Modern Family star Ariel Winter has opened up about the horrific trolling and fat-shaming she received from viewers when she was 13 years old. Winter is an American actress best known for portraying Alex Dunphy on ABC's Modern Family from 2009-2020. Viewers watched Winter literally grow up on screen as she went from the nerdy 11-year-old middle child into a stunning young woman of 22 years. In addition to her time on Modern Family, she has gone on to star on the big screen in such films as Kiss Kiss Bang, Duress, and Opposite Day. She has also lent her voice to several beloved children's characters with voice-acting roles in Jake and the Never Land Pirates, Phineas and Ferb, and Sofia the First.
Winter played a pivotal role in Modern Family, as the middle child in the nuclear Dunphy family. The series centers around three different types of families - nuclear, blended, and same-sex. Modern Family is an open and honest look into what typical modern families look like and demonstrates that family structure doesn't truly matter as long as there is happiness and love. Modern Family ran for a staggering 11 years, gaining critical acclaim and maintaining a loyal fan base throughout. However, not all fans were so loyal and positive towards Modern Family.
As reported by People, Winter revealed in an episode of Red Table Talk: The Estefans that she was trolled and fat-shamed by fans when she was merely a child. Growing up on television meant that, naturally, Winter changed, as did her body. Winter recalled receiving cruel comments telling her she was a "slut" and "fat" for simply developing and needing to change her style. Viewers callously called her out for not being and looking like Dunphy all the time. The comments flooded her from every direction and made her feel like she had to change herself to garner praise. Today, she is still in the midst of her journey, but is healing with the help of therapy. Read her full statement below:
I got called a fat slut when I was 13. That was rough. Because I gained weight and my body changed, I had to wear different outfits and I wore a dress that had a cutout here. And the headlines were dark. 'Fat slut' was rough for me, and it continued. It was the fans, some of them — we have lovely, lovely fans, but some of them were also hard on me in the way they loved Alex Dunphy. And because I wasn't Alex Dunphy and didn't look like Alex, I didn't want to dress like Alex… I was just different in that way. I'm not my character. From them, they're like, 'How did you go from Alex Dunphy to being, like, a whore? You're trying to be sexy, you're 13, you're a horrible role model. What are you showing people? You got so fat on TV, now you look so fat.' I got on antidepressants. I gained 30 lbs. It was rough going to school, it was rough online, on my Instagram it was like, flooding comments, flooding comments. And so then I was like, 'They hate this about me, I need to work on it. I need to be thinner, I need to change my hair here, my cheeks look weird. If I change these things about me, the things they hate about me, I'm not going to get that anymore. I'm going to get praised.' I'm definitely still on a journey. I've been in therapy twice a week for years. I love my therapist. I love my time in therapy.
The bullying and harassment that Winter faced for her role in Modern Family is appalling to hear. However, the internet and social media made it extremely difficult for Winter to escape the flood of comments. The bullying had such an impact on her that she gained 30 lbs. and started on anti-depressants. The 13-year-old was essentially bullied for simply growing older and not fitting into viewers' unrealistic expectations for her to be 11-year-old Dunphy forever.
While it is fortunate that Winter is healing and receiving aid through therapy, her story raises concerns for others in the child acting industry. Sadly, Winter is far from the only child actor who has opened up about exploitation, bullying, and harassment that they faced in the industry. From Macaulay Culkin to Dev Patel, child actors are particularly vulnerable, because they have less power to defend themselves from exploitation and harassment. Being a teenager is hard enough, but much more so when one can't so much as check social media without being slammed with insults and attacks. Meanwhile, the fact that viewers can't comprehend that a young girl naturally grows into a woman is a sad testament to the discrimination that women face in being expected to continuously maintain weight and body proportions. Modern Family's Winter is still in the process of healing from the harassment she received a decade ago, and her story is a dire warning for the need to protect child actors and to bore down on internet bullies to prevent such emotionally detrimental bullying from occurring in the future.
Source: People