About

Erin Moriarty Plastic Surgery or Erin Moriarty Cosmetic Surgery refers to a viral series of photos of American actress Erin Moriarty, best known for her role as the character Annie January / Starlight in the TV series The Boys, after she reportedly had plastic surgery and posted the images to her Instagram in mid-January 2024. The selfies garnered considerable media coverage and spread online as people discussed them, also creating memes comparing older images of Moriarty. The criticisms Moriarty received after they were posted also generated discourse with some criticizing the negative reactions expressed online about her appearance.

Origin

On January 14th, 2024, Erin Moriarty posted a series of selfies to her Instagram^[1] account (@erinelairmoriarty) with the caption "watch me de-sophisticate before your very eyes." The post received over 194,000 likes and numerous comments in three days (seen below). The images were then deleted from her account sometime between the night of January 17th and the morning of January 18th.

Precursor Discourse

This was notably the second time that Erin Moriarty had gone viral for images of her causing speculation of plastic or cosmetic surgery. On July 26th, 2022, the X account @archivetheboys^[2] uploaded two images of Erin Moriarty from her having her hair done, showing what appeared to be a more pronounced jawline and face structure than previous pictures had shown, earning over 17,000 likes while also sparking people to talk about her possibly doing a procedure on her face, speculated to be buccal fat removal (shown below).

Memes about her different facial appearance in 2022 quickly spread online, often being negative depictions of her current face while users expressed a preference for the way she used to look. For example, on November 28th, 2022, Redditor u/Muskelmaus^[3] uploaded a Wheels on a Shopping Cart meme using four pictures of Moriarty, with three of them being older photos and one of them having the previously posted picture of her hair appointment from July, implying that her new appearance was worse than her previous one (shown below).

Spread

One of the highest engagement posts that went viral discussing Erin Moriarty's photos was posted on X / Twitter^[10] by user @hippojuicefilm on January 14th, 2024. Their tweet (seen below) garnered over 34 million views, 135,000 likes, 18,000 reposts and 11,000 replies in four days.

After the mid-January 2024 selfies of Moriarty started to be spread on social media in the following days, more memes began to circulate revolving around her changed look, often comparing photos of the actress from 2020 to 2024 with a negative stance being against her 2024 appearance.

For example, on January 16th, 2024, Imgur user astronomypictures^[4] uploaded a side-by-side comparison of Moriarty with her character's name "Starlight" being used for her former look and "Stoplight" being used to label her current one (shown below). The meme received nearly 3,400 views, 50 upvotes and 60 comments in 24 hours.

The viral discourse also resulted in media coverage from various outlets, such as Cosmic Book News,^[5] The Spectator^[6] and Fandom Wire,^[7] each of which published articles covering Erin Moriarty's Instagram selfies and the online reaction in mid-January 2024.

Some users also defended Moriarty as the photos garnered discussions online.^[8] For example, on January 15th, Twitter / X^[9] user @DannyDrinksWine posted a tweet about the "huge outcry over Erin Moriarty's plastic surgery," receiving over 135,000 views, 250 likes and 110 replies in three days (shown below).

Break From Social Media

On January 26th, 2024, Erin Moriarty deleted several of her recent posts on Instagram and updated her story with a long-form paragraph picture describing how much trauma she had felt over the reaction to her posts and that she is stepping away from social media effective immediately. The post, which was spread across two photos, received a lot of compassion from her fans who were upset that the star had received so much negative attention from the internet (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References