Ariel Winter mildly fascinates me but we don’t cover her too often because frankly she’s controversial. I feel similarly about Bella Thorne. Winter often posts revealing photos to Instagram, which is her right, and wears revealing clothing day to day and on the red carpet. I know I sound like a middle-aged mom, I am one, and it’s hard for me to reconcile my thoughts about her age (she’s only 19!), her platform, her right to wear and share what she wants online, and her fashion, which is often puzzling. She’s a public figure and she’s promoting and expressing herself, like a lot of young women her age. It makes me uncomfortable at times and maybe that’s the point.
Anyway Winter did an interview with Refinery 29. It was extensive and she gave several statements that could be used as headlines, but her main point was that we should be able to wear and do whatever we want, and to be positive about our body image and to support other women. I totally agree with that, and you can read her interview here. Here are some of my favorite quotes from that. She’s saying you do you:
“I’m definitely a makeup at the beach person, and I don’t care if people think I look ridiculous — it’s my beach day! Whether I want to go natural or with makeup or in sweatpants, that’s up to me. People are so stressed out about how they’re going to look in their bathing suits that they forget to go to the beach because they want to go to the beach, which defeats the whole purpose. The beach should be a safe space.
“I went through a lot of hate online, so I tried to change myself for a really long time. But people just kept hating on me no matter what I did. I decided that instead of pleasing these other people, I’ll just spend that time pleasing myself. Those people are going to be rude to me regardless of what I do, so I should just try and be happy with what I am.
“I used to have full-scale meltdowns in bathing suit shops because there was nothing I could find to wear. I always felt like crap about myself. It’s gotten a little better, but it’s still definitely hard. Like, my best friend, she’s super tall and skinny and she’ll wear the same bathing suit as me, but people will automatically look at me and call me out as a slut or write headlines about ‘Ariel Winter’s cleavage.’ Meanwhile they look at her like, ‘Oh she looks so cute!’ But I’ve learned to not care about that as much. I’m comfortable in a bathing suit, scars and all.”
She also said that “Thanks to Donald Trump we’re being objectified” and that as women we should stick together “to remind each other that what [we] look like is not the only thing that’s important when it comes to who [we] are.” She sounds really wise for 19 actually. The press pulled her anti-Trump comment and some of her quotes about living with her 29 year-old boyfriend, and reported on them separately, as we do with interviews. She took offense to that and mildly called out outlets for focusing on the wrong parts of the interview and not the whole. Here’s what she posted to Instagram, along with a photo from the shoot she did with the magazine. (There are more photos at the source.)
On one side I understand this. It’s got to be frustrating as a celebrity to give an interview that lasts an hour or more, to cover different topics, and to have the most salacious ones used as headlines. One the other hand I work in this industry. We have to find an angle that other sites aren’t using, and people will be much more interested in the ten year age difference with her boyfriend than the fact that she’s talking body positivity, which she’s said several times before. The new and interesting parts get comments and views, that’s just how it is.
Also, she knows this very well. She knows how social media, and online media in general works and she uses it to her advantage. Plus her post calling out the press may be yet another way to get more attention, but that’s just how I think. It’s hard to take anything at face value when you’re in the gossip business. At least she has a positive, inclusive message and she’s been consistent about that.
.@arielwinter1 tells @ariannagdavis that she DGAF what anyone thinks about her "beach body": https://t.co/d5JaRVvILh pic.twitter.com/BNxQwmeCGv
— refinery29 (@Refinery29) May 31, 2017
photos credit: WENN, Refinery 29 and Instagram
Glad shes promoting body positivity (even if its mostly for attention) but good god she is incredibly exhausting.
couldn’t agree more. I like her on-screen persona much better. In real life she hasn’t got much to say. She seems to be an immature attention-seeker with a penchant for exhibitionism. All this talk about body positivity is a smoke screen, otherwise she wouldn’t photoshop her thighs in every second pic.
Yup agreed!
That’s fine that she loves her body, but she dresses that body like she does not like it. Straight up ugly clothes. The question is, is that really her taste or is she just trolling everyone?
I am the owner of some natural DD’s so I know the slut factor of which she speaks, but the clothes she chooses are abysmal.
My issue is that sometimes she is extremely tacky. I don’t care if she is covered or not. Her age is not an issue too.
I’m glad she is encouraging body positivity.For some reason I can’t forget the drama with her mother and how she said Ariel was trying to date older guys and dress older when she was around 14 when she wouldn’t let her do those things that’s when she started complaining about her mom’s treatment of her. After moving in with her sister she quickly started to dress more provocatively for a teen after that I thought the mom was right.
Yes you can dress however you want but please make it tasteful. Some of her clothing choices are flat out tacky. I’m sorry I’m all for women solidarity but there’s a line and it’s called taste. She’s lucky she is in the entertainment business. I can tell you if she worked in an office, her right to “express herself” through clothes would lead her to a meeting with HR.
Honestly, I think she’s going through a pretty normal stage – she’s entering a period where she’s suddenly aware of her body and that it’s beautiful, and she wants to show it off. Considering how gross we are about sexualizing young female bodies – especially voluptuous ones – she likely spent most of her teen years being self-conscious about her breasts until she had the reduction. Enjoy it honey, just stop worrying about having to justify it to the rest of us.
I agree. some of the stuff I wore when I was her age shrieked… HHHOOOOOHHHHKKKAAHHHH and I thought I looked amazing and was the bees knees. She’ll grow out of it. We were all 19 once.
Still like her. She’s young, she wants attention, she’s got growing to do, but her hearts in the right place. There’s not a lot of artifice in her, or calculation. I prefer that to a sanitized and uber controlled image/brand.
Encouraging conversation about body positivity is great, but I feel like with her it’s become a Demi Lovato situation where it’s her go-to talking point. It’s kind of stale coming from her because she always says the same things about it.
Also: she bugs, but I LOVE her expression in the bottom pic.
that green suit is so cute. How can someone wear make-up at the beach without it running all over the place? It’s one of those things the uber girly-girls can do that I find sort of magical.
I don’t like body shaming either but when that becomes the whole talking point of a celebrity (see ashley Graham, etc.) it starts to feel like a never-ending cycle of reactionary clapbacks when maybe they’d be better served by just not feeding that particular media fire.
I think she’s obsessed with her shtick and her self esteem is now completely body based. I blame her crazy mother and her upbringing that instilled that. She needs a good therapist. This is an incredibly smart young woman with legitimate acting talent but she’s not yet wise at all. In her own way, she’s contributing to body issues of other young girls, but she just doesn’t see it. Bless her heart.
I agree with @maybetomorrow. I don’t know much of her other than her fight for the freedom to wear not much. Clearly her self esteem is low but attacking the public and media for the freedom to be you when you don’t even know who you really are at 19 is gonna result in insanity.
She’s clearly too absorbed in social media and needs to realise that there is life outside of Instagram. Her taking pictures and posting them there…..if she is enthralled by “likes” then her value is in other peoples opinions and not everyone will like what she is purposefully and freely sharing.
If you have to specifically post that you “DGAF about what people think about your beach body”, then you very clearly do.
Exactly!
Ha! You made my point so much more succinctly !
She looks cute in the refinery29 pictures. She seems intelligent enough. Tacky as hell, but to each their own. Only thing that bothers me is her 29 year old boyfriend. He seems like a creep.
Yea wtf does a 29 year old see in a19 year old? It feels gross and creepy, she is just out of her teens.
I can relate to the situation where she is being called out looking slutty and her tally skinny friend is cute. Having big boobs myself I can’t or won’t wear some outfits because I look ridiculous. Even simple t-shirts can be inappropiate for work.
Being short, a bit chubby with big boobs and duck feet (my feet look like laced up beef rolls in sandals!) shopping can be so frustrating. I also have a tall skinny friend who looks great in almost everything. If I wear the same thing I look like a streetwalker.
I agree that it’s hard to dress a figure that is really curvy. I had a figure very similar to Ariel’s back in the day. I always said that I had the perfect figure for 1957. And that was the answer for me when I wanted to dress up –lots of vintage party dresses. Back in the 80s and 90s, you could still get nice ones for cheap. I could look great in dresses that were designed when an hourglass figure was the ideal. They weren’t overtly sexy on the rack, but when you have a lavish figure, a little goes a long way.
I applaud Ariel for grappling with this issue, but I think she still has a way to go to sort through what sounds like a lot of toxic influences. There is a difference between can and should. A lot of her clothes would be great in a dance club, but they are distracting at a graduation party or a professional photo call for a famity show. They distract from others who are present and they distract from any other messages that she may have.
That’s funny. I tried vintage style dresses for a while as well. And I have to say, it didn’t look too bad.
She’s adorable and has a cute curvy body, why not show it off?
Sure she looks a bit like a low rent Kardashian sometimes but she’s harmless.
Don’t know much about her. She looks great in those green bathing suit pics and terrible with those fake eyelashes in the bottom pic; I will be SO happy when that trend is over. That said, she’s young and finding her style. I feel for young women in the public eye.
I don’t have a problem with Ariel Winter, I think she’s smart and talented, but I think that whenever a message is so in your face like this, it ends up coming across as fake or desperate for attention, not just this one in particular but any message. In this case, it’s great that you believe in you doing you and you should dress however you like and do whatever you want. Do it, you don’t need to keep talking about it, you know?
“Do it, you don’t need to keep talking about it, you know?” I think that’s easier said than done when people resort to the same-old same-old every single time she or any other woman/girl who’s well-known just does it, AND when part of her political message around this has consistently been that women SHOULDN’T just quietly accept the shaming, misogynistic and victim-blaming responses as ‘normal’ ‘natural’ and ‘deserved’. She’s sort of practicing what she preaches in that way, and it also gets her name in the press.
She’s clearly had some of the usual insecurities about her body, but I don’t get the “so sad, what low self-esteem, poor weak child” vibe on her. I see her as someone who obviously will try to get the public’s attention as a celebrity, but who’s also assertive about what she believes in politically. And she’s passionate about these things when it relates to other people besides herself too.
No girl her age dresses like that. She dresses like a forty something divorcee. Very much iike poor Courtney Stodden. They dress like an older retired Veas showgirl fromthe 90s