WOW. Now THAT was fast: http://www.savefrenchie.com/
2,788 signatures already on the petition.
With this kind of following–she doesn’t even need American Idol. Fox can kiss her ass. 
Who cares what strippers get paid or what specific acts they perform? So perhaps Stoid overstated the “primary source of money for the majority of strippers”. That’s not the point here. The point is, how and why is it different for a cute little white chick to strip to (at least) bare breasts, jiggle them in the general direction of men’s faces, bump and grind her body rhythmically, most likely rubbing herself in a suggestive fashion and a large black woman who strips to bare breasts, simulates what appears to be suggestive touching of herself and has still shots taken for men to oogle at? Why is the person who did the former allowed to continue as a contestant on a Pop Idol show and the latter kicked off?
There’s a possibility that Frenchie Davis is no longer being allowed to compete on AI due to previous recording contracts or other rules violations having nothing to do with her posing. If that turns out to be the case, I’ll reconsider my stance here. However, what we know right now is that it’s being reported that (at least partially) the reason she’s no longer a contestant is because Fox found out about her previous stint posing topless for an adult website.
And I think that’s hypocritical. And wrong.
Hey Shana:
I did. It was an unconfirmed speculation on The Smoking Gun, which I hardly consider proof of “exactly what she did”. She may be relatively “innocent” here, but Fox could be too. However, I find it odd that the initial reaction on this board, normally the home of logic, was an unbalanced bashing of Fox before anyone knew what she actually did–which we STILL don’t know.
This is the first I’ve heard about Nicki from the first season having been a stripper. Does anyone have a cite for this? Everyone here seems to be taking it for granted that she was (to the point of mentioning it in a protest letter to FOX), so maybe I just missed out when that news came out.
Man, the Idol message boards are flooded with posts about this. I hope they’ll pay some attention, but I sincerely doubt it will make any real difference.
Thanks, Shayna! I always liked Nicki (cause she was a little different from the others), and this doesn’t make me think any less of her, but it is indeed a double-standard on the part of FOX–assuming they knew about it before the first season was over.
From the USA TODAY article:
She’ll probably be more successful now than if she had won American Idol.
In the 45 hours since you posted this the number more than tripled.
In the 15 seconds after I posted my signature, 14 more people signed up.
Write them! Send E-mails! Send faxes!
4.5 hours, that is.
I’m at work on the West Coast so it hasn’t aired here yet, and I’m going straight from the office to the Citizen’s Police Academy that Spiny Norman and I are attending so I’ll miss it entirely, but I’ve read elsewhere on the web that both Entertainment Tonight and Access Hollywood are reporting that Frenchie told the Producers at Fox back in November that she’d posed for pictures on an Adult website. Can someone who’s seen either of these shows, or who will see them later, please confirm this for me?
If this is true, why on earth is it now, all of a sudden an issue, but it wasn’t when she disclosed it before the show even began airing?! Why bother to let her get this far in the competition, only to pull her out in the middle of it?
C;mon Shayna, you know why, we’ve been saying it all along: because she was emerging as the star, with an excellent shot at actually winning. And they couldn’t stand that.
It’s one thing to give the fat girl a shot, show you’re being fair. But to let her WIN?
Yep - if the pix come out in public. Vanessa Williams would be just another ex-Miss America without hers, right?
Still sucks, though. What she is said to have done is a mainstream activity nowadays. It would be nice to know what other skeletons are in the others’ closets.
Save Frenchie!
According to this article from E! Online…
That’s such crap. The website, from what I can tell, doesn’t use minors and doesn’t puport to – it merely uses the term “teenage”. Teenage /= Underage!
Yeah, sure, we could get into a whole other debate about that, but the bottom line is this… the woman was legally an adult when she posed. There was and is nothing illegal about posing for semi-nude pictures. And she disclosed this to the Producers before the show even began airing.
This whole thing just disgusts me.
When I called the American Idol production offices, the gal I spoke with was very nice and used the following phrase: “We’re trying to get Frenchie back…” I didn’t seize on her words at the time, but I cling to them as hope.
I wonder where the woman herself is right now, if she’s fully aware of the tremendous support she’s got, and if she’s playing it right. I’ll bet she’s got lots of people offering to manage her and speak for her at the point.
It’s hard to imagine any of last year’s contestants getting this kind of support and affection * before they’d even sung in the semifinals! *
I hope whoever is whispering in her ear right now doesn’t get her to sign anything with them, because that will automatically prevent her from being reinstated. As much as people like her, I think her best shot at this point is to get back on the show and kick everybody’s ass.
Refer to earlier point in post: “Sex makes money. Money = good.”
Uh, no, YOU’VE been saying it all along. “You” != “We”.
Did you not watch the show tonight? The winners were, to put it bluntly, fat. Why would they dump Frenchie and not Ruben Studdard, who’s got a shot at winning and is the size of a mobile home?
This is a prudishness issue, and I’d bet dollars to your dimes that it’s the sponsors who applied to pressure to have her banned.
—Because everyone knows, sex = dirty and sexless = clean.—
Sick thing is, the whole “clean” thing is as much as sexual fetish as anything else. The goal IS “clean” girls dressed like hookers. Actual hookers need not apply.
Uh, no, because I’m in California and it’s 6:19 pm.
Thank you.
Very much.
Not.
Ever heard of spoiler boxes? Time zones other than your own?
(And “we” includes the many other people who have been saying the same thing all over the net, if not here. I’m far from being alone in this. Frenchie was far and away the star, and she hadn’t even sung yet. Very likely she’d win. Not so true with everyone else.)
So what nefarious plan is about to befall our other two larger contestants?