Page Six

Millie Bobby Brown, pictured here at the 2025 SAG Awards, has been receiving a multitude of undeserved hate for simply growing up.

With just a glance at Netflix’s home page over the course of the last ten years, one face has persisted: Millie Bobby Brown. 

Brown made her pivotal debut in the industry when she was only 10 years old, playing Eleven in the monumental television show Stranger Things. She stridently dedicated herself to her role as the series’ star, even shaving her head and moving to America from England to further her career. 

Unfortunately, it was not long before she was thrust into the harsh and volatile reality of modern-day media. 

Criticism of the preteen quickly began to sprout with haste; journalists and online bullies lashed out at her press tour etiquette, equating her jubilant, youthful attitude with a desperation for attention. Others, taking clips of the young actress painfully out of context, called her “too loud” and sought her supposed “overtalking” to be condemned. Even so-called fans were quick to take the childlike clamor of the cast—all of whom were simply acting the way a traditional child would—and use it as collateral to falsely claim that Brown was acting immature and bratty, stealing the spotlight away from her costars. 

For Brown, however, this was only the beginning of a long stretch of unwarranted disparagement and meticulous evaluation. 

Soon after she was attacked for her extroverted demeanor, she started attracting a new wave of predatory attention. She was styled in a hypersexualized manner in photoshoots and depicted in a way that insinuated she was much older than she was, giving fuel to the fire of a dangerous emergence of internet creeps that showered her with explicit and derogatory comments on the regular. At 14, rapper Drake—who was 31 years old at the time—sent her unsettling messages saying he “missed her” and gave her unsolicited romantic advice. Two years later, whilst in a committed relationship with her now-husband Jake Bongiovi, she was the victim of an online stalker who claimed that he had dated her with her parent’s consenting approval, formulating crude and untruthful comments about their false partnership despite the fact that she was underage.

This type of scrutiny is not foreign to many young female actresses. For decades, celebrity journalism has had an unwavering tendency to make young, impressionable women feel insecure in themselves and who they are simply because they are deemed easy targets. For Brown, now over ten years since these first bouts of media mistreatment, she is facing yet another round of harsh and baseless examination by the press. 

At the Screen Actor’s Guild (SAG) Awards this past Feb., Brown walked the red carpet in a simple, peach-colored cowl-neck gown, her blonde hair plaited in a braided bun. Despite the aura of confidence she exuded, this did not stop hundreds of online tabloids from tearing her down; most notably, these critics were making abrasive remarks that claimed she had aged poorly, formulating conspiracies that she must have had cosmetic surgery done to make her appear so old.

Brown, a subject of unmerited media criticism for over a decade, has since been quick to clap back at this faux-journalism and aggressive ageism that seeks to dehumanize her. On March 3, she took to Instagram to post a video where she voiced her disgust with the disreputable articles, papers, and posts that had no intention other than to ridicule her. Putting it best, Brown emphatically stated, “This isn’t journalism. This is bullying.” She went on to list the specific names and authors of certain articles that were harassing her, an unfortunate portion of them being written by women. “We always talk about supporting and uplifting young women,” Brown said, “but when the time comes, it seems easier to tear them down for clicks. Disillusioned people can’t handle seeing a girl become a woman on her terms, not theirs.”

This much-needed message highlights the harmful double standards that persist for young women in the public eye. Emphasizing how female celebrities are often subjected to an exhausting cycle of criticism, her experience serves as a painful example of the scrutiny one may face for aging in a way that does not align with impossible beauty standards. This pattern reflects a broader societal issue: the relentless policing of women’s appearances, behavior, and personal growth, all under the guise of public interest, underscoring the need for accountability and anti-exploitation. 

For Brown and many women like her, the violent culture of the media and dishonorable journalism continue to prove themselves as an engine of multifaceted cruelty and bullying. The pillars of media literacy cannot be distorted into simple-minded gossip. In a world where people’s lives are plastered online, and privacy becomes more and more defunct every day, it is imperative that journalism maintains integrity and seeks to report on strictly venerable topics.