Demi Lovato has talked for years about body positivity, body image and realistic body standards for women. It’s an issue of hers and something about which she cares deeply. Demi also posts nude and strategically covered up photos often and, while they’re of course flattering to her, she’s not Photoshopping her body into comically unrealistic proportions like Mariah Carey. So that’s why it’s not surprising that she schooled a fan for drawing her body in what she considered an unrealistic way. Romanian fan Vladimir Serbanescu, inspired a photo of Demi covered only in a sheet on her bed (you can see that here, it’s a promotional image for her song “Body Say”) recreated the image to show her as a mermaid complete with (half covered) boobs and a tail. Instead of thanking Vladimir for the portrait, Demi commented on an Instagram of the portrait to ask if her body should look that way. The thing that makes this notable is that Vladimir responded that his art was meant to be a fantasy image and you could tell his feelings were hurt.
[A fan] drawing of Lovato topless with a mermaid tail caught the singer’s attention, and not in the good way.
“Is that how my boobs should look?” she commented on a fan’s Instagram that reposted the photo this week. “It’s gorgeous but that’s not my body.”
The drawing is inspired by a sultry promotional shot from her new single “Body Say,” which shows Lovato nude, but sans mermaid tail, in the same position. Unlike the fan artwork, however, bed sheets largely cover her bust and waist.
Vladimir Serbanescu, the Romanian artist responsible for the image, quickly defended his artwork on Instagram and responded to Lovato’s accusation that he misrepresented her body.
“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.”
I would understand Demi’s position if this was a photo on a magazine, but a fan drew this image as a tribute to her and she just crushed the guy. Of course she doesn’t have these proportions, but she’s not a mermaid either. He’s an artist he’s not going for perfection. I get that she wants to project realistic body standards for young women but maybe this wasn’t the place for that message. Also, kudos to Vladimir for defending himself so well.
I’m sorry, she is just an a$$hole.
Can you imagine being the artist/fan who spent time drawing someone you admire only to have her publicly dump on it? So hurtful.
I came here to say the same thing, so +1. Vladimir, it’s a cool drawing. Good job.
Yeah there’s a time and a place to make a statement or point, but this wasn’t one of them. Demi may have gotten caught up in having her brain in body positive mode, and didn’t step back to see the big picture here, no pun intended. Just say thank you and move on.
As someone who draws people I admire on a semi frequent basis, I would be absolutely CRUSHED. Yeah, it’s not cool to perpetuate the idea that thin=beautiful, but come on. Look at that drawing. It took hours and hours to do and 1000x that to perfect the techniques. Maybe don’t shit on someone trying to express their admiration in a way that absolutely isn’t meant to be harmful?
He posted it publicly – obviously without asking her first. Her body is her property, not his. It feels weird to be portrayed with an unrealistic body shape. He’s a good enough artist that he could have made her look as she really does. To change the proportions suggests that he thinks she would look better as portrayed than as she really looks, no matter how he wants to rationalize it. I think she has a valid point. And he brought it into public view. If nothing else he was promoting himself as an artist.
I’ve had “fanart” drawn of me that I felt was inappropriately sexualized. It was incredibly awkward as it was. I’d have been pretty embarrassed to see it posted on the internet. And I’m a nobody.
Sorry, nope. The artist doesn’t get a free pass anymore than a Photoshop artist gets one when they put a person’s head on someone else’s body. I’m with her on this.
Every time is the right time to call out a man who fantasizes about a female body who’s waist is drawn similar to the circumfrence of her arm. And I call bullsh*t on his whiney excuse that it’s boobs are that of what he thinks a mermaids would be. Puhleez.
Uuuuuuuugh this girl.
I second that. All I saw in the title was “Demi Lovato complains….”
This is so ungracious. He’s a fan, he put a lot of effort into what is a beautiful drawing. Say thank you and move on. What happened to grace in this world?
I second that. All I saw in the title was “Demi Lovato complains….”
This is so ungracious. He’s a fan, he put a lot of effort into what is a beautiful drawing. Say thank you and move on. What happened to grace in this world?
This guy didn’t do this for commercial or monetary reasons, he’s not furthering a career with the drawing–it was drawn in and for the best reason: love.
I can’t believe she shit all over it. What a loser.
She’s just mad her boobs don’t look like that in real life.
I see celebs on social media repost fan artwork all the time and give thanks. Not Demi. She complains about everything. Whether it has to do with her or it doesn’t. She whines, complains and sticks her nose in everything. This artist spent their hardwork and time on a piece of work that shows Demi as a mermaid so of course it isn’t going to look exactly like her but again leave it to Demi to complain instead of appreciating this person’s artwork.
“Demi Lovato complains.”
There. I fixed your headline for you.
LOL. This.
I cannot stand her.
Nor can I. You can own your experiences and your struggles without making them the issue of the day every single day.
That seem to be great consensus about her.
She has Fans That Draw tribute art?!??!! LMMFAO
lol she used to have one. not any more
Right??? I don’t think she said anything wrong. Just a comment that it looks better than she really does. She’s got what, maybe three years left of relevancy?
very rude of her. Just thank the fan for their tribute and shut up.
It’s a beautiful piece, but I actually agree with her. Her waist is slimmed, her breasts are ballooning and you can count her ribs. The excuse of “it’s fantasy” is the same one given for why female comic book characters and superheroes are drawn in such highly sexualized ways that they couldn’t actually function as heroines. No clothing, no muscle, no armor, just beautiful, ridiculous things to look at. Why is that the fantasy, rather than a strong body that could actually kick a criminals ass or swim through the ocean with blazing speed?
She’s being represented as a mermaid. Mermaids don’t look like Demi Lovato or human beings in general. Not everything needs to be made out to be realistic.
While I agree, why is then that when women are drawn as fantasy creatures, we are only made to look “unrealistic” in one direction? I don’t see too many video game characters or deviantart drawings of fat, flat-chested mermaids.
On the other side of that argument why are so many male superheroes tall, extremely muscular and many times very handsome? It works both ways. And saying that doesn’t mean I don’t agree with you to some extent- female characters are often problematic but the point of fantasy is to live out a life you wouldn’t normally be able to do as a mortal. A mermaid is a fantasy creature and even if they were real, with all that swimming I doubt they would have a normal sized waist. 😋 Regardless of all that, the picture is absolutely beautiful and who knows how much time and effort this man took to create something he was proud of, she could have went about it differently.
I don’t disagree, unrealistic body standards are not great for anyone.
@embertine I don’t really think men drawn as fantasy creatures or superheroes look realistic either.
Mermaids don’t look like anything. It’s not like there’s an actual mermaid anyone’s basing them on, so everyone’s free to draw them however they like.
This guy drew a naked (mermaids are usually drawn with some kind of top or at least have their hair covering their breasts) mermaid with a body type he finds hot and stuck Demi’s head on it. If you put your fetish out into the world like that you’re opening yourself up to negative comments.
Most (though not all) male superheroes have bodies at the extreme end of the scale … but actually achievable. Meanwhile, most (but not all) female superheroes have bodies that are impossible. It’s made worse by the poses, which are physically impossible for people with normal spines.
Buzzfeed did an amazing article, where they got normal women to copy female superhero poses (as best they could), then photo-shopped their bodies to make it match. You don’t realise quite how impossible the bodies are until you see the freaky photoshop tricks they have to pull. Google “we had women photoshopped into stereotypical comic book poses”.
The thing is, male bodies in comics are a different sort of fantasy, still aimed at dudes, because it wasn’t until recently that comics really started to care about women as an audience. Male characters are who the creators/traditional audience want to be; female characters are who they want to f*ck.
If anyone’s interested, check out the Hawkeye Initiative. It’s an amazing and hilarious take on some of the same issues brought up in the article mentioned downthread.
Oops, posted in wrong place. But I concur, BendyWindy!
I disagree, her waist looks smaller and her butt looks way bigger in the original she posted. The mermaid one made her look more realistic in those areas. She should complain about that as well.
And I agree with you, but that is another issue. Everybody already knows how and what she thinks about body positivity. A fan took his time to do something for her and she should just be grateful. Or don’t say anything at all if it disturbs you so much, but that was unncessary rude.
She was very rude to him. A simple thank you and a phone call to your best friend to gripe would have been sufficient.
@Bendy Windy & Katie, yeah, I’m with you guys on this one. I know a lot of people here can’t stand Lovato, but I don’t really know a lot about her. In this instance I get where she’s coming from. Yeah, the guy took a lot of time apparently drawing this….which precisely no one asked him to do, I don’t why anyone is calling her ungrateful. The guy drew her from a photo and gave her p*rn star proportions in the name of “fantasy”, how original *yawn*. Is it a thing now that women celebrities have to celebrate all their fan art even when they disagree with what the image is representing?
Then don’t respond. Plenty of fans draw male celebs in art and they ignore it. They don’t say negative things because of it, they just ignore it. Demi could have rolled her eyes and moved on, but instead she insulted someone.
But she didn’t insult him, she said his picture was gorgeous but not representative of her. That’s hardly major shade. I can get her responding too, not only did he tag her in his post he encouraged all of his followers to do the same, something he apparently does with a lot of celebs. He wanted her attention, and got it, but if you obviously distort someone’s body into male-gaze fodder and beg for their feedback don’t act all whiney if they don’t fawn over it. JMO
Agreed @Gretchen
I think there is a difference between superheroes, which are supposed to be based on humans but then look ridiculous because they have no muscles or armor (unless they are invincible and don’t need armor), and literal fantasy creatures like mermaids. Mermaids don’t actually exist so anyone is free to draw them how they wish. But you can’t take a human, give them no muscles and broken-body poses and say they are strong. Humans don’t work like that. But mermaids can work however the artist wants them to work.
But it isn’t as if she was looking strong and muscular in the original photo and he removed those things. She was looking very slender in that photo. He just covered her butt crack and improvised on the top half.
It also doesn’t look like her face, funny how she’s not complaining about that, though.
There’s other ways she could have gone about this. She could have at least acknowledged how much work went into this – she could have said something like “Wow! This is beautiful – but only in a world of mermaids would I have that tiny of a waist and big of a bust!” and kind of joked about it.
Exactly, that would’ve been perfect. But it’s like she cannot resist bringing up body language and feeling bullied every time she opens her mouth. If she wants to be known for that instead of singing, she’s doing a great job.
Her face in the drawing looks exactly like in the photo she posted. So yeah, she shouldn’t have uploaded that because it’s not how she really looks.
My thoughts exactly. Its great that you want to promote positive body image, realistic body image, etc. But it’s a fan who drew a cool picture of you, ffs! While not perfect, accept the good intentions he had and save your body image issues for magazines who deliberately Photoshop your actual body into something else.
I think she should hire you to handle her social media, Erinn.
I’d glady take the money hahaha. Honestly – it always baffles me how bad these people are with just being basic human beings.
I was thinking just that.
“Oh this is beautiful, thank you! I wish my boobs looked like that, haha only in my dreams”
is so much nicer than,
“Is that how my boobs should look?”
I had one person draw me a picture. I did not tell them once that I am not magenta and stick shaped.
“I had one person draw me a picture. I did not tell them once that I am not magenta and stick shaped.” LOL, nice.
But she DOESN’T wish her boobs looked like that. She is very outspoken about liking the body she has and setting an example for young girls to do the same. Why on earth would she reinforce this type of image as a superior standard of beauty than her own natural figure?!
I’m torn between tone policing, she shouldn’t have to speak a certain was on a topic to have people listen, and the idea that as a celebrity you should be kind and gracious to those you owe your livelihood.
I land on this – Demi should have handled this better. I realize that it probably hurts to see your body depicted in a way that basically says – yeah you’re hot, but you’d be hotter if…. scribbles in larger boobs, erases part of the midsection, adds tail.
It is a great opportunity to have a conversation about body image, the male gaze in fantasy art and why in the hell artists ever thought tits looked like that. To bring young women in to talk about how it impacts them, to have Demi even say it impacted her. If she said, this makes me upset because of my history with an eating disoder, depicting me in a way that is not realistic triggers that. I would have tons more respect.
Standing on your massive platform and specifically pointing out one person is not going to have effect you want. It’s just going to make one person feel bad.
Maybe my standards are too high for her, but pick your battles and be kind to others.
She has the worst attitude
She sucks as a person. So ungrateful.
This. She just seems to suck as a person. She wants to appear to take a stand and assert herself, but so often her efforts are blundered and the point she tries to make gets lost in her suckiness.
Yup. The problem with Demi is she seems to have a permanent chip on shoulder. Even when she has a point (and I do think she has one here) the way she goes about making it is often such a turn off.
She really does. I always want to root for her since she’s been so public about all her struggles, but her sh*tty attitude makes it impossible for me.
Eh, I can understand why a woman who’s publicly struggled with eating disorders might be annoyed at seeing a drawing of her that depicts the kind of unrealistic body standards that have been so damaging to her.
And honestly……these kinds of fans are weird to me – the ones who draw sexualized, naked images of a celebrity and then deliberately bring it to the celebrity’s attention (the artist tagged her and asked others to do likewise).
If you insist on making sure a celebrity sees the half-naked drawing you made of her, then be prepared for her to comment and the possibility that she may express discomfort with some aspect of it (or the whole thing).
In this case, Demi’s mild criticism (which was preceded by a compliment – she called it “gorgeous”) hardly constitutes a “crushing” attack.
She’s nude (on a sheet) in the reference photo. How is it rude to present someone with an artistic depiction of how they have already presented themselves? And the sheet covers up her bust so an artist *must* imagine how the breasts and waist sit on the surface, so regardless of going for realistic or exaggerated proportions it won’t ever look just like her body because imagination must be used as a tool to fill in that space.
She’s very thin skinned imo
Wait, why must the artist imagine how her breasts looked behind the sheet?
They could’ve copied the original exactly and hidden the breasts with whatever surface the mermaid is lying on. (Is it sand? Is it water?) There was no need to show more skin the Demi did in the original shoot.
Actually, probably would’ve made a better picture that way, since the way the body is interacting with the surface looks wrong.
because it’s a mermaid and they are know to be half naked, he did so in a subtle way, on the side, so I think it’s totally ok.
I agree Dana. I feel bad for the guy but at the same time, yeah, maybe you shouldn’t draw someone with a history of eating disorders with a super tiny waist, visible back ribs, and HUGE boobs. Where does it say that’s what mermaids look like? Disney may have given their mermaids little tiny waists but they certainly didn’t have ballooning breasts. I don’t know, I’m conflicted about this one.
I can see both sides of the argument, but I agree especially with your first paragraph, Dana. Demi is very vocal about body acceptance, but I’m inclined to think that part of the reason she strives so hard to push body positivity is precisely because she still isn’t 100% comfortable in her own skin, but she needs to convince herself that she is. I still struggle with food issues myself, and while I would never want to be as skinny as I was when I was at my lowest weight, I’d be lying if I said that I never catch myself comparing other women’s thighs to my own.
It’s rude, this person worked hard on this and if she didn’t like how it represented her body all she had to do was not post it.
However, this is Demi.
This^^
As a similar artist, I have to agree with her on this. I follow a lot of similar artists on IG, and most of the work features female subjects rendered for the male gaze. Trying to justify this particular portrayal as “fantasy/imaginary creature” is total BS. The focus is on the bewbs/sexy hands-face, not the tail. I’m so tired of all this fetish-ized female imagery in my IG feed that I’ve stuck to using only hot dudes as subjects in my practice. Yes, I realize flipping the script like this- objectifying men in response to their objectification of women- is not solving the problem. But it feels like I’m carving out a small bit of revenge and that feels good. 🙂
Yes, excactly. I find this drawing creepy and her reaction more than justified. Just because she is a celebrity doesnt mean that she has to accept this drawing and shut up. She of all people hat a right to criticise this. I would have done the same if some random guy took a picture of me in bikini and drew an almost naked version of me out of it.
Yeah, I agree with you Lolo. I do art for fun and I personally didn’t even find her comments that bad, considering she did complement the piece. I can’t say I like her but she’s justified in her reaction. She didn’t ask him to draw her and I find the was he did draw her to be a bit creepy imo.
Totally. She owes him nothing and it really is a creepy thing to do. 😛
I really can’t stand her anymore. I used to stand up for her, because I like when she spread positive messages about mental and health problems but she’s so irksome. I’ve read her answers below that fan art, it was rude and disrespectful. A fan gave up his time to draw that, so at least have the decency to answer in a proper manner.
I thought this was unnecessarily rude of her! Imagine the amount of time that went into that drawing. There are a million other ways she could’ve made the point that she did. Demi truly is an asshole.
Just my opinion but she has terribly low self esteem and walks around always complaining when she is the one with the problem. After hearing the way she talked about telling that Jonas boy to dump his girlfriend, I have no sympathy left for this one.
I think this is ridiculous. It’s art FFS. I hope this young man doesn’t spend any more time on her…
He just photoshopped her head on it, right? He didn’t redraw it? Hard for me to tell, but it looks so identical I think he just photoshopped it on to his drawing.
I think she has a valid point. This is not how the artist imagines mermaids, the image depicts how he imagines HER as a mermaid. Demi as a mermaid. If he wanted to draw a mermaid, he would have used a generic face image. But he didn’t, he chose her.
In doing so, he made her body be what HE wanted it to be, not what it is. And she took issue with that. And I agree with her.
It’s not paying homage to who she is, it’s using her body for his own purposes, and she said no. No way.
And I agree with her. Her body, her right to dictate how and when it is used.
I’m totally on her side over this, but I’m sure it’s drawn. I looked at his instagram – he’s damn good at drawing faces from photos. And, actually, I can see one tiny difference – the eyebrows in his pic are more flattering than her real ones.
Other than that, I agree with everything else you said. Just because you’re a fan doesn’t give you rights over your idol. They don’t owe you anything!
To be honest, I have doubts that he’s particularly a fan of hers in the first place. He’s been drawing a lot of famous people, tweeting/posting the pictures at them, and encouraging his followers to do the same. Seems less like a particular fan and more like a savvy artist trying to build attention for his work. I don’t think he’s some scumbag who intentionally annoyed Demi for publicity, but I don’t think he was some mega fan either.
Great comment, you said what I couldn’t articulate! To me the drawing says, “Ideally, this is what your body would look like” and compared to the photo below it, that’s not her body AT ALL.
This ^^
I totally agree. I see nothing wrong, at all, with a woman seeing a picture of her with exaggerated parts saying “nope- that’s not me.”
She did a piece of art with her photo & album and the whole point of it was to show her raw but real and that it is okay. He took that art and used it for the exact opposite idea and made her unrealistic. Dude kind of stole & then took a big poop on her art.
I am for Demi on this one.
@original Kay I’ve been following this artist for awhile, and I am 100% certain he drew this. As a fellow artist, it kind of irks/amuses me that you would assume it’s photoshop because it’s too good.
As far as Demi goes, meh… I can’t stand her, but she has every right to dislike the picture. Facing criticism is the risk every artist takes by posting their work. She doesn’t have to be grateful for the time and effort he put in if she doesn’t like the picture. Honestly, if she didn’t come across so throughly unlikable all the time, I would probably side with her here. But, considering how annoying I find her in general… I am “team no one” on this.
Has anybody stopped to think that maybe this is how the artist actually SEES Demi’s body?
Because I took several required nude model drawing classes in college and if you walked around the room and looked at people’s easels, you would see widely differing interpretation of the same nude body. That tends to happen when you’re making art: sometimes you play around with exaggerating the body type/parts because it makes for prettier lines or a more visually-appealing piece. Sometimes you exaggerate accidentally, because you got the proportions wrong, and you continue with it because you only have two hours to produce seven completed drawings.
And sometimes you just have a completely opposite interpretation of a nude body than your classmate did not. A lot of that has to do with subjectivity in that how we visually render nude bodies is often dependent on how we SEE that body type, which as we know even from this forum can vary greatly. Some people covet the curvy body type, others the fit body type etc etc.
I mean, I’m as exhausted with the unrealistic portrayal of the female body as everyone else, but I also know how artists think and not every artists is trying to promote the *sexay, hot female body* image, sometimes we’re just trying to create something sensual, soft, or beautiful to look at.
Just remember that at it’s heart, a drawing is a visual communication. That being said, a visual communication doesn’t have any obligation to make a social statement or any commentary whatsoever. It just depends on the artist’s intention.
*shrugs*
Well said.
I scratched my head for a while at your comment and like it…..I think that this may be part of Demi’s issue though. She wants to be the pop star that has a typical body and girls can relate to. The machine wants to make her skinny, have bigger boobs- that is what she was pushed to for so long in the industry growing up and she is trying to rail against it. This pic goes against what I think her underlining message is and that’s why she commented against it to slap it down. She doesn’t want to be seen with big boobs, skinny waist & mythological- she wants to be seen as a real woman who overcame real struggles & is trying to get comfortable in who she is. This is how some people see her and she doesn’t like it and will say so. I don’t fault her for that.
*shrugs too*
I’m a portrait artist and if that’s how he sees her, then itt indicates a lot of troubling issues. The composition and focus of this piece screams, “desireable sex object for me to eye-bang” and “I don’t know what boobs look like except for what I see in porn.” 🙁
I think the art is beautiful. Great work, Vlad. Keep it up. 🙂
“It’s gorgeous but that’s not my body.”
Because he drew you as a mermaid, moron. Of course your body doesn’t look like that. You don’t have a mermaid tail! Just accept the artwork as artwork and be thankful (or say nothing and ignore it like the many other fan art I’m sure you either don’t see or just ignore). Don’t be an a-hole.
Demi Lovato trolls fan pages is the moral of the story.
God she is a MOLE
I don’t follow Demi so I’m going in with little knowledge of her. But I sure as hell wouldn’t be flattered. He made her waist and butt much smaller, and gave her gigantic hard implants that miraculously stand on their nipples. I find it very creepy. I’m not a celebrity, but I wouldn’t want to represent my true beautiful body, and be turned into a sexualized unattainable porn version by someone obviously doing it for fame. And how ridiculous to claim that he’s not to be criticized because he’s fantasizing her as a mermaid. More like a porn star. And why should she pretend to be flattered when he clearly thinks her body is wrong and he is making it more beautiful? And more beautiful to whom exactly?
This.
The drawing is great. On the one hand if you’re any type of artist putting your work out for public consumption (and especially if you’re presenting it to the subject) you have to be able to take a little bit of positive and negative feedback (but not name-calling and personal attacks, which she didn’t do, and said the work itself was gorgeous) for your work. But on the other hand, Demi has been publicly rude multiple times by now. I do think she’s overreacting a little bit, but she’s also someone who’s had an eating disorder and had body image issues, so maybe seeing herself drawn like this bothers her a little bit. But a fan making fan art won’t always be aware of what kind of drawing will bother the person (and they shouldn’t be expected to always be aware of it either).
I dunno, after reading your comment, I’m on the fence.
If he is a fan of her, not just her body, he should be aware of what she stands for and that this type of depiction would make her upset.
She’s exhausting. It’s fan art. Calm down.
I get why she’s upset over this. She’s really self concious.
However, she could have just left it alone, not commented on it. She’s very insecure.
I didn’t realize her mermaid tail looked like that either…
If he’s a fan, he should know about her issues with body image and eating disorders. Damn, I’m not a fan and I know how much she struggles with that. To be honest, I don’t think he meant any harm, in his male head he can’t see what’s wrong, but just like most of them, he couldn’t empathize with a woman’s feelings, even if she sreams them, he had to put his sexual fantasy first.
I agree. And after looking at the pictures again, he’s really not that good. Her right arm is all out of proportion. Guess he was too busy with the gigantic fantasy boobs.
Wow Demi sucks…… Some ppl are so argumentative over everything and dont see clearly. Clearly it was not a realistic piece since we dont have scales…slow ur roll dems
Oh good grief. EVERYTHING is an issue these days! It’s so exhausting!! Now even artistic interpretations are offensive?
Girl should be thankful anyone is that invested in her. I can’t believe she felt the need to pick this apart….. It’s a mythical creature combined with her image for goodness sake. Relax.
Okay, but let’s flip that argument around. He should also be grateful that she bothered to check his art out in the first place, since he clearly had her tagged. He should, instead of arguing against legitimate criticisms by the subject, accept that she might not have seen it the way he did. He didn’t have to draw her and she doesn’t have to like it and he should also relax because she didn’t even say the drawing was bad.
Everyone is focusing on her initial comments but his response to criticism was rude and honestly creepy. He’s not going to improve if he can’t take some criticism. Saying something is “fantasy” when someone points out your proportions are off is not a good response to criticism.
He hit her in the nerve, that’s the problem. It’s like I’m afraid of snails and someone makes a drawing of me covered with them.