Sharon Horgan is done being polite about it. The “Bad Sisters” creator sat down for an interview and basically said what a lot of parents mutter under their breath but rarely put on record: she hates – hates – what her daughters are seeing on screens. Specifically, bodies. Worryingly skinny ones, according to her, popping up everywhere from Instagram to the shows they watch. And honestly? Good for her for saying it out loud.

Wait, Didn’t We Already Have This Conversation?

Here’s the thing. We’ve been talking about body image and media for, what, twenty years now? Longer? Back when I started covering entertainment, it was all about magazine covers and airbrushing scandals. Remember when everyone lost it over that one Kate Winslet Photoshop mess? That feels like ancient history now, doesn’t it.

But Horgan’s point – and I think it’s a good one – is that this isn’t a magazine problem anymore. It’s not even really a TV problem, not in the old sense. It’s a phone problem. A scrolling-at-11pm-under-the-covers problem. A problem that follows kids into their bedrooms, their bathrooms, basically everywhere, all the time. There’s no closing the magazine and putting it back on the rack. The algorithm just… keeps going.

The Speed Thing Nobody Talks About Enough

What’s interesting here is the sheer volume. A teenager scrolling TikTok for an hour isn’t looking at ten images of unrealistic bodies. It’s hundreds. Maybe thousands, if we’re being honest about how fast people swipe past stuff now. That kind of repetition does something to your brain that a monthly magazine simply couldn’t. I’ve seen this pattern before in coverage of eating disorders among teens, and the numbers keep going the same direction – up, not down, despite (or maybe because of) all the “body positivity” branding slapped onto everything.

So Is This Actually New, Or Just Louder?

I go back and forth on this one, not gonna lie. Part of me thinks Horgan’s just saying what every generation of parents has said – “things were different when I was young, and not in a good way.” That’s basically the parenting starter pack. But then I think about my own scroll time, and how even I, a grown adult with (allegedly) some media literacy, still feel a pang looking at certain filtered, “natural” looking influencers who are clearly not eating breakfast most days. If it gets me, at my age, with my skepticism… what’s it doing to a 13 year old?

“I hate that my daughters are seeing worryingly skinny bodies on screen” – Sharon Horgan

That quote is short, but it’s doing a lot of work. Notice she didn’t say “images.” She said bodies. Real people, on real shows, being consumed as content. That distinction matters more than it seems.

The Part Where I Get a Little Ranty

Look, this drives me nuts. We keep having these conversations – actresses, showrunners, the occasional politician when it’s convenient – and then… nothing really changes. Platforms tweak an algorithm here, add a “you’ve been scrolling for a while” popup there, and we call it progress. Meanwhile the content itself, the actual bodies being celebrated, praised, monetized, stays pretty much the same. Skinny is still the aesthetic default in a huge amount of entertainment, even as we say all the right things about diversity and inclusion.

I mean, think about it. How many shows can you name right now, off the top of your head, where the lead actress isn’t conventionally thin? Go ahead, try it. It’s harder than you’d think. And that’s not an accident – that’s casting directors, network execs, algorithms all quietly agreeing on what “sells.” Horgan’s own show has a range of body types, to be fair, which is probably part of why her comments land with some credibility instead of feeling performative.

Parents Can’t Actually Fix This Alone

And here’s what gets me – Horgan can control what’s in her house all she wants, but her kids have friends. Friends have phones. Phones have algorithms that don’t care one bit about anyone’s careful parenting philosophy. You can ban an app at your dinner table and it doesn’t matter because your daughter’s classmate is showing her the exact same video at recess the next day. There’s no fully opting out anymore, not really, unless you’re basically raising your kid off the grid.

What This Actually Means

So where does that leave us? Probably nowhere clean, if I’m being honest. Horgan’s comments aren’t going to change Instagram’s algorithm or make casting directors suddenly hire a wider range of body types overnight. But maybe that’s not really the point. Maybe the point is just… someone with a platform saying the quiet thing out loud, again, so it doesn’t become normal to just shrug and accept it.

I don’t think this problem gets solved by better parenting tips or another op-ed (yes, I see the irony). It probably gets chipped away, slowly, by enough people in entertainment refusing to pretend the status quo is fine. Whether that actually happens, or whether we’re all just going to keep having this same conversation in five years with a new celebrity’s name attached to it… that part I genuinely don’t know.