Ariel Winter opened up about her amazing 18th birthday celebration when she chatted with Brad Goreski on E!’s Live From the Red Carpet at 22nd Screen Actors Guild Awards at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, revealing her party had a “Moroccan” theme!

“We had Aladdin guys and belly dancers and we had a a lot of really cool things,” she dished. “My cake was awesome!”

There to celebrate her big 18th birthday? Her friends and family, with more than 300 loved ones in attendance, Winter revealed, admitting, “That’s insane right?!”

She went on to explain, “I’m Greek, so you gotta factor in family members, how many cousins I have, and stuff like that!”

On Tuesday the actress took to Twitter on Monday to defend her decision to show her breast reduction scars when she attended the SAG Awards on Saturday.
“Guys there is a reason I didn’t make an effort to cover up my scars! They are part of me and I’m not ashamed of them at all,” Winter, 18, tweeted in response to fans.

Last year the actress annouced that she had surgery to reduce the size of her breasts from a 32F to a 34D. “It’s amazing to finally feel right,” the 17-year-old Modern Familystar tells told Glamour. “This is how I was supposed to be.”

Winter says it was “really hard” to dress up for red carpet events. “There was so little that I could wear that was age-appropriate. I’d have to wear the dress that was super tight and form-fitted everywhere because if I didn’t, it didn’t look good. I didn’t really have an option other than to wear fitted clothes. Everyone would [say], ‘Why is she dressing so mature? That’s so inappropriate for her age!’ I understood what they were saying,” the actress explains. “It’s not like I wanted to pick out those inappropriate dresses, it’s just that I didn’t really have another choice, or I was going to get ridiculed.”

“It’s hard when you’re a teenage girl and you already have a lot of ridicule and then you pile on more, and it’s kind of…it just gets too much,” Winter says of growing up in the spotlight, adding, “We live in a day and age where everything you do is ridiculed. The Internet bullies are awful. I could post a photo where I feel good, and 500 people will comment about how fat I am, and that I am disgusting. On [red carpets], I just said to myself, ‘You have to do your best to look confident and stand up tall, and make yourself look as good as you can in these photos,’ because everyone is going to see them. I definitely seemed confident; I’m an actress, that’s what we do. But on the inside, I wasn’t feeling so happy.”

ariel winter before after

Worse than the ridicule, she says, was dealing with “painful” breasts.

“I had a lot of back problems. I really couldn’t stand up straight for a long period of time. It started to hurt so bad that I couldn’t take the pain,” she tells Glamour.com. “My neck was hurting so bad and I actually had some problems with my spine. I had been discussing my chest with doctors for many years, but when I finally said, ‘I’m thinking of doing this,’ he said, ‘Your back is going to thank you so much.'”

With her doctor’s guidance, she decided not to go bigger than a D or smaller than a C. “I have always been a curvier girl. Always. And I enjoy being a curvier girl. I don’t want to be disproportionate again,” she explains. “I have a big butt, I like having a big butt. I didn’t want to have a big butt and no boobs!”

Winter says she wasn’t “hesitant” or “sad” before going under the knife.

Before her breast reduction surgery, Winter says the Modern Family wardrobe department would hide her assets with “big sweaters” or by strapping her down. “I understand that it doesn’t fit the character they have in mind. I understand that,” she tells the magazine. “But it was difficult to do that every day.”