I know this isn’t the usual type of thing we tend to post on The Stevenson Life, but after reading a number of tweets and Instagram posts on an Instagram story Millie Bobby Brown shared, the issue really resonated with me.
If you don’t know who or what I’m on about, Millie Bobby Brown is a 14 year old actress who is most famous for playing Eleven on the Netflix hit Stranger Things. She’s an incredible talented girl, but it does seem that people (herself included) forget that she is still just a child. The issue in question was when Millie revealed on her Instagram story that she’d been watching the new Netflix series ‘You’. Now if you haven’t watched the show, it’s about a young man called Joe who becomes obsessed with a girl named Beck, I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who hasn’t seen it, so let’s just say he’s a very disturbed individual and it doesn’t end well.
Now Millie, having watched ‘You’ decided to share that she felt Joe was not a stalker and was simply in love with Beck and that the things he was doing were okay. Now even Penn Badgley who plays Joe has said that his character is not someone to be admired. Millie has received a lot of backlash for her comments, but what a lot of people are forgetting is that she is just 14 years old. She is just a child. Whether she is famous or not does not change that fact.
A lot of the behaviours we see early on from Joe include (but are not limited to): hunting for all forms of Becks’ social media, searching for her friends and families information, following her around, breaking into her home and stealing her things. Now, no matter how much you love someone, this type of behaviour isn’t okay. But why would Millie, a child, be aware of something like this?
When I was 16, someone added me on Facebook and proceeded to tell me that they had gotten my name from the college pass I was wearing around my neck when they served me in a shop. This freaked the hell out of me and I proceeded to delete and block this person, because that isn’t romantic behaviour, it’s toxic and creepy. But Millie, being 14 years old and constantly in the limelight has probably not had to learn the lessons that a lot of teenage girls like myself had to learn.
As a parent, and a female, I really hope that someone close to Millie sits her down and says “okay, I totally understand that this is your opinion and why you think that way, but here’s why you aren’t correct on this one”. If not, then Millie will grow up believing that this behaviour is sweet and romantic, and this could really get her into some dangerous situations which I wouldn’t ever want to see anyone put in to.
It’s difficult, because I think a lot of people don’t want to make children aware that there are some really dangerous and messed up people in the world. I know I’d love to tell Grayson that everyone in the world is kind and caring and he has nothing to fear, but that would be naive and wrong of me to not make my son aware that sometimes he does need to guard and protect himself.
I’m not saying we should tell our kids every gory detail of every bad thing that happens in the world, but we tell our kids that if a strange person tells you to get in their car because they have puppies, you run and don’t look back. So why shouldn’t we teach them that if someone goes out of their way to track you down, even if you’ve never actually given them any indication you’re interested, that this isn’t normal behaviour?
I do believe that once Millie has watched the rest of the series, she’ll come back and go “okay yeah, that’s not normal, he’s crazy” but if not, someone needs to help her understand why this is not okay.