Apr 11, 2011 12:36 GMT  ·  By
American Idol producers under fire as girl claims she was told she was “too fat” to sit front row
   American Idol producers under fire as girl claims she was told she was “too fat” to sit front row

American Idol producers are accused of discriminating against heavy-set people by forcing them to sit in the back rows, even if they have tickets for the front row, it has been claimed. One fan in particular has quite a depressing story to tell about what happens during the AI live shows.

Ashley Kauffman. 19, of Riverside, Calif., tells Radar Online of her humiliating experience during one of the most recent American Idol shows, when she was told to go and sit in the back because she was too “fat” to sit front row.

Kauffman says she and a bunch of her friends all had tickets to sit behind the judges, but she and another plump friend were sent all the way to the back on the grounds that she was simply not skinny enough to appear in the front.

The entire thing made her sad and angry with producers: she knows she has weight issues and is insecure about her body as it is, she didn’t need for so many people to tell her to her face – and send her to the back of the room because of it.

“One of us was not in a great outfit and the lady said ‘Oh, I don’t want shorts in front.’ Then she looks at me and goes, ‘Oh no, you’re just too big, too heavy to be in front!’” the girl tells Radar Online.

“I was kind of taken aback. I’m not that big, but I understand I was bigger than the girls I was with. But I was like, ‘Wow, way to hit a low blow’,” Ashley explains.

The woman was just the first to tell her she couldn’t sit behind the judges, where she had tickets.

“My three other friends were right in the front row by the seated area near the judges. And we’re thinking we’d behind them. Well, the guy grabs my ticket and looks at it and goes, ‘this makes sense why you’re not with the skinny girls. You’re in the last row’,” Ashley adds.

Moreover, she says she wasn’t the only one treated this way, though, somehow, she’s the only one to speak out about it.

In the area close to the judges, there were only skinny and pretty girls – and the families of the hopefuls. The heavier girls were all in the back.

Ashley says she told her dad what happened and he convinced her to speak up in the hope that no one will have to go through that same humiliating experience.

“It needs to be known that they are making people feel like this. I don’t want to be walked all over. I want something to happen. I want them to see ‘Hey, look, this is how your people are acting there,’ when you’re not supposed to discriminate against anybody,” she says.

Reps for American Idol are yet to comment on this.