Originally, the photo was simply intended to illustrate a most innocuous moment in life between her and her niece Emma Roberts.
“I posted a photo of my niece and me, taken one morning during a weekend where she had slept over.
We had just woken up, we were drinking tea and playing cards.
We were having a lovely morning.
It was great, I felt good,” says Julia Roberts in this audio recording broadcast on the Instagram account of her colleague Viola Davis, on Friday February 9.
To discover
Podcast
> Gwyneth Paltrow: the strange guru from the Upper East Side
However, the countless reactions that this image provoked were not really those expected by the heroine of
Pretty Woman
.
“There are a lot of people who felt absolutely compelled to say how horrible I looked in the photo, that I wasn't aging well.
People were saying, 'Oh my God, I didn't even recognize her,' 'Is that what she looks like?'" the actress protests, also referring to the "confrontations" that broke out in the comments under his publication, creating a real debate between those who openly criticized his physique and those who defended him.
Toxicity of social networks
The Lancôme muse did not hesitate to share her vulnerability with Internet users, confiding how much these remarks had touched her.
“I was amazed at how it made me feel, and I'm a 50-year-old woman.
I know who I am, and yet I was hurt, she admits, I was so hurt that people couldn't see the point of this [post], the sweetness, the luminous and absolute joy that emerged from this photo.
The actress from
Love at First Sight in Notting Hill
, mother of three children, also took advantage of this unfortunate opportunity to warn of the consequences of this type of comments on the youngest.
"I thought, 'My God, what would have happened if I was 15?'
It’s just devastating,” she laments, adding that this experience allowed her to open her eyes to the harmful effects of social networks.
“We realize that there is something neurological in this whole system.
It was fascinating to me and I think it taught me a lot about what it means to be a young person in today's society,” she concludes.
Also read Filtered beauty: on networks, the “Snapchat syndrome” threatens mental health
In the caption of her post, her friend Viola Davis added: “This Julia Roberts story says it all.
Social media can be toxic.
What does this do to all of us – especially young people?
Let’s think about it.”
Pamela Anderson, Eva Longoria, Selena Gomez, Florence Pugh... 23 times celebrities caused a sensation without makeup in 2023
In images, in pictures
See the slideshow23 photos
See the slideshow23 photos