You know what’s stranger than Stranger Things’ demagorgon, or the upside down? That people in the real world, 2017, are happily sexualising a famous teenager, yet again. You don’t have to be the world’s top celebrity expert to remember how premature sexualisation of young child stars has affected, say, Justin Bieber, Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Amanda Bynes, Drew Barrymore, Macauley Culkin, Shia LaBeouf and Aaron Carter. But recently, self-appointed ‘world’s top celebrity expert’, NBC senior executive Mike Sington, seemed to have a blindspot to the fates of young, oversexualised celebrities, when he tweeted a couple of pictures of Stranger Things’ Millie Bobby Brown at a premiere, along with the caption “Millie Bobby Brown just grew up in front of our eyes. (She’s 13!) #StrangerThings2”
Millie Bobby Brown just grew up in front of our eyes. (She’s 13!) #StrangersThings2 pic.twitter.com/5NanY9q2oq
— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) October 27, 2017
The tweet has provoked a whole bunch of responses. Oscar-winner Patricia Arquette said:
And other Twitter users said stuff like this:
Meanwhile some others said some gross stuff we're not up for repeating. Today, the Daily Mail has described Millie's outfit at last week's premiere as 'a distinctly adult Calvin Klein leather dress', and wondered, as if their previous video titled 'All grown up! Millie Bobby Brown at the Stranger Things 2 premiere' has nothing to do with the culture Millie is growin up in, 'can she avoid the downsides of child celebrity which have blighted so many?'
While it’s pretty obvious to most of us that make-up and clothes - even a neck-to-knee dress by Calvin Klein - don’t turn a child into an adult, it seems like a few people still need reminding. And even if Millie is perhaps a calculated and precocious schemer hell bent on fooling all of us into thinking she’s really old, first of all: why? Second of all, adults should know better than to play along. This girl has never taken a heavy sopping bin full of a miasma of random putrid juices to the bin. She has never paid a bill. She is not an adult, nor a receptacle for adult fantasies. But it’s not only the sexualisation of the male gaze that elevates a child star way beyond her remit, we can see it in this ‘relatable’ tweet:
Sure, it’s lol, because feeling like your world is spiralling out of control is pretty constant for so many of us. But it’s all part of the same narrative - that Millie Bobby Brown is an adult, when she really isn’t. She’s just a child who does a great job as a child actress, helped along by a team of PRs, make-up artists, hair people, stylists, agents, directors, producers, whoever. Her family, reports that Mail article, all have a hand in helping her out in different ways. And as much as it seems like she’s got everything figured out, her path ahead might prove a little rocky if she’s treated like an adult for the foreseeable.
If the past few weeks, where all sorts allegations have been made about the sexualised treatment of young women - and men - in Hollywood, have taught us anything, we all know that decreeing a child is an adult way before her time isn’t that lol after all…what is lol? Calling yourself ‘the world’s top celebrity expert’
UPDATE: Mike Sington has apologised, tweeting out the following statement
You might also be interested in:
Millie Bobby Brown vs Emma Watson, How Teenagers Take On The Red Carpet, Then And Now
Who Is Millie Bobby Brown, The Girl Behind Stranger Things' Eleven
Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.