Actress Chloë Grace Moretz: I Got ‘Body Dysmorphia’ over ‘Family Guy’ Memes Mocking Me

MGM/New Line Cinema
MGM/New Line Cinema
Alana Mastrangelo

Actress Chloë Grace Moretz responded to what she called “horrific” Family Guy memes mocking her body, saying they contributed to body dysmorphia. “I basically became a recluse.”

Moretz told Hunter magazine that she began to feel “so much self-loathing” and confusion after attending a red carpet event at age 18, when she started to ask herself, “What am I doing? Who am I? Why am I doing this? Like, what does this mean?”

“And then came the onslaught of horrific memes that started getting sent to me about my body,” the Carrie actress said. “I’ve actually never really talked about this, but there was one meme that really affected me, of me walking into a hotel with a pizza box in my hand.”

Moretz went on to say that this particular photo “got manipulated into a character from Family Guy with the long legs and the short torso, and it was one of the most widespread memes at the time.”

“Everyone was making fun of my body and I brought it up with someone and they were like, ‘Oh, shut the fuck up, it’s funny,'” she continued.

“And I just remember sitting there and thinking, my body is being used as a joke and it’s something that I can’t change about who I am, and it is being posted all over Instagram,” Moretz lamented.

“It was something so benign as walking into a hotel with leftovers,” the actress told the magazine, adding that “to this day, when I see that meme, it’s something very hard for me to overcome.”

Moretz explained that she was “kind of sad,” after that, adding, “It took a layer of something that I used to enjoy, which was getting dressed up and going to a carpet and taking a photo, and made me super self-conscious.”

“And I think that body dysmorphia — which we all deal with in this world — is extrapolated by the issues of social media. It’s a headfuck,” she said.

The Let Me In actress added that she “basically became a recluse” in response to the Family Guy memes.

“It was great because I got away from the photographers and I was able to be myself, and to have so many experiences that people didn’t photograph, but at the same time it made me severely anxious when I was photographed,” she said. “My heart rate would rise and I would hyperventilate.”

You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.

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