Courtney Stodden Knows Exactly What Happened

April 2, 2019 1:18 PM

Whether you think she was just a foolish young girl seduced by the chance to be famous and sold out by parents who wanted to be adjacent to that fame, or an abuse victim with no agency, or the knowing architect of her own creepy narrative, Stodden was roundly mocked for years by a public waiting for her 15 minutes to be up. Tabloids have called her “worse-for-wear,” a “fame whore,” a “regular whore,” suggested she’s secretly a 40-year-old woman, mocked her for her hypersexuality, for having her period, and depending on the day, for being too fat or too skinny. The American public seemed remarkably comfortable sneering at a 16-year-old who married someone old enough to know better, and Stodden grew up in a kind of media wasteland where the easy and seemingly reasonable thing to do was to call her a dumb slut.
posted by roolya_boolya (5 comments total)

I got this far into this article:

Their wedding photos tell you most of what you need to know about the couple, with Stodden towering over her new husband in lucite platform heels and a tight white minidress, blonde hair cascading down her back, and Hutchison’s face pressed into her formidable bosom.

None of the photos in the slideshow they link to show those things. Yes, she is wearing lucite heals and a slinky dress, but he appears to be slightly taller than her and none of the photos show him with his face in her bosom. Maybe there are photos of that, but Buzzfeed hasn't exactly provided the receipts with that link.
posted by jacquilynne at 1:30 PM on April 2, 2019 [1 favorite]

Can we act in good faith and try to read the article here in this thread? I realize that not knowing who celebrities are gets you Internet Cool Points, but in this specific case we're dealing with how the media and public have reacted to a child being married to a 51 year old, so maybe we can be just slightly better that everyone else thus far.
posted by FirstMateKate at 1:31 PM on April 2, 2019 [8 favorites]

This poor woman had so little chance. I mean, stage mothers are a caricature at this point, but what her mother did was a crime. She didn't just encourage her fifteen year old daughter to accept that attention from adult men was normal, she married her off to one that she had a crush on.

I'm glad that she's getting to make her own decisions now, and that she seems to be aware of how she got to where she is. I just hope that at some point, she can feel good about herself without needing a tragedy on the walls to remind her to stay on track.
posted by headspace at 1:39 PM on April 2, 2019 [1 favorite]

I thought the article was insightful and interesting.

Jacquilynne: in that link I see one photo where she is indeed towering over him (second photo in the slideshow) and one where his head is pressed into her chest (the photo below right of the slideshow).

I certainly remember when Courtney Stodden was a hot gossip item on sites like ONTD and I don't think I knew at that point that she was still a teen. That would have coloured my perception of the situation but I don't recall it being a feature of the coverage (beyond their large age gap more generally). She has certainly been lambasted by the rpess for not being enough/being too much on many fronts.
posted by hepta at 1:40 PM on April 2, 2019

This quote right here:

Stodden grew up in a kind of media wasteland where the easy and seemingly reasonable thing to do was to call her a dumb slut.

Every day I am surprised by how much internalized misogyny I carry, and the toxic messages it caused me to unthinkingly accept.

What could the world be like if we didn't hate women?
posted by Space Kitty at 1:41 PM on April 2, 2019 [9 favorites]