Erin Moriarty, star of The boysis sick of Megyn Kelly framing her judgment of people’s bodies as concern for women, and honestly? We’re proud she spoke up.
The former Fox News host accused Moriarty of having undergone plastic surgery, citing the actress – best known for her portrayal of Starlight in the Amazon Prime Video superhero comedy – as an example of a “social disease” that leads “beautiful” women to undergo “extreme” plastic surgery in a recent segment.
“More and more young women are doing this,” Kelly explained on her SirusXM show. “It’s not an objection to plastic surgery, it’s an obsession with transforming yourself into this false version of yourself,” the host claimed.
(Sure, Jan.)
But Kelly went further after analyzing the differences between two undated photos of Moriarty, declaring that the actor’s perceived facial changes were “a sign of mental illness.”
Kelly took the tried-and-true line so often taken by people who claim their ill-informed judgments are actually care. “I really want to get into the heads of these young girls and tell them, ‘Please don’t do this.'”
Understandably, Moriarty was not happy about Kelly using her image to dictate what women should or should not do with it, especially since, as she said in an Instagram post on Friday, she has never undergone the surgeries and procedures Kelly demanded.
Moriarty explained that she had already endured “one of the most difficult weeks” of her life, during which she had “BARELY been able to eat or sleep” and was already fearing unsolicited feedback and comments about her body online. She condemned Kelly for what she called “exhibitionist feminism” and “ironically misogynistic.”
“This is something I truly never expected,” Moriarty wrote in the Instagram post. “We all face bullying throughout our lives, but I am appalled and felt I deserved to take a moment to address these things.”
“Megyn used as an example a photo that she said was taken ‘a year ago,’ but was actually taken about a decade ago, before I was of LEGAL DRINKING WATER AGE (I’m turning 30 soon) (maybe do some research, which would take 30 seconds),” Moriarty explained.
She explained that the “after” photo Kelly used was from a day where makeup artists used their “magic wands” and did work that included “heavy contouring” to create the look, which Kelly said was purely plastic. At the time, the makeup made Moriarty feel “pretty” after a stressful day. However, the “scathing comments” since then have left her “horrified” and prompted her to quit social media altogether.
“I am appalled by the response, the simplistic assumptions,” she wrote. “It broke my heart. You broke my heart… there is no excuse for these horrific accusations, the verbal abuse I had to delete, and the truly false information being used to spread a message that is exhibitionist feminism.”
“Shame on you, Megyn Kelly,” Moriarty concluded her statement. “The suggestion that my photograph reflects that women are worse off is as false as my belief that you would leave women better off if you resigned.”
To that we can only say: Damn it, Erin. Damn it. Fortunately, many people – including several The boys Co-stars like Chace Crawford and Jack Quaid – supported Moriarty because he spoke out against our culture’s Ouroboros-like obsession with the female body.
And, hey: Maybe one day the world will just let women live!
(Sure, Jan.)
