Desperate Housewives alum Madison De La Garza says weight shaming online comments led her to an eating disorder at age seven
- Actress, who is Demi Lovato’s half-sister, spoke on Heart of the Matter podcast
- She said she would read hurtful YouTube comments comparing her to her TV mom Eva Longoria
- The 21-year-old actress said she was ‘trying to starve’ herself after reading nasty comments about herself online
Madison De La Garza said that weight shaming comments she received online led her to an eating disorder at the age of seven.
The 21-year-old actress, appearing Tuesday on the Heart of the Matter podcast, said she was ‘trying to starve’ herself at the young age after reading nasty comments about herself online.
‘It was just shocking,’ De La Garza, who played Juanita Solis on Desperate Housewives, said of the ‘reactions’ to her character on the ABC series, which starred Eva Longoria, Teri Hatcher, Marcia Cross and Felicity Huffman.
De La Garza, who is the half-sister of Demi Lovato, noted that the method many of her critics tried to frame their hurtful remarks.
‘A lot of people came at it in a way that they were “concerned for my health,”‘ she said. ‘And I personally believe that that’s just not true, that that was a cover-up so that they could just judge a six-year-old.’
The latest: Madison De La Garza, 21, said that weight shaming comments she received online led her to an eating disorder at the age of seven. Pictured in an Instagram post last month
De La Garza said that ‘was never allowed to be on a computer unsupervised at that age,’ but would look at comments left on YouTube clips and TMZ stories for ‘hours and hours.’
The actress, who appeared on 72 episode of the dramatic comedy from 2008-2012, added, ‘I would just spend a crazy amount of time reading through these comments, and most all of them were just atrocious.
‘They said things like they wanted me to die because of what I looked like. It was just horrible. And this was when I was seven, eight years old.’
De La Garza opened up on the impact the remarks had on her growing up.
‘Reading comments like that definitely affected my mental health and ultimately played into me developing an eating disorder at a very young age,’ she said.
De La Garza’s character Juanita was the adopted daughter of Longoria’s character Gabrielle Solis, which she said led many commenters to compare the two.
‘The whole joke of my character was that Eva was this thin, beautiful model and her daughter turned out to be quite the opposite,’ De La Garza said. ‘And so, I think she was very aware that this was going to affect me.’
De La Garza said that Longoria was a comforting presence amid the turbulent time.
‘We never explicitly talked about it, but [Longoria] 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,’ she said. ‘And if I ever did want to go to her with these things, I absolutely could have.’
People who are battling eating disorders can contact the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) at 1-800-931-2237.
De La Garza’s character Juanita was the adopted daughter of Eva Longoria’s character Gabrielle Solis, which she said led many commenters to compare the two
De La Garza said of the reactions she read on YouTube at a young age, ‘It was just shocking’
The actress was pictured at an event in North Hollywood, California in May of 2013