Demi Lovato challenged a fan artist who drew her unrealistically and then got body shamed
Part of why we love Demi Lovato so much is that she’s not afraid to speak her mind on the things that matter to her. Whether it’s candidly speaking about her own mental health and the trouble she’s had in the past, or her own body image, we’re in awe of anyone who feels unafraid to share their truth.
However, the 24-year-old singer has recently become embroiled in a complex war online.
Basically, two months ago a fan from Romania, Vladimir Serbanescu, uploaded a fan drawing of Demi on to Instagram. In the picture, Serbanescu had adapted the singer’s cover art for her latest single “Body Say,” and turned Demi into a beautiful mermaid. It’s a really beautiful picture.
Demi, it seems, came across the picture and decided to comment about how it made he feel.
"It's gorgeous but that's not my body," she wrote, before asking, "is that how my boobs should look?"
These comments obviously upset Serbanescu, who decided to address them.
"If i make your waist slimmer and your boobs bigger to accentuate the fact that i drew you as a mermaid, a mythological creature, doesn't mean I say that you should look like that or all girls should look like that," he wrote. "That's how i imagine mermaids. I worked a lot on that drawing and i was proud of it, but not anymore. @ddlovato."
Demi then replied:
"I said it's gorgeous, sorry for saying anything at all. But it's equally offensive that someone would change my body because mine isn't good enough."
Of course, Demi is allowed to feel anyway she wants about how her body is being represented. However, this does call into question whether fans are allowed to re-interpret or riff off of images to create artwork. As Serbanescu said, he wasn’t saying that that was how all girls should look, he was just re-imagining Demi as a mermaid.
This caused a bit of a debate in the comments underneath the picture.
However, things were about to get even more extreme.
One Twitter user took it upon themselves to digitally alter the image. false
Fans were quick to chastise the new image, citing that Demi has previously spoken about her problem with her weight and eating disorders and that this picture is body shaming and could be potentially triggering. false
https://twitter.com/udfredirect/status/781894722650533888
Despite what you might think about Demi’s response to the fan art, the picture that was changed by the Twitter user isn’t okay. As many people said, it definitely appears to body shame Demi, and feeds into the plethora of online bullying that stars like Demi are subjected to on a daily basis.
Regardless of all this online drama, however, Demi proved that she was over it with this gorgeous no-makeup selfie.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BLGuPq0As60
Whether Demi was right or wrong to chastise the fan who drew her as a mermaid is up for debate, but we’re glad that she hasn’t let the resulting nonsense bother her.
