Ariel Winters is a 17-year-old actress and she’s already had plastic surgery. To reduce her boobs. The* Modern Family* star has explained that she’s gone from a 32F to a 34D not only to feel better in herself, but to avoid the sort of taunts and speculation that no teenage girl should be getting from playground bullies, let alone the world’s media.
‘I remember being at my sister’s wedding and being so flat and thinking, “I just wish I could grow boobs!” And then overnight I did,’ she said of her sudden boob growth when she was just 15. ‘But then they kept growing and growing and growing, and it didn’t seem like they were going to stop.’
And it wasn’t easy, not least because she was growing up (or ‘all grown up!’) under the media’s watchful, lusty eye: ‘I was 15 years old with [size] F [breasts]. How do you navigate that?’
The press attention, she told Glamour.com: ‘made me feel really uncomfortable, because as women in the industry, we are totally oversexualised and treated like objects. Every article that has to do with me on a red carpet had to do with “Ariel Winter’s Crazy Cleavage!” or “Ariel Winter Shows Huge Boobs at an Event!” That’s all people would recognise me by – not, “Oh, she does great work on Modern Family.”’
The media’s preoccupation with her body meant that anyone who wanted to bully Ariel online had the go-ahead. If a magazine does it, why shouldn’t an anonymous commenter online? ‘We live in a day and age where everything you do is ridiculed. The internet bullies are awful. I could post a photo where I feel good, and 500 people will comment about how fat I am and that I am disgusting.’
This all wound up tormenting Ariel: ‘On the inside, I wasn’t feeling so happy.’
Not being able to find a bikini that fitted her was the breaking point, because she realised just how unhappy she was. She got the breast reduction earlier this summer, keeping it hush hush because, well, it’s her business, right?
She’s now spoken out because: ‘I also think there’s some good that can come from [telling] my story. It’s something that I did to better my life and better my health, and I think that can benefit a lot of young girls. I have felt happier with myself than I ever have.’
Which is really good and well – we’re glad she’s happy, no longer gets all the flack she used to, and can now fit in the clothes she wants to wear. But in an ideal world? A teenager, still growing, wouldn’t have to change her body for anyone.
Think about it, Ariel’s flesh-made boobs have been up against man-made problems: being mean to someone online shouldn’t happen and clothes are meant to fit people’s bodies. At its base level, Ariel’s had to have a knife taken to her body to fit into people’s expectations of what a woman should be, at just 17, and that’s pretty sad and profound.
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Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.