“It was one of the only actors that ever made me cry on set.”
No one should ever have to hear body-shaming remarks about themselves being used to make them inferior, but it’s extra uncool for a teenage girl to experience body-critical judgement in her professional workplace. Unfortunately, Chloë Grace Moretz says that it happened to her. The actress, now 20, revealed to Variety that she was body-shamed by a male movie co-star when she was just 15 years old.
“This guy that was my love interest was like, ‘I’d never date you in a real life,’ and I was like, ‘What?’ And he was like, ‘Yeah, you’re too big for me’ — as in my size,” said Chloë in her new interview. “It was one of the only actors that ever made me cry on set.”
Chloë didn’t call out the actor by name or reveal exactly which of her projects this happened on, but mentioned he was much older than her, at around age 23-25 at the time. She also said that she immediately turned to her family to help her get through the really uncomfortable encounter.
“I went bawling to my brother and he was like, ‘What happened?’ And I was like, ‘He told me I was too big.’ And my brother was like, ‘What just happened?’ My brother was so angry,” Chloë recalled. “I had to pick it up and go back on set and pretend he was a love interest, and it was really hard.”
Chloë definitely did the right thing by confiding in her brother, and hopefully by sharing her story, more people will realize that making these comments are just uncalled for and unacceptable.
“It just makes you realize that there are some really bad people out there and for some reason, he felt the need to say that to me,” she added about her own experience. “You have to kind of forgive and not forget really, but it was just like wow. It was jarring. I look back on it and I was 15, which is really, really dark.”
It’s totally understandable that Chloë was shaken by this situation, but it’s empowering her to see her now turn around and use her voice to create change by highlighting the effects of body-shaming.
Written by Kristine Hope Kowalski