Millie Bobby Brown is proof people still can’t handle when famous girls become women | Opinion

OPINION: At 21, most women are still figuring out who they are; they’re experimenting with fashion, beauty, sexuality, and making plenty of mistakes along the way with the keen knowledge they have their whole lives ahead of them to figure it out.

But when Millie Bobby Brown does it, all hell breaks loose.

The Stranger Things actress has copped criticism recently for everything from her looks, to her fashion, hair, and decision to marry young.

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This week, she hit back at the attacks from critics and anonymous trolls who have taken issue with her living her own life and making her own choices at 21.

“I started in this industry when I was 10 years old. I grew up in front of the world and, for some reason, people can’t seem to grow up with me,” she said in a powerful video.

“Instead, they act like I’m supposed to stay frozen in time, like I should still look the way I did on Stranger Things Season 1. And because I don’t, I’m now a target.”

The blowback Brown has been subjected to is nothing new for girls who grow into women in Hollywood’s bright lights.

WATCH: Millie Bobby Brown’s powerful response to critics

We’ve seen it play out so many times before over the last half-century when a young girl shoots to stardom.

Suddenly she’s the ingenue who must remain pure and girlish and sexless, even as strangers code internet timers to count down to the exact moment she turns 18 and is thereby “legal”.

It happened to Brown. It happened to Emma Watson, Natalie Portman, the list goes on.

These girls are viewed almost like public property, symbols of innocence in the Hollywood machine who inevitably grow into women with their own minds and desires – and that’s when the tide turns.

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“Disillusioned people can’t handle seeing a girl become a woman on her terms, not their own,” Brown said herself.

“I refuse to apologise for growing up. I refuse to make myself smaller to fit the unrealistic expectations of people who can’t handle seeing a girl become a woman.”

Watson expressed a similar sentiment almost a decade prior, when she spoke out about the fact that the society that started sexualising her at 14 was then scandalised by her performing love scenes in her twenties.

Not only are women like her and Brown subjected to criticism and attacks for daring to grow up, they are also subjected to all the same unrealistic expectations that come with being a woman in the spotlight. Expectations many of them have felt for years before they become adults.

There’s unimaginable pressure on women in Hollywood to look a certain way: thin, wrinkle-free, ‘naturally’ beautiful in a way that is often only achieved with copious amounts of skincare, beauty treatments, injectables and other interventions.

And they’re expected to meet every one of these standards without looking like they’re trying too hard.

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Just look at Brown, who has been criticised for her new blonde hair and fitted gowns despite the fact social media and marketing would have most young women believe that’s the exact look they’re supposed to be striving for.

Brown isn’t the first female star to call out the cruel double standards applied to girls who grow into women in the spotlight and, sadly, she’s unlikely to be the last.

But by speaking out, by holding her critics accountable and giving voice to the complicated and oftentimes traumatic experience of becoming a woman in Hollywood, she may just make people think twice before targeting the next girl whose star is on the rise.

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