Ariel Winter Responds to Body Shamers With Unretouched Photo

Ariel Winter is responding to body shamers who criticized her by going unretouched in a new photo for the cover of Pulse Spikes magazine.

PEOPLE reports that the Modern Family star spoke out about what it was like to let her guard down and go natural for the photo.

“It was definitely more of a difficult process for me, not because I have to be in makeup daily, I don’t, I’m not looking red carpet standard all the time. It is just something you think about like, ‘Oh, well I am going to be photographed in this setting. Oh no, what if I look weird? I got a pimple today!’ But it was nice to be able to do that,” she said during an interview with Pulse Spikes.

She went on to say that she has been dealing with random internet strangers offering their two cents for so long that at this point she is unfazed by it.

“When I was 14 to 16, in high school, I cared about what people thought about me. And not what my classmates were saying but more what was on the internet, since there were a lot more people who said things directly,” she admitted. “In school, it was more like whispers that maybe I heard or maybe I didn’t. I tried to change a few of those things.”

“Nobody thought anything better of me, the criticism didn’t stop, nobody was ever going to be happy with the way I looked. So I realized that it didn’t matter,” Winter added, “the only person that matters is me because I am the only one who has to live with me.”