We all know who Bella Thorne is—but do we really know who Bella Thorne is? This 20 year old actress and singer started her career as a model since she was only 6 weeks old, appearing in numerous commercials and guest-starring on TV shows such as The O.C. and Entourage. She got her big break on Disney’s Shake It Up as the bubbly aspiring dancer Cece Jones, starring alongside Zendaya.
As a young teenager, I was obsessed with Bella Thorne. I envied her eye-catching fashion style, her attractive looks, and her flaming red hair. Bella would appear in countless movie premieres, fashion shows and award shows, and I would be totally mesmerized by her red carpet dresses and interviews.
After she left Disney at the age of fifteen, she appeared in movies such as Blended, The Duff, and plenty other thriller films. She was still the gorgeous, America’s sweetheart actress with the positive, clean image until her not-so-subtle transformations in which she dyed her hair in vibrant colors and started adopting gritty and eccentric looks at Hollywood events. Then came a huge wave of rather shocking Snapchats and Instagram stories of her cleaning acne, piercing her nose, waxing, and even going to the toilet. Oh, and fans lost it when she named her new puppy Tampon.
It’s one thing to question her intentions of posting those images and videos on social media, but quite another to be bashing relentlessly on her actions. Bella’s posts have no doubt created an uproar in the world, but is she really the naughty “bad girl” that has completely gone off the rails?
In a recent mini Vogue documentary “Inside the Life of Bella Thorne” Bella Thorne gets insanely candid and unveiled her struggles with body image, sexual harassment and dealing with online haters. She admitted that she was talking in a much higher tone than usual on Shake It Up, and that she was often forced to be typecast as either the goody-two-shoes or the snobby sexy girl in films. She was tired of being cornered into a particular box & she decided that she couldn’t take it anymore. Bella’s personality in front of the cameras has transformed into a much more careless and casual attitude, revealing her struggles with dyslexia, coming out as bisexual on the Internet, and speaks out about her experience being molested when she was younger. On another note, she gets real with the rest of world about her finances and how much she’s earning through social media. One Instagram post alone earns her $65,000 while Insta and Snapchat stories allow her to pocket 10K to 20K per post!
Overall, I think all this indicates the fact that we are living and seeing the world through the filtered and fragmented lens of social media. We may think that we know a celebrity so well, but it is often nothing close to what they truly are as three-dimensional human beings. We have to ask ourselves, why are we nonchalant about spreading hateful comments about a person’s appearance online? Why are we so quick to judge a celebrity’s actions and gossip? Bella takes this rebellious and abnormal yet authentic approach to jolt people’s awareness, breaking down some of the facade and hyper image that may have been rooted in our minds.
She has been so outspoken and straightforward whenever she does an interview, such as on Chelsea Handler’s talk show, where she talks about the women’s march and the #MeToo movement. On ABC news, she talks about how she is motivated for change when she sees that her social media platform can reach fans and create debates in astounding ways. In truth, we are beginning to see a multi-dimensional side of Bella, but we will never know who she really is as a fully-fleshed human being and that’s something we should all keep in mind when we view celebrities on the Internet. It simply isn’t our place to judge or to jump to conclusions about someone we don’t have a full portrait of.
The future for Bella is looking busy so far. She is starring in a a new Freeform TV series called Famous in Love as title character Paige Townsend, a college student suddenly plucked into the Hollywood industry, and is bombarded with all the crazy baggage that tags along with being a nationwide superstar.
Her most recent romantic movie Midnight Sun with Patrick Schwarzenegger has hit theaters and is trending worldwide, creating a wave of Twitter adoration from fans all across the globe.
Whether you love her or hate her, you can’t deny that Bella Thorne is one of the most genuine celebrities in Hollywood right now—and we will definitely be seeing a lot more of Bella’s revolutionary change in the years to come.