Millie Bobby Brown may be a legal adult, but that doesn’t mean she’s willing to be sexualized by fans or Hollywood. During an appearance on the Guilty Feminist podcast, the Stranger Things actor described a shift she’s felt in terms of how the press and fans on social media were sexualizing her since she turned 18 in February.
Brown’s been in the public eye for six years, and she’s seen enough to recognize a change in how she’s being discussed in the press and on social media. As she told the podcast, she has “definitely been dealing with [being sexualized] more within the last two weeks of turning 18 — definitely seeing a difference between the way people act and the way that the press and social media have reacted to me coming of age.” The actor went on, calling the shift “gross” and saying that it was “a very good representation of what’s going on in the world and how young girls are sexualized.”
As someone who is old enough to remember a time when websites openly counted down to Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen’s 18th birthdays in 2004, I’d like to think that we, as a society, had grown beyond the need to sexualize teenage girls. But, then I see a subreddit was created just before Brown’s birthday reportedly called “This subreddit will open when Millie turns 18, which is February 19, 2022.” Gross! (The subreddit was reportedly taken down.)
Let’s stop this nonsense and let Brown and her boyfriend, Jacob Bongiovi, in peace.
