Zyahna Bryant, who ruined a white student’s life over a “misheard” remark at a Black Lives Matter protest in 2020, has partnered with Dove to promote “fat liberation.” Bryant claims that she is “committed to keeping the voices of marginalized people, such as Black, Indigenous, and Latinx people who exist in fat bodies at the forefront of our visions for liberation and change.”
“My belief is that we should be centering the voices and experiences of the most marginalized people and communities at all times,” Bryant, an activist and former University of Virginia student said in an Instagram video talking about her new and bizarre pro-fat campaign with Dove.
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“So when I think about what fat liberation looks like to me, it looks like centering the voices and the experiences of those who live in and who maneuver through spaces and institutions in a fat body,” the activist continued.
“It looks like making accessible spaces and having conversations that are aware of the fact that people have different bodies and that they are interacting with space and people and institutions and communities in a different way,” she said.
“Fat liberation looks like fully embracing those differences and having those conversations instead of shying away from them,” Bryant concluded.
She then urged viewers to go to Dove’s website to learn more about “fat liberation and the campaign for size freedom” that the company is supporting.
“Tap in. Join the campaign. Support the campaign. This is important and we should all be talking about it,” Bryant insisted.
In an Instagram post earlier this year, Bryant announced that she would be teaming up with Dove to “to end body size discrimination.”
“Did you know that body size discrimination affects 34 million people in the United States? This means that the majority of the US population lives without legal protection from discrimination, based solely on the way they look,” she wrote.
“This NEEDS to change — that’s why I’m partnering with @Dove to support @NAAFAofficial and @FLAREforJustice to end body size discrimination with the #CampaignforSizeFreedom,” the activist continued.
Bryant then went on to claim that she is “committed to keeping the voices of marginalized people, such as Black, Indigenous, and Latinx people who exist in fat bodies at the forefront of our visions for liberation and change.”
Before her stint with Dove, Bryant was busy ruining a white student’s life over a “misheard” comment at a Black Lives Matter protest in Charlottesville in 2020.
Earlier this year, University of Virginia graduate Morgan Bettinger described how a woke mob ruined her life with false allegations while she was a student at the university. It took more than a year before investigations at UVA cleared her completely of the allegations, but those behind the fake charges suffered no repercussions.
Bettinger’s problems all started after Bryant claimed on social media that the white student had said the Black Lives Matter protesters would make “good speedbumps,” despite there being no evidence of her having said that.
The rumor then went viral on social media, resulting in Bettinger becoming the subject of a campus-wide scandal, and being investigated by the university.
One year later, the university’s Office for Equal Opportunity and Civil Rights (EOCR) concluded that Bryant did not actually hear the alleged “speed bump” comment firsthand.
Moreover, the only witness who corroborated Bryant’s claims were discredited, as the witness was caught contradicting both themselves and Bryant during interviews.
While Bettinger was vindicated, her reputation was destroyed, she said.
“Just because [the EOCR] found the correct answer, in some sense, didn’t get rid of everything I had just gone through,” she told Reason. “This whole situation has had a huge impact on my life. The university has never had to answer for what their actions have done.”
Bettinger, a first-generation college student, now “lives in a state of limbo,” the magazine said. Her father, a police officer, had died of cancer six years before the incident. And her dreams of going to law school feel completely out of reach, given the black mark on her record and her new reputation.
Bryant, on the other hand, has thrived since she made her allegations against Bettinger. The activist received a glowing profile in the Washington Post in 2021, and has been named to Ebony’s “Power 100” list. And now, she landed a partnership with Dove.
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.