Millie Bobby Brown has spoken out about being bullied for her appearance in a new Instagram post. The 21-year-old actor has faced a slew of negative commentary over the course of awards season, torn apart for supposedly looking older than her years after debuting a ‘00s inspired platinum blonde hairdo and emulating old Hollywood glamour on the red carpet. In a video posted yesterday, Brown dubbed that the constant reporting on how ‘old’ she looks is ‘bullying’.
‘I want to take a moment to address something that I think is bigger than just me, something that affects every young woman who grows up under public scrutiny,’ Brown began. ‘I started in this industry when I was 10 years old. I grew up in front of the world, and for some reason, people can’t seem to grow with me. Instead, they act like I’m supposed to stay frozen in time, like I should still look the way I did on Stranger Things Season 1. And because I don’t, I’m now a target.’
Brown went on to pick out several articles about her appearance, calling out journalists by name. ‘This is bullying,’ she said. ‘The fact that adult writers are spending their time dissecting my face, my body, my choices, it’s disturbing. The fact that some of these articles are written by women? Even worse. We always talk about supporting and uplifting young women, but when the time comes, it seems easier to tear them down for clicks.’
All of the articles Brown called out were published by the Daily Mail, which has not responded. Now, according to Google Trends, all journalist's names Brown mentioned are breakout search terms – as well as, somewhat ironically, searches like ‘What has Millie Bobby Brown done to her face?’, ‘How old is Millie Bobby Brown?’ and ‘Millie Bobby Brown Stranger Things season 1’.
Brown has been accused of getting plastic surgery, or treatments like Botox and filler, ever since she turned 20. She’s never commented on the rumours but has posted messages on Instagram that some take as responses – for example, her writing ‘Women grow! Not sorry about it’ in a recent post and in her video last night, reiterating that she’s simply grown up. ‘I refuse to make myself smaller to fit the unrealistic expectations of people who can’t handle seeing a girl become a woman,’ she said.
Seemingly, given the latter search terms trending, some aren’t quite getting Brown’s point – continuing to look for evidence as to why such critique is ongoing rather than heeding her warning that she feels bullied by the commentary. ‘Why is the knee-jerk reaction to say something horrible rather than to say something nice?’ Brown asked. ‘We have become a society where it’s so much easier to criticize than it is to pay a compliment.’
It’s a fair comment, particularly when there was a time that we actually celebrated how much pop culture has evolved from nasty, appearance-based critiques dominating reports about celebrities. We’d look back on headlines from the ‘90s and ‘00s and lament how anyone ever got away with being so mean – critiquing young women for everything from their weight to their sex life to their mental health.
Have we moved on from '00s tabloid culture, or have we just found more insidious ways to tear celebrities down?
Have we moved on, or have we just found more insidious ways to tear celebrities down? In the last few years, there’s been endless commentary about various celebrities ‘ageing badly’ and not just in tabloids, but all over social media – TikToker’s are obsessed with using how well someone ages as either the ultimate compliment or critique. And actually, it’s more complicated an issue than one might think.
A generational obsession with age – and visible ageing at that - is hardly new, but there are unique reasons young people seem to care more than millennials or boomers ever did: social media has made comparison culture unbearable, aesthetics companies market to their demographic by offering Baby Botox (which has more than 189million views on TikTok) and not to get too philosophical, but their increasing anxiety about environmental doom in their future can’t be ignored. They’re scared to get old… and look old doing it.
But what makes conversations online about ageing, so toxic is the way in which we perceive treatments like Botox and filler – for which popularity has soared in recent years. More than 900,000 Botox injections are carried out in the UK each year, with experts noting that women in their 20s are fuelling the rise. According to one study by University College London, the dermal filler market is projected to reach a value of £11.7 billion by 2026.
These statistics alone raise many fair questions. Is an obsession with all achieving the same standard of beauty (much of which is fuelled by misogynistic, white supremacist marketing over decades) healthy? What does it mean for us that these treatments are so accessible to young women? Do we all really want to morph into one homogenous beautiful face, and what will that do to those who can’t or don’t want to adhere?
We can debate the nuances of tweakment obsession in a healthy way, as above, or we can mimic what tends to happen on social media by asking much less thoughtful questions. What happens then? Typically, the very bullying Brown is calling out. Instead of having nuanced debates, many turn to plain critiques like the above – assuming she’s had work done and therefore commenting that ‘she looks SO old!’ or the conversation becomes layered with casual misogyny as people seek to insult young women who do publicly talk about getting these treatments (which in turn, of course, disregards the very valid pressures women face to look ‘perfect’ all the time.)
Such critiques are popular to make right now, as the general consensus online becomes that Botox and filler ‘age’ young people. When Love Island was airing, for example, plastic surgeons on TikTok were consistently going viral for expressing shock and awe at how young the contestants were, dubbing that their tweakments made them look ‘middle-aged’.
What’s seemingly happening now is that, whether a young person has or hasn’t had these treatments, debating how ‘old’ they look for their age is the new acceptable insult. One might rarely see a celebrity body-shamed in headlines now, but they’ll absolutely see many dissecting whether or not they’ve ‘aged like fine wine’.
With Brown’s video, she raises an important question: will we ever reach a time when women aren’t critiqued for merely existing? We might’ve thought pop culture moved on, but it’s still as misogynistic as ever – it’s just easier to hide now.