FeMail trouble

Millie Bobby Brown taught one Daily Mail freelancer a lesson but that's not enough...

Previously: How to survive a deletion

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“This isn’t journalism. This is bullying. The fact that adult writers are spending their time dissecting my face, my body, my choices, is disturbing. That some of these articles are written by women makes it even worse. I will not be shamed for how I look, how I dress, or how I present myself. Let’s do better, not just for me but for every young girl who deserves to grow up without the fear of being torn apart for simply existing.” 

When the actress Millie Bobby Brown posted on Instagram last week, responding to a run of newspaper articles criticising her looks, she called out four Mail journalists by name — the paper’s Deputy Health Editor, John Ely, online showbiz reporter Bethan Edwards, reporter Cassie Carpenter and FeMail freelancer, Lydia Hawken. Only Hawken responded publicly to Brown’s video. In a post on TikTok, she said:

… I work on a rota system, and sometimes I get to pitch stories that are my own, that I truly want to write, but more often than not, I get assigned stories that have been decided upon by an editorial team. The story about Millie Bobby Brown fell into the latter category. This is not an excuse or me asking for sympathy, because I still wrote it. I was also totally unprepared to deal with the consequences of being named by Millie as one of the journalists involved in this reporting… I want to say I’m sorry for writing the story, and for not being brave enough to say no… This morning, I officially resigned from the Mail and I won’t work with them again. I’m turning 30 in a few days, and it’s time for a change… 

The ‘story’ that Hawken wrote was headlined Why are Gen Zers like Millie Bobby Brown ageing so badly? and used the hook of unkind comments about Brown posted on social media as an excuse to quiz a series of aestheticians about just what’s wrong with young people’s faces these days.

Since Hawken’s apology video, her name has been removed from the byline, replaced with a generic reference to a “FeMail reporter”, but a look through her MailOnline back catalogue shows she was quite experienced with that genre of article. Here are just two of the most recent examples:

Why are Love Island girls so bad at makeup? (12/02/25)

How Donatella got this face at 69: Experts reveal the procedures behind Versace designer’s ‘biggest upgrade ever’ (04/12/24)

Would Hawken have experienced her Damascene conversion if she hadn’t been named and shamed by someone with such a big public profile and platform? It’s possible but I suspect not. The culture of celebrity journalism is to treat its subjects like characters rather than human beings. Hawken was surprised by what it feels like to be subjected to the scrutiny of the internet at large because showbiz hacks are so used to giving it out and not taking it.

I’d be tempted to say that Hawken deserves to be cut some more slack as she’s only just left her twenties but Brown is only 21. That said, Hawken deserves a modicum of credit for actually addressing the criticism and making a change. The other journalists named by Brown are on staff at the Mail and have many more years of judging and sniping under their belts. They’re committed to a career of feeling morally superior while pumping out morally bankrupt material.

Let’s look at the piece by John Ely that Brown flagged up in her Instagram post. Under the headline What HAS Millie Bobby Brown done to her face? Cosmetic surgeons weigh in as fans say Stranger Things star, 21, looks 'a decade older' on the red carpet, the Deputy Health Editor wrote:

She is one of Gen Z's most famous faces - yet Millie Bobby Brown's recent outings have left fans wondering why she looks 'a decade older' than her actual age. The 21-year-old actress was declared unrecognizable as she walked the red carpet at the premiere of her film, The Electric State in Los Angeles.

It came after her appearance at the SAG Awards earlier this week, which left social media users stunned at how mature the Stranger Things star looked. One, writing on X, said: 'Literally had to double check [she] turned 21 the other day and not 40.'

'Already looking like 30-year-old,' commented another.

'When did 21 going on 45 looks become fashionable?' asked a third.

Fans have previously speculated that Millie, born 19 February 2004, may have received injections of fillers, often used to plump the cheeks and lips.

This is a classic example of trawling social media for comments to justify a line that the publication wanted to use. A small number of snide people on X become “fans wondering” and “speculating”. The comments Ely quotes in the passage above come from X users with 228 followers, 640 followers, and 939 followers respectively. The Mail treats trollish gripes as criticisms worthy of an international media platform.

Digging through the site formerly known as Twitter for lines allowed Ely to pass off insinuations that he wanted to write as merely the opinions of others:

Fans have previously speculated that Millie, born 19 February 2004, may have received injections of fillers, often used to plump the cheeks and lips.

You see, he wasn’t speculating on whether Brown has had cosmetic surgery — while using her first name as if they’re old pals — but merely passing on what everyone else has been saying. And then it was time to bring in some experts to add to the fun:

Now cosmetic doctors have weighed in, adding their expert view as to whether or not fans are correct in their suspicions.

“Now cosmetic doctors have weighed in” makes it sound like they spontaneously got in touch with Ely rather than responding to a press requests for comments from those keen to pimp their brands on the pages of MailOnline. The first cosmetic surgeon quoted in the article, Dr Paul Banwell, has popped up in the Mail eight times in the past five years. A second cosmetic surgeon, Dr Richard Reish, is quoted on the back of a TikTok he posted to his 18,000 followers speculating about Brown’s face — the Mail used the same line in another ‘story’ about the actress’ looks in September 2024.

With the Mail’s usual deliberate blindness to irony, Ely’s story ends by quoting Brown talking about her insecurities in a 2023 interview with Glamour magazine.

Oddly enough, the MailOnline’s Milly Bobby Brown coverage doesn’t reference her Instagram post or criticisms of its journalists. While it’s since managed to post about Chris Brown standing in front of her at a press event — apparently to preserve her modesty — and had been pumping out two or three pieces a day about the minutiae of her life, her statement is somehow not newsworthy.

Brown was right. What she was subjected to wasn’t journalism but bullying. FeMail regularly indulges in little more than playground taunts gussied up under a byline. It’s a culture that’s driven from the top of newsrooms and it’s all about clicks. Milly Bobby Brown’s name drives them at the moment so she’s subjected to these dissections. She told Vanity Fair in a recent profile:

I started this really young, and I felt that the press specifically was very, very harsh on me. And so I just like to make sure that I’m advocating for myself. 

It’s good that she did and that she was willing to name names. The problem is that the individuals most to blame for this culture don’t put their names to it. They are editors and executives who hide behind young writers — very often young women — who are willing to write this kind of story on the promise of a career. Lydia Hawken may have learned her lesson, but there are always countless others who will take her place.

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