The way Millie Bobby Brown’s body became the subject of public discussion is unsettling; it wasn’t because she asked for it or made a statement, but rather because she was raised in a public setting.
The majority of people first saw her on Stranger Things as Eleven, a child with a shaved head, a bloody nose, and an intense gaze. When filming started, she was ten years old. Sitting with that number is worthwhile. Ten. And now that she’s twenty-one, married, promoting movies, and walking the red carpet, it seems that this change has been enough to spark a wave of criticism that she eventually had to confront in public, directly, and with a great deal of annoyance.
There was no public statement or health disclosure from Millie Bobby Brown at the beginning of the weight gain controversy. Headlines were where it all began. During her press tour for The Electric State earlier this year, articles titled “Why Are Gen Zers Like Millie Bobby Brown Ageing So Badly?” and “What Has Millie Bobby Brown Done to Her Face?” started to circulate. There was something special about the coverage; it was dressed as observation and framed as concern, but it actually functioned more like an audit of a person’s physical development.
In a now-viral video and an open interview with British Vogue, Brown discussed all of this. It wasn’t just a little annoyance that she described. “For three or four days, I was depressed. I was crying every day,” she said, adding that the sorrow followed her to London, where she gave Sabrina Carpenter an award at the BRIT Awards. While getting her hair done backstage, she was crying. When she noticed Carpenter in the wings, she became emotional. That’s actual, documented distress brought on by articles that were essentially just commentary about how a young woman looks now versus how she looked as a child; it’s not someone dismissing tabloid noise.
Strangely, it didn’t take much research to understand any of this. Bodies undergo change. Faces shift. A ten-year-old is now twenty-one. It’s not hard math. However, there appears to be a specific desire to catalog those changes as if they are a failure or a mystery that needs to be solved, both online and in some media outlets.
A larger cultural disorientation may be the source of some of this. A twenty-year-old with natural curves and a real stomach seems strange to us because we’ve spent years watching celebrities who have been filtered, altered, smoothed, and injected. That point was made in a widely shared social media post, which pointed out that people thought Brown’s body was radical because it isn’t. That observation is more significant than it first appears to be.
Brown has made it apparent where she draws the line. She expressed her admiration for journalism. She is a reader. She keeps up with news reports. However, she made a clear distinction between journalism and what she referred to as bullying. She specifically called out a number of writers and media outlets for what she perceived to be harassment that was barely disguised as reporting. “Leave my f—ing case alone. In one video, she stated, “I am 21,” with the directness of someone who has had enough.
Whether any of this will significantly change how tabloids and entertainment websites view young women’s bodies is still up in the air. This type of coverage has been around for a while and is profitable. However, Brown’s response adds a particular human cost to something that is typically written off as the price of fame, which is what makes it noteworthy. She wasn’t evasive about the effect. She listed the days she shed tears. She gave the articles names. She identified the authors. Compared to a broad critique of media culture, that kind of specificity is more difficult to ignore.
It’s not a scandal to grow up. A defense shouldn’t be necessary.
