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Rachel Zegler has sparked a fresh wave of online debate after her unusual posing at the 2026 Met Gala left fans confused.
The Snow White actress, 25, attended fashion’s biggest night on Monday wearing a dramatic Atelier Prabal Gurung gown complete with a Jennifer Behr custom silk blindfold mask.
Zegler herself later confirmed the look referenced French painter Paul Delaroche’s 1833 artwork The Execution of Lady Jane Grey, which depicts the doomed monarch moments before her beheading after being convicted of high treason in 1554.
But while the theatrical look itself turned heads, it was Zegler’s facial expressions on the red carpet that quickly became the real talking point online.
Videos circulating on X showed the actress repeatedly jutting her jaw forward and grinding it from side to side while posing for photographers outside New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The movements immediately prompted confusion among viewers, with some questioning whether the actress was attempting to embody a specific character or artistic concept, or whether something was medically wrong.
‘WTH is she doing? 😂’ one baffled viewer wrote.
Another added: ‘why is Rachel Zegler moving her mouth like that…’
Others were even more blunt, with one post reading: ‘This is not normal behaviour.’
A separate user wrote: ‘What is actually wrong with her face. Does she do this on purpose?’
Meanwhile, another viewer joked: ‘I genuinely want to believe there was a concept behind this 😂😂😂’
Not everyone was critical, however, with several fans rushing to defend the star and arguing the unusual expressions were intentionally tied to the evening’s costume-inspired theme.
‘She’s posing for pictures and she’s showing her best face poses. No need to make more of it than what it is,’ one person argued.
Another wrote: ‘It’s part of the look, I guess.’
One particularly passionate defence claimed critics were missing the artistic point entirely.
‘I don’t want to be in a position of defending these people, but you appear ignorant with this critique,’ they wrote.
‘The theme was “costumes”. She has a corset facing the incorrect way and a blindfold with anguished facial expressions to exemplify the juxtaposition between wearing a beautiful costume and the pain it requires.’
The actress has become an increasingly divisive figure online over the past year following backlash surrounding Disney’s live-action Snow White remake, which became engulfed in controversy before its release.
Comments Zegler made during promotion for the film — including criticism of the original animated classic and discussions around modernising the princess character — sparked intense culture-war debate online, with the actress frequently becoming a lightning rod for social media discourse.
As a result, even relatively minor red carpet moments now tend to generate outsized reactions online, with the Met Gala appearance quickly becoming another opportunity for Zegler’s haters to criticise her.
Still, some fans appeared amused more than outraged by the entire thing, with one user summing up the internet’s confusion by writing simply: ‘She’s an underbite queen, end of story. Next!’
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