Hollywood’s relationship with young girls has been toxic from every possible angle. The s*xualization of girls that grow up in the limelight has become a painful pattern that doesn’t seem to have stopped, even though various victims have spoken about it.
From Emma Watson to Millie Bobby Brown, the public seems to love hyper-fixating on youth, be it never wanting them to grow up or begging them to grow up faster. Watson has spoken out about this after growing up, and Brown has followed in her footsteps, with their experiences remaining the same a decade apart.
Millie Bobby Brown and the world’s obsession with her age
Recently, Millie Bobby Brown took to her Instagram account to address her experience in the film industry. While the actress has talked about her mistreatment before, it hasn’t been this direct and public. Having started in the industry when she was not even a teenager, she has experienced the true horror of the media from a very young age.
Brown talked about the recent conversations that have surrounded her appearance, with the internet collectively talking about her “aging poorly.” Feeling targeted, the actress did something very few celebrities have done; calling out journalists by name for the kind of discussions they were having about her.
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.
She stated that the way they were talking about her felt more like bullying than it did journalism. Brown pointed out that the conversations about her were not beneficial in any way and felt more intrusive than anything.
This isn’t journalism. This is bullying. 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.
Since Brown isn’t the only victim of the media and growing up in the public spotlight, this opens up a bigger conversation to be had.
The polarity in Millie Bobby Brown’s experience
There seem to be two kinds of critics that have followed Millie Bobby Brown her entire life. One is the predator-like perspective, with some looking at her with eyes of perversion that would make one’s skin crawl. They could not wait for her to become legal so that they could feel better about their twisted ways of thinking and, in a way, made their feelings public too.
Most famously, fans of the actress called out creeps who had set countdowns on Reddit for her eighteenth birthday, when the actress would have been of the legal age of consent. Emma Watson experienced something similar when her 18th birthday party ended with photographers trying to take inappropriate pictures of her.
While the world collectively agrees that such thinking is twisted in every definition of the word, it is the other kind of critic that manages to slip under the radar. The kind that has a different kind of obsession with young girls’ youth and wants to preserve it, even if they are ready to grow up.
In an interview with The Guilty Feminist, Brown talked about the time that she was “crucified” by the internet for wearing a low-cut dress and stated that she looked like a woman in her 60s when she was only 16 years old. Brown specifically addressed these critics in her Instagram post, talking about how they simply cannot accept the fact that she has grown up and focus on the fact that she does not look like a child anymore.
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