Sarah Hyland is firing back after she was criticized for joking that wearing two pairs of Spanx is easier than dieting.
The Modern Family star, 28, shared photos from all angles of her hot pink look from the Vanity Fair Oscars Party on Instagram, and said she had some elastic help.
“#funfact I’m wearing TWO pairs of Spanx. Why diet? When you can just hide it!” Hyland captioned the pictures.
But many of her followers weren’t amused by Hyland’s caption, and said that it wasn’t a body positive thing to say.
“Or… you can also process to accept the way your body look without trying to change it because of some standards you’re seems to be concerned about,” wrote one follower.
“She’s always preaching about body positivity and for people not to make comments about how skinny she is due to her health issues, but then implies that she needs to diet….” added another.
Hyland explained on Twitter that she opted for two pairs of Spanx because of her kidney problems. She first retweeted one person who also went through kidney transplants.
“If you’re trying to hide the bump from your transplant, forget it. I’ve been trying for years!! Stay healthy. #kidneystrong #transplantssavelives” the person tweeted, to which Hyland added, “Someone gets it!!”
Hyland also retweeted a critical tweet that the person later deleted, and told them, “When you have two kidney transplants and are on steroids for life get back to me.”
The actress revealed in December that she underwent a second kidney transplant for her kidney dysplasia — a condition that meant her kidneys underdeveloped in the womb and frequently form painful cysts. Hyland initially received one of her father’s kidneys in 2012 but it failed, and required treatments that caused her to drop weight, attracting criticism on social media.
Hyland said that the treatments failed because the kidney was already too far gone.
“You can’t un-burn a house,” she told SELF.
Doctors removed the kidney in May 2017, and that November, they implanted one from her brother, which led to conflicted feelings.
“I was very depressed,” she said. “When a family member gives you a second chance at life, and it fails, it almost feels like it’s your fault. It’s not. But it does. For a long time, I was contemplating suicide, because I didn’t want to fail my little brother like I failed my dad.”
Hyland was in and out of the hospital during the first half of 2018, but she’s now doing well, and happily living with her boyfriend Wells Adams, who supported her through her health problems.
“He was texting me in the morning before I went into surgery, and we were FaceTiming the entire time I was in the hospital. He’s seen me at my worst. He was there through all of that,” she said. “I think that’s why I feel the most beautiful in his eyes, because he still finds me beautiful after seeing all that.”
