23-year-old British dancer Elena Smith said she was fired from a hotel in Marrakesh where she was supposed to be doing dance sets after being branded “too fat”, the Daily Mail reported.
Elena, who claims to weigh around 57kg now, applied for the job online by sending pictures of herself and videos to the unnamed Marrakesh hotel in April 2019. After a Face Time interview, the dancer was hired to perform at dinner shows and events with other dancers until January 2020, for which she flew out to Morocco this June.
However, after just a week at her new job, Smith was sacked from the hotel where she was supposed to be performing sets in different styles, as her manager urged her to lose weight on behalf of the hotel.
“My manager told me that the bosses at the hotel had complained that I was too fat and that they were thinking of firing me because of it", the dancer told the Daily Mail. “I was totally shocked. Since I'd arrived in Marrakesh, I'd lost weight because of training anyway, so to hear they thought I was too fat was really surprising”.
“I explained that I was going to the gym every day and eating healthy food and that I knew my own body so there wasn't anything more I could really do, but they just told me I had to find a way to lose weight”.
The British dancer, who is now back in her native Epsom, claimed that her weight had dropped to around 50kg during the job at the hotel, but that she is now back at 57kg.
Smith, who is a graduate of the Centre PAC dancing academy, has reportedly fought a “starve then binge” eating disorder this year known as EDNOS, for which she has been officially diagnosed. The dancer said that she was devastated by the news, as they made her feel great “self-consciousness” about her weight.
“My manager said that she was going to fight for me so that I didn't have to leave, and I managed to lose a further 2kg in a week, but when I went in the following Saturday, I was told I didn't have a job anymore”, Smith revealed. “I was handed my final pay and told that the bosses no longer wanted me because I was too fat”.
Smith also argued that the hotel did not even pay for her tickets back home, despite initially promising to do so.
A spokesperson from the hotel said that they were “very surprised” by Smith’s claims, arguing that it was the dancer who had decided to leave the job, also insisting that the value of her air ticket was later reimbursed.
