Hilary Duff shut down parent-shamers before they could even start criticizing her for piercing 7-month-old daughter Mae’s ears.
“Yes! I pierced her ears today,” the mom of three, 34, who also shares daughter Banks, 3, with husband Matthew Koma in addition to son Luca, 9, shared with ex-husband Mike Comrie, wrote via her Instagram Stories on Sunday, November 7. “Can’t wait for the internet to call me a child abuser … again. Lesss go.”
The Younger alum is no stranger to dealing with trolls online, having previously faced backlash in 2019 when she pierced Banks’ ears around the same age.
“Just wondering how she gave you consent to pierce her ears?” one social media user argued at the time, stating they would be “unfollowing” the Lizzie McGuire actress. “Babies are beautiful, why would they need their ears pierced?” another vented via Twitter, while a third claimed she had caused “unnecessary pain” for her infant.
However, other fans rushed to Hilary’s defense, firing back with claims that it’s not as big of a deal as some people are painting it out to be.
“I’m OK, I’m not [traumatized] and I don’t remember because I was a baby,” one person wrote. “People need to stop judging what other people do, and look at what goes on in their own home.”
Earlier this year, the A Cinderella Story star spoke out about facing mommy-shaming and said it can be hard to brush off her shoulders at times.
“I’m so used to dodging the comments or the judgment, that I don’t realize. Like, you just get a tough skin and you don’t realize how much it actually affects you,” Hilary told Yahoo! Life in February. “I don’t comment on other people’s posts like that, so I don’t understand, but I guess it’s just a need for attention or whatever,” she continued. “It’s hard not to take it personal.”
Fortunately, she’s learned to handle the naysayers with more ease thanks to her experience in the limelight. “At first I want to be defensive, but when I zoom out, I’m like, ‘It’s one person. That’s not how everybody feels,'” added the Houston, Texas, native. “‘That doesn’t really matter. That person’s, like, a keyboard gangster who just needs to be heard or seen.'”