Due to their visibility, celebrities are bigger targets for aesthetic scrutiny than the average person. The women who play the Dunphy daughters on Modern Family, seem to bear the brunt of the worst social-media trolls even more than other entertainers. Sarah Hyland has been unduly criticized for everything, including her curly hair and her weight; and now, TV little sister Ariel Winter, who has been body-shamed on a regular basis, is seeing renewed attacks on what rude commenters perceive to be new plastic surgery.
On Wednesday, Winter posted a photo and clip from Modern Family’s season finale to her Instagram grid, writing “Our final episode of season 10 airs tonight!!! ❤️ While the episode is very funny, it’s also a really beautiful episode that you mighttttt need tissues for. It’s quite special.” Somehow, one commenter interpreted this as an invitation to make presumptuous remarks about the 21-year-old actor’s appearance.
“How many surgeries have you had on your body and face now?” the person wrote, then replying to their own comment with, “Two breast reductions, that’s obvious, cheek bone and chin shaving and lip fillers. Pretty obvious, she looks so different #Truth.” Clearly, this plastic-surgery truther didn’t get the memo that if she had gotten those procedures, it’s totally OK, no one else’s business, and definitely not up for discussion unless brought up by Winter herself. They apparently also don’t know that it’s not cool to publicly and judgmentally make assumptions about why a person’s appearance looks the way it does, and Winter eventually responded to the troll to let them know their assumptions were, in fact, not the #truth.
“I wasn’t going to reply but I HAVE to ask…what the fuck is cheek bone and chin shaving????” wrote Winter, who has been open about the breast-reduction surgery she underwent in 2015. “You’re also wrong about all of it by the way 🙂 one breast reduction & I lost weight but you do you boo.” Handled like a boss — and like someone who has unfortunately seen way too many comments like this.
But even if the recent redhead had understandably chosen not to reply, her fans were ready to put this troll back in its cave. One simply wrote, “that’s not nice,” while others went into more detail about why the comments were so uncalled for. “And what if she did do those things how is this any of your freaking business anyways….why do you feel the need to comment like that?” one fan wrote, while another went the sarcastic route: “heard @arielwinter also had her shoulders surgically raised and her right arm is cybernetic, it’s why she never goes near a microwave.”
Luckily, there are far more people looking at Winter’s Instagram who are willing and able to be kind than there are those who feel entitled to make unsolicited rude remarks.
