Survey Says: Hollywood Obliterates Young Female Celebs’ Self Esteem

Can a young woman work in the entertainment industry, and keep her positive body image intact? It certainly doesn’t seem like it.

In the past week-or-so, several female, former-teen celebrities—including Miley Cyrus, Chloe Moretz, Ariel Winter, and Cara Delevingne—have spoken out individually about how much the jobs that brought them fame, also brought them anxiety, low self esteem, and poor body image.

Cyrus unwittingly kicked off the conversation in the September issue of Marie Claire, which she also covers. Discussing her five-year stint as the title character on Disney’s Hannah Montana, the singer says that working on the show caused her self image to be warped from the beginning.

“From the time I was 11, it was, ‘You’re a pop star! That means you have to be blonde, and you have to have long hair, and you have to put on some glittery tight thing,‘” she recalls. “Meanwhile, I’m this fragile little girl playing a 16-year-old in a wig and a ton of makeup. It was like Toddlers & Tiaras.”

Over time, she began to lose sight of who she was—and who she was becoming. “I was told for so long what a girl is supposed to be from being on that show,” she says. “I was made to look like someone that I wasn’t, which probably caused some body dysmorphia because I had been made pretty every day for so long, and then when I wasn’t on that show, it was like, Who the f–k am I?”

When the show ended in 2011, Cyrus says she was suffering from both seasonal affective disorder and anxiety attacks.

Next came Winter, an actress on ABC’s Modern Family. The 17-year-old opened up to Glamour about her recent decision to undergo breast reduction surgery, downsizing her chest from a 32 F to a 34 D. While Winter says she had been experiencing back pain and had difficulty finding clothes that fit her frame, she also expressed the discomfort she felt every time she walked the red carpet—purely due to the boob-centric headlines that were sure to follow.

Winter at the SAG Awards in January, 2015. Photo: Getty Images

“As women in the industry, we are totally over sexualized and treated like objects,” Winter tells the glossy. “Every article that has to do with me on a red carpet always had to do with ‘Ariel Winter’s Crazy Cleavage!’ Or ‘Ariel Winter Shows Huge Boobs At An Event!’ That’s all people would recognize me by, not, ‘Oh, she does great work on Modern Family.’” Reminder: If Winter weren’t acting, she’d still be in high school. Imagine feeling bullied for your body by adults?

Eighteen-year-old Moretz echoed those same sentiments, Sunday, at the Teen Choice Awards. Following her win for Choice Movie Actress: Drama, she spoke to press backstage about the pressures she’s felt to fit a specific Hollywood ‘type.’

“I’ve been pulled in so many different directions and told I need to be this and I need to be that,” she revealed, noting that, despite the fact that Moretz is already fair haired and thin, it’s not enough. “I need to be skinnier. I need to be blonder. I need to look like ‘this.’ I need to cry better onscreen.” And again, she’s still just a teen. “The best thing about being a teenager is that we don’t have all the weight on our shoulders we’re going to have when we’re older,” Moretz added. “Be young and be free.” The question is, will her industry even let her? ‘Be young and be free and be skinny and be blonde’ might be more apt.

Moretz. Photo: @chloegmoretz/Instagram

Delevingne, the model-turned-actress, is the latest to chime in on the topic, speaking with London’s Sunday Times (via People) about her decision to leave the fashion industry. Her deciding factors? The way modeling made her about her body (bad) and her ideals (also bad).

She told the paper that posing provocatively and nude in photo shoots as a teen made her feel “hollow.”

“I am a bit of a feminist and it makes me feel sick,” she said. “It’s horrible and it’s disgusting. [We’re talking about] young girls. You start when you are really young and you do, you get subjected to … not great stuff.”

Delevingne also said that the stress of work took a toll on her physically, causing her psoriasis to flare up. "It is a mental thing as well because if you hate yourself and your body and the way you look, it just gets worse and worse. […] People would put on gloves and not want to touch me because they thought [my psoriasis] was, like, leprosy or something,“

The only positive aspect is that she’s become a stronger person, said the now 23-year-old. “I am very good at standing up for myself now, and for other people. If there is injustice I will flip out. If someone is crossing a line, they will know about it and so will everyone else."

Delevingne. Photo: John Hardy

Unfortunately for these four young women—and all the others like them who simply haven’t spoken up—a change in the way they’re treated would, really, require several changes in our entire society: The way we view women, the way we compartmentalize their talents and abilities, the way we sexualize them based on body-type, and so-on and so-forth into infinity. The damage to their self confidence and body image has been done, and will be done, time and time again.

Hollywood and the entertainment industry (fashion, included) will always seek out young people. But hopefully, the more that people and parents hear what Winter, Cyrus, Moretz, and Delevingne have to say, the more they’ll take into consideration the lasting negative effects that something as initially exciting as fame can have on children and teens.

As much as TV shows and movies get berated for the real-life ages of their “high school students,” it might actually be the better alternative—if it means fewer real teen girls will grow up thinking they’re not good enough or not pretty enough, etc. Maybe Beverly Hills, 90210 was onto something, after all.

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