u/radiohead-girlies

i’m probably not the first person to say this, but the way some people talk about sasha as a child on the show is honestly strange and at times it feels genuinely predatory.

there’s always been a lot of focus on the fact that she was 12 while playing alison. and yes, it is impressive how well she performed at that age, but the way people talk about it often feels off. people forget that 12 is middle school. calling that time her “prime” or acting like she’s past it now when she’s only just turning 30 is weird. and the sexualized comments people have made about her over the years are just gross. i really wish people were normal about young girls.

everyone has an obsession with how ‘pretty’ and ‘perfect’ sasha looked in season 1 when the girl was literally 13. the conversations will start off normal, like appreciating her acting skills, and then somehow shift into something that sounds like a creepy old man in a facebook comment section. it’s like… how did we even get here? 😭

and this next point might sound too serious, but i honestly don’t care. a lot of the way people talk about the women in this cast is genuinely problematic and, at times, very ageist. it’s not that saying they were at their peak during the show is the worst thing ever, because they were objectively at the height of their popularity. but there’s a difference between acknowledging that and implying everything after that is decline.

that same mindset hasn’t really gone away, it’s just shifted. now it shows up in comments like “they all looked better back then,” or people acting shocked that the cast doesn’t look the way they did in 2010 anymore. there’s this fixation on freezing them in one specific moment and treating anything outside of that as a downgrade.

at the same time, i’m not saying people never look different because of things like surgery or other changes. and i do think it’s disingenuous to pretend that every visible change is just “natural aging,” especially when someone’s features look significantly different. acting like that’s always just growing up can feel naïve and, honestly, a bit misleading. but that’s kind of a separate issue. acknowledging that people change, whether through aging, personal choices, or anything else, shouldn’t automatically turn into criticism. aging itself isn’t a failure or a flaw. it’s also not something that needs to be denied or sugarcoated. it just is.

and more importantly, people can look different for all kinds of reasons. it’s rarely as simple as “they aged” or “they had work done.” reducing it to one explanation misses the bigger picture and usually says more about how people expect others to look than anything else. i’m not fond of ashley benson but the way people talk about her looks has gotten tiring, she looks massively different? yes. but what now? like okay 😭.

troian was around 24 playing a high school student, which yes, is older than the character. but the way some people talk about it, you’d think she was a literal grandmother playing a teenager. people were calling her “old,” saying she “looked 40,” or even joking that she looked like someone’s mom in season 1. it’s always been weird to me because 24 is not old at all. it’s barely even outside the typical casting range for teen dramas, yet people reacted like it was extreme.

i also think this ties into a bigger issue with how people talk about age in general, especially when it comes to women in entertainment. there’s this idea that once you hit 30, you’re basically old, like that’s the cutoff for being considered attractive or relevant. you even see comments like “i hope i look like her (lucy) at 36,” as if 36 is some unusually old age to still look good, when realistically most people in their 30s look completely normal 😭?

i don’t get how this take even got so popular when there’s barely any real reasoning behind it, but this fandom isn’t exactly known for critical thinking skills, no shade as much as i love y’all and also contribute to the endless discourse 🥹

it’s always been weird to me how people blame emily’s mom for maya’s death because of the butterfly effect. like yeah, if pam didn’t report maya, she wouldn’t have been sent to camp, and maybe things would’ve turned out differently. but that logic is so selective. why aren’t people blaming maya’s parents, who actually sent her away? or the guy who stalked and killed her because he couldn’t take no for an answer. somehow it always circles back to blaming a woman instead of the man but i expected nothing less 😭.

and the way people talk about pam is annoying too. she was homophobic at first, but that lasted a few episodes and she changed. after that she was supportive, defended emily, and tried to protect her as best as she could. i don’t get why people act like she’s some irredeemable villain over that when the show literally shows her growth. i’m not excusing how she acted at the start, but acting like people can’t change in pll makes no sense, especially when a lot of the same people dragging her are the ones defending alison or shipping her with emily 🤷🏾‍♀️.

saying this as someone who actually really likes hanna (she’s my second favorite after spencer), i’ve always found it kind of strange how her trying to pressure sean into having sex isn’t treated as seriously as it should be? from what i’ve seen, people tend to victimize her instead (which honestly happens a lot in this fandom whenever she’s in the wrong), like her insecurity somehow justifies crossing someone’s boundaries…?

i’m not saying people never call it out, but it definitely doesn’t get the same level of criticism as other problematic behavior in the show. and it’s especially weird when some of the same hanna fans who hate on spencer for the spaleb situation paint spencer as this male-centered cheater who’s always chasing validation, when hanna’s entire relationship with sean is basically her ignoring his boundaries and throwing herself at him because she feels insecure and unwanted 😢.

it just feels like when its pertaining to certain issues (pedophilia, grooming, SA, etc.) there is is a bias (ie: pedophilia bad when ezra but jason good because he’s hot, aria is a grooming victim but spencer goes after others boyfriends and isn’t being preyed upon, and many more).