Milana Vayntrub, who played Squirrel Girl in both the Marvel Rising animated specials and in the New Warriors television pilot (which was ultimately not ordered to series), spoke out about being the target of online harassment.In an Instagram livestream that has since been reposted to Twitter, Vayntrub discussed how old photos of her have been manipulated into memes that generate lewd responses. Some posted such comments even while she was addressing the issue, as reported by Business Insider.
"Maybe it just has to do with being a person on the internet, or maybe it's specific to being a woman on the internet. But all of these comments... it hurts my feelings," Vayntrub said. "I'm hurting and it's bringing up, like, a lot of feelings of sexual assault. I am just like, you know, walking my dog and getting messages from people who have distorted my pictures to get likes on their accounts."
In addition to her Marvel roles, Vayntrub played sales manager Lily Adams in commercials for AT&T from 2013 to 2016, and again this year. AT&T posted that it is against "sexual harassment of employees in the workplace or [their] social channels" in one of its own Instagram posts that drew similar harassing remarks.