Melissa Joan Hart has spent most of her life being photographed.
A former child star, she knows something about how much a single snapshot can shape the way we see someone: A camera can make a moment look polished, awkward, glamorous or unflattering, sometimes within the span of a few seconds.
Recently, Hart offered a particularly good example.
She shared on Instagram two photographs of herself from the 2013 premiere of “Frozen.” In one, she is standing on the red carpet in a fitted blue dress, smiling while facing the camera with her arm on her hip. In the other, she is caught from the side, apparently unaware she is being photographed.
“The difference a little lighting, camera angle, and facial expression can make,” Hart wrote in the caption, adding the hashtags #smokeandmirrors and #professionalphotographer vs. #reallife.
The post struck a chord, and many of the comments zeroed in on something bigger than a celebrity looking different from one photograph to the next.
“I wish we could post this everywhere. This is what we need to normalize. Especially for women and girls. Thank you,” one commenter wrote.
“Melissa this is so important for women to see, thank you! You are so beautiful,” another added.
Hart, who grew up on television, first as the star of “Clarissa Explains It All” and later “Sabrina the Teenage Witch,” has been candid about the pressure that can come with that scrutiny, particularly as women get older. Now 50 and a mother to three sons , Mason, 20, Braydon, 18, and Tucker, 13, she has spent much of her adult life navigating that scrutiny in the public eye.
In a 2019 interview with Us Weekly, Hart acknowledged that maintaining a certain weight can be difficult in an industry where actresses are constantly being photographed and judged.
“That’s the hard part about the business,” she said. “As you get older, it gets harder, and then you have babies! Nobody wants to see you age or see your body change.”
At the same time, Hart has acknowledged that even with a generally positive view of her body, she still has insecurities.
“I have a really good body image. But I definitely have things I wish I could change and things I get down on myself about. For example, I hate my neck — when I notice people with beautiful jawlines, I want that. But I don’t know if anybody really notices my neck except me. I try to put that in perspective.”
Rachel Paula Abrahamson is an entertainment journalist-turned-lifestyle reporter living in Boston. She covers parenting, pop culture, and news for TODAY.com — and fancies herself an expert on all things twin-related! In 2024, Rachel received an NBC Gem Award (Going the Extra Mile) for her contributions to NBC. Rachel lives in the Boston area with her husband, their two daughters, and labrodaughter Asti. Follow her on Instagram.
