If you’re a fan of Modern Family (or, more accurately, if you enjoyed the first season), you’d be familiar with Ariel Winter.
Since 2009 she’s played Alex Dunphy, the wise-cracking nerd daughter of doofus Phil, on the award-winning ‘Murican sitcom.
While the gig is a dream come true for any child actor, the downside is that Winter’s had to grow up in front of an audience of millions; enduring the best and blurst of puberty in stark light.
The 18-year-old is no stranger to speaking out, though, and has opened up about her online presense, her body and the meanest Insta comment she’s copped in a feature for Self mag.
On growing up in the public eye:
“I had a hard time finding confidence within myself. When I started [Modern Family], I had a completely different body than what happened overnight at 12 years old. I was stick thin, I had no chest, I had no butt—I had nothing. I was totally flat, and I was so sad about it. Then automatically, overnight, my body changed drastically. I was a D cup and had a bigger butt, and my waist was expanding. Everything was getting bigger. I automatically got this hate and judgment online.”
On the judgement she gets for her (admittedly racy) Instagram:
“I think people make a lot of judgments about me based on what I wear and all the things that I do,” she says. “They kind of glorify and objectify a lot of the things that I do, and I wish people would just see me as the normal 18-year-old that I am. I’m doing the same things that everybody my age is doing…people are taking it and making it [seem] like I’m doing stuff that is crazy when really I’m just being me. I wish people would see that.”
On the shittest comment someone’s left on her Insta:
Winter is supposedly used to arseholes who call her “fat, and ugly, and a slut” on the ‘gram. The worst comment she’s received, in her opinion, is from a stranger who said she was “asking for it.”“That really disturbed me, and made me incredibly upset,” she says. “It made me super disappointed in our world, and in the internet and the people who were writing things on the internet.”
How did she react to it?
“I really had to stand up and make it a point to fight back against people who were not only body shaming, but also slut-shaming…taking aim at people that weren’t doing anything wrong and making comments that were so harmful and distressing for absolutely no purpose,” she says, in true sharp as a tack Alex Dunphy style.
And finally, how she deals (with more wisdom than you can poke a stick at):
“It was hard for me in the beginning to deal with people’s comments and deal with everybody having an opinion on absolutely everything I did. It was hard for me to not fall prey to wanting to change the way I felt and the way I did things and the way I looked because of what other people said. But as I got older, I started to realize that as long as I’m positive in my life and as long as I feel good about my decisions and stick to how I feel and the things I want to do, that’s what’s most important. And that’s what’s going to get me through in life.”
To lead the life Winter leads and still have a head that’s screwed on pretty well is no mean feat. Good on her.
Source: Self.
Photo: Self.
