Chloë Grace Moretz Opens Up About Insecurities from Being Photoshopped at 15

Chloë Grace Moretz has been in the spotlight since she was 8 years old. But it hasn’t all been easy. In an interview with Popsugar, the 21-year-old actress opened up about insecurities from being photoshopped at 15 years old and and why she’s dedicated to showing her natural beauty, problematic skin and all, to let her fans know that they don’t have to be retouched to be seen as beautiful.

Like many teenagers, Moretz was influenced by the women that she saw in the media growing up. When it was her turn in the spotlight, Moretz, who struggled with hormonal acne, felt a pressure to wear makeup to look like the women that she saw in the cover of magazines. “A lot of my ideals of feminine beauty came from everything I saw in magazines and things that I learned on set and photo shoots. There was pressure to hide behind layers of makeup,” Moretz said. “It was brutal growing up in the public eye.”

A turning point came when she saw her brothers walk outside makeup-free, with their pimples and blemishes in full glory. The moment made Moretz realize that her fear of her skin was societal. “I was like, ‘Why can’t I do that?’ Then I realized I could do that; it was just my mind telling me I couldn’t,” Moretz said.

Source: Instagram

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The “Carrie” actress also opened up about being photoshopped as young as 15 years old. She recalled looking at magazine covers that she posed for and not recognizing the woman in the pictures. “I’ve done so many covers where I was photoshopped, and I looked nothing like myself,” she said. “It was so strange at 15 years old to be on the cover of a massive women’s mag and be like, ‘That’s a cool photo of whoever that girl is, but it’s not me,'” Moretz said.

As a result of her experiences, Moretz posed makeup-free in unretouched pictures for SK-II’s Bare Skin campaign, with the hope of letting her fans know that they don’t have to conform to unrealistic beauty standards. “I hope that a 13-year-old girl on Instagram sees it and will know that I’m not retouched,” she said. “She’ll realize that you can go out with bare skin and be who you are and not hide behind these false ideals of what beauty is.”

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Like most celebrities, Moretz has faced her fair share of negativity on social media. But as she’s become more confident in her skin, she’s become more OK with the comments and people’s negative opinions about her. “The more I stopped hiding behind the figment of what I thought people wanted to see as Chloë Moretz and started just being myself was when I started becoming OK with all the different comments, be it negative or positive,” Moretz said. “When you become confident in who you are, you become confident with what you look like when you wake up in the morning. Then people’s comments don’t really affect you the way that they used to, because you’re not falsifying who you are.”

As woke as we claim to be, what we see in the media still holds a huge weight, whether it be diversity or Photoshop. Good on Moretz for calling out Hollywood’s obsession with Photoshop. We hope she inspires more young people to embrace their natural beauty too.