Huge problem with calling Millie Bobby Brown ‘old’
Photos of a former child star are going viral, and the response has exposed quite the problem.
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Millie Bobby Brown has done something most young women do: she dyed her hair blonde and discovered fake tan, but our response to this transformation is alarming.
The popular actress has been around for ages. She’s been acting since she was in primary school and got her massive break on the Netflix sensation Stranger Things.
Even though she’s only 21, Bobby Brown done some very grown-up things, like becoming incredibly famous and marrying Bon Jovi’s son, Jake Bongiovi.
It is important to remember, though, that she’s only 21.
At that age most of us were eating out of our parents’ fridge, messaging people on Snapchat and didn’t have our own Medicare cards.
We also had no idea how to dress ourselves. Your early twenties are the time for bad hair extensions, questionable shades of foundation, and outfits that make little to no sense.
At some point, you’ll be forced to snap at your mum that she “just doesn’t understand fashion” and flounce off in your Supre slogan T-shirt and cargo pants, feeling quite gorgeous.
Everyone goes through it.
Some have a harder time than others, some of us have even tried to make side fringes work, but it is a rite of passage.
Bobby Brown is a typical 21-year-old, and she’s having a style transformation. She’s embracing sequins, dyed her hair blonde, trialling some new looks.
Has she maybe gotten a little too heavy-handed with the make-up? Sure, but who hasn’t.
It is jarring for some of us, who have watched her since she was a kid, but that doesn’t give us the right for cruelty.
Even more bizarrely, instead of maybe critiquing her outfits or her style, people have decided to just start calling her old.
Sure, she might be taking some real housewives’ fashion inspiration, but she still looks like a woman in her twenties.
People got really mean after her appearance on the red carpet last month for the premiere of her new film, The Electric State, accusing her of “ageing badly” and “looking old” or “looking like someone’s mum”.
The backlash got so intense that Bobby Brown herself hopped onto Instagram this week to call out the negative commentary in a video shared to her 63.3 million Instagram followers.
“Disillusioned people can’t handle seeing a girl become a woman on her terms, not theirs. I refuse to apologise for growing up,” she wrote.
“I refuse to make myself smaller to fit the unrealistic expectations of people who can’t handle seeing a girl become a woman. I will not be shamed for how I look, how I dress, or how I present myself.”
It is all very bleak; a young woman can’t even try on a new outfit or a new look without people just screaming at her that she looks like she’s “ageing badly”.
She also doesn’t look old. Old is just a word people like to use against women when they aren’t dressing how society wants them too. It is used to shame women into conforming and it has little to do with reality.
You don’t have to like Bobby Brown’s new look or fashion, but that doesn’t give you the right to shame a woman for trying to figure it out. Let’s not forget that some of us tried to make purple lipstick a thing at 21.
If Millie Bobby Brown looks old, then we all looked old at 21 when we were experimenting with style that perhaps wasn’t quite right for us.
Originally published as Huge problem with calling Millie Bobby Brown ‘old’
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