassment, discrimination, false imprisonment and body shaming.
Is Lizzo playing the victim card?
On August 3, Lizzo took to Instagram to respond to the allegations leveled by the three former dancers. "Usually I choose not to respond to false allegations but these are as unbelievable as they sound and too outrageous to not be addressed," she wrote, adding, "These sensationalized stories are coming from former employees who have already publicly admitted that they were told their behavior on tour was inappropriate and unprofessional." The ‘Good as Hell’ singer claimed the aftermath of the allegations had been "gut-wrenchingly difficult and overwhelmingly disappointing." While many of Lizzo’s fans came to her support after the statement, a PR expert was not very convinced with her response.
Molly McPherson, a public relations professional and crisis manager, critically analyzed the ‘Truth Hurts’ singer’s response statement in a slew of social media posts. She claimed that Lizzo was painting herself as the victim. In one of her videos, McPherson claimed that the singer’s team strategically planned to post the statement on early Thursday morning when the media was focusing more on former President Donald Trump’s court appearance in Washington, DC, adding that the singer's statement showed she was "not owning up" to the situation. "When you don’t own up to whatever you are accused of or the allegations, you are putting yourself in the situation of deniability," McPherson said.
‘Now we have victim mentality’
McPherson continued, "Now we have a victim mentality. People are attacking me buttress of her value statement, which every good response has, and in her value statement, she's talking about her sexuality and expressing herself. That's a way of diminishing some of the sexual harassment charges," adding, "She's just framing herself as being very open sexually and the body shaming. She's not putting up with body shaming." She then claimed that the ‘2 be loved’ singer tried to restore her tour ticket sales by speaking about her work in the response statement.
"That's like a bat signal that she is sending to her fans to help leverage and mobilize them so they will rise up and support her ideally on social media and increase her ticket and album sales because Lizzo was on tour and Beyonce yanked her name from a shout out in a song. The goal here is to restore trust so you can restore ticket sales," Mcpherson claim.
The PR expert’s claims garnered immense social media attention, with one of her followers saying, "It doesn’t matter to these pr hacks whether harm was done, all that matters is how you manage the lies." "Only Lizzo could make sexual harassment about “openness with her sexuality”. I guess she’s open with others as well," another user wrote.
