When Madison De La Garza was just 6 years old and starring in Desperate Housewives, she became the subject of criticism over her weight. Now, she says she spent hours reading negative comments about herself on YouTube videos, causing her to turn to disordered eating at just 7 years old.
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Madison says she was taken aback by all the criticism she received.
"The reactions that I got to my character on Desperate Housewives, it was just shocking," Madison admitted while appearing on the Heart of the Matter podcast.
"A lot of people came at it in a way that they were 'concerned for my health,' and I personally believe that that's just not true, that that was a cover-up so that they could just judge a 6-year-old."
She discovered the nasty comments while scrolling YouTube.
Reading what people had to say about her quickly became an obsession for Madison, who admitted to spending "hours and hours" reading the hate online despite being prohibited from using the computer "unsupervised" at that age.
"I would just spend a crazy amount of time reading through these comments, and most all of them were just atrocious," she recalled.
The things people said about her weight were horrifying.
"They said things like they wanted me to die because of what I looked like," she continued, adding that she was only 7 or 8 at the time she was reading all the horrible messages.
Madison said those messages "definitely affected [her] mental health and ultimately played into [her] developing an eating disorder at a very young age."
Despite being the butt of many jokes, Madison said her on-screen mom went out of her way to make her feel better.
Madison joined the cast during the fourth season and played Eva Longoria's adopted daughter. "The whole joke of my character was that Eva was this thin, beautiful model and her daughter turned out to be quite the opposite," Madison explained.
"And so I think she was very aware that this was going to affect me," Madison defended her co-star. "[Eva] definitely went out of her way to make me feel like I was pretty and like I was special, and she made me feel like I was family."
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We feel awful that Madison had to experience this.
Madison, who is Demi Lovato's younger half-sister, should never have had to go through any of this.
We hope that by sharing her story she reminds people that it's never OK to talk about a person's weight, especially when it's a child. You never know who is going to read those comments, and posting hurtful words can have a lasting impact on people. Yes — even celebrities.
