Chloe Moretz Body Shamed, Trust That It Happened

Among the top five or so most popular team sports in Hollywood is announcing how badly you were mistreated, abused, or even assaulted in the past without naming names or dates or places. That would be team woman. Dax Shepard tried to tell his story about having an older boy stick his hand down his pants and everybody kind of laughed. Shepard found it less amusing and went on a twenty year rock and whiskey bender.

Chloe Moretz has been reminiscing about that time she was a fifteen year old on a movie set and her male co-star ten years her senior body shamed her. Or more specifically, he told her what kind of girls he prefers to date:

“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.”

No doubt, an odd thing to say to a girl who would be a high school freshman who can’t possibly have weighed more than ninety pounds. But to work in Hollywood is to understand that child actors in particular are in the one percent of socially awkward. Being raised in an organically grass fed vegan bubble will do that to you. Other things like never going to school or learning social skills from kids not currently supporting their families with shampoo commercials doesn’t help.

In Moretz’s defense, you have to have a body shaming story in your back pocket if you’re a chick in entertainment. A Buzzfeed or HuffPo early twenty-something journalist is going to force you on the issue. She’ll start with a question about your new movie to lure you in, then onto body shaming experiences, gender neutrality, and anti-Trump slogans. They’ve got to make their senior editors happy. The late twenty-somethings back at HQ. Body shaming is one of the approved story hooks. It’s like anything Kaepernick for ESPN.

Naturally, Moretz didn’t name her shamer. Thereby allowing several of her former male costars to twist in the wind as her social media followers started making assumptions. Hard to defend yourself from an accusation where you’re not even named. Even harder working off the assumption it quite possibly never happened. Or when he said “too big” he was teasing about how famous she was. Or any number of other completely innocuous explanations.

We used to call anonymous indictments McCarthyism. Now we call it journalism. When there are no news standards, everything is news. You can only hope Moretz survived.

_{Photo credit: Neighbors 2 / Splash News}