Jaime King Writes Back to Online Bullies
Actress Jaime King. Photo: Getty
Growing up in the modeling world, Jaime King understands the power of beautiful photography. She also sees those gorgeous images as art—not reality. “In day-to-day life, there is no perfection,” King told Yahoo Beauty at a recent event to launch the new rewards program, Plenti.
King feels that part of the problem is that the images people post on social media are all made to look flawless, either with retouching apps, or by only showing a very styled version of reality. Varying standards of perfection are posted every second, and King feels that it does a disservice. “There’s this very curated society now making people feel isolated and very lonely,” she says. “I’m kind of bummed when I’m seeing people’s Twitters or Instagrams. It’s like, perfect selfie, and ‘oh my God’ perfect food. It’s one perfect thing after another and nothing funny or honest. It’s you’re walking through this fake museum of someone’s life. I feel like, man, I don’t really feel connected to them. Nobody really has a life like that. Anyone could set up a pretty picture.”
Jaime King multitasking at the salon with her son. Photo: Instagram
The actress who has been in blockbuster movies like Pearl Harbor and Sin City, the just-canceled show Hart of Dixie, and the new flick Barely Lethal, has said that being authentic is sexy. She doesn’t believe in fitting into a cookie-cutter mold of what is considered attractive. “It’s so easy to sell yourself out. I don’t sign up for that. You take little pieces of yourself and throw them out. All of a sudden, you look around and there’s nothing left. I’ve seen that happen to people.” Instead King says her motivation for being an actress was about making connections. “I became an artist so people would feel less alone in this planet. I felt that way a lot as a kid. I didn’t fit in and I was bullied a lot.”
That taunting that King and others have faced in childhood, is sadly present on social media today. King has recently spoken out on the issue of online bullies. She has has highlighted her own harassment, to bring awareness to the issue. “People go on my Instagram and say I need to eat a hamburger and I don’t deserve to be a mother because of the way I look, and that I’m starving my baby,” says King who is pregnant with her second child. “People say very horrific things.” King feels as if she has to defend her naturally skinny frame. “I eat hamburgers. I drink milkshakes. This is just the way that my body is. I love my body,” she says. “To say that one person is too thin or one person is too big, or too this or too that – no one can ever win.”
King decided to not take the critics lying down. “Everyone has a platform. People have a right to an opinion, but there’s a very big difference between freedom of speech and making someone feel terrible because of the way that they look. Whether it is my followers or people commenting about someone else, I will write back to them.” However, King chooses her words wisely. She doesn’t want to engage in a battle with fans, but enlighten them. “I don’t write back in a mean way, but I write back in a really loving way,” King states. “If I see something that’s hurtful, I’ll say, ‘That’s inappropriate.’ Whatever it is they’re saying, I respond accordingly.”
King says engaging with the commenters can create positive, rather than negative, dialogue. “It’s very interesting. People write back and they apologize. They say, ‘I’m really sorry. I didn’t know that what I said would hurt you. I didn’t know anything about your life and went through this stuff.’ And then we’re open for conversation. To me, that’s the most important thing. We can start talking like human beings.” That’s what social media is for, King says. “It’s about communicating with human beings from all over the world. That’s the beauty of it.”
Related: Jaime King Speaks Out Against Body Shaming
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