Lorde Told To ‘Harden Up’ After Admitting Online Barbs Hurt Her

Lorde should “harden up.” The 17-year-old Kiwi songstress admitted that she was hurt by the insults directed at her and her boyfriend James Lowe on social media, but photographer David Grr, who was responsible for posting an “awkward-looking” photo of the couple on Facebook, said that she should develop a thick skin now that she’s in showbiz.

In an interview with Rookie online magazine, Lorde, whose real name is Ella Yelich-O’Connor, revealed that she wasn’t quite as indifferent to criticisms as some people thought she was.

“Just the other day this guy who I don’t know but who I have mutual friends with posted a photo of James and me at the beach. This guy is quite famous on Facebook and Tumblr and stuff, and suddenly there were like hundreds of people from my city looking at my picture and making fun of me [in the comments].

“That affected me much more than it should have, because I was transported back to high school, when you get to school and everyone has been talking about something that happened to you maybe the night before or whatever, and straightaway you feel like you’re on the outside of something. I surprised myself at how stressed out I was about it.”

That guy that she mentioned was Grr.

According to him, Lorde contacted him through his Facebook page and told him that he was mean for exposing her to spiteful scrutiny by the public.

He apologised and removed the photo, but he was surprised that she mentioned him (although leaving out his name) in her interview.

But Grr said that Lorde should learn how to ignore hurtful comments because it’s just going to devastate her.

“If she takes everything personally she’s going to be a wreck by the end of the year,” he told Herald on Sunday. “I had to say something to her, I guess as a warning to her, that she needed to harden up a little bit.”

In the same Rookie interview, Lorde also had a thing or two to say about feminism.

“I think I’m speaking for a bunch of girls when I say that the idea that feminism is completely natural and shouldn’t even be something that people find mildly surprising,” she said. “It’s just part of being a girl in 2013. That kind of normal, non-scary, chill vibe that you had with it, and that Rookie had, was really encouraging when I was like 14.”

She added, “Even now, I find a lot of feminist reading quite confusing and that often there’s a set of rules, and people will be like, ‘Oh, this person isn’t a true feminist because they don’t embody this one thing,’ and I don’t know, often there is a lot of grey area that can be hard to navigate.

“It’s just something that I’d assumed was natural for a long time. It’s not some crazy kind of alien concept to me. Did you ever have that problem of getting into feminist writings and then feeling confused about all the ways people’s opinions differed and all of the weird rulebooks and you’re like, what?”

It’s unlikely Lorde was referring to a particular person, but there’s one who didn’t think she’s a feminist: Selena Gomez.

The slightly older Selena once said in an interview that Lorde wasn’t a feminist after the Kiwi singer criticised her “Come & Get It” hit track.

“But I think at the same time that feminism and that specific thing is very sensitive because in my opinion it’s not feminism if you’re tearing down another artist,” the 21-year-old former Disney star told radio station Hot 99.5 in an interview.