Alyson Stoner experienced body-shaming at age nine when a wardrobe assistant labeled their leg hair dirty and barred them from wearing shorts. That encounter initiated a detached view of their body as something to control and fix to meet industry beauty standards. Years of child acting normalized doing whatever adults demanded and led to excessive exercise and an eating disorder requiring inpatient treatment as a teenager. Stoner embraced evangelical Christianity and underwent conversion practices before later coming out as queer. Stoner now embraces themself and works as a mental-health practitioner and advocate, describing a childhood without a trustworthy connection to mind and body.
I started to view my body in a detached way where it was just something to control, to fix, to manipulate for whatever standard was presented to me, says Stoner. In this case, the extreme beauty standards of the industry. It was a lot for a nine-year-old to take on, but by then Stoner had been working for several years they were a Disney regular, and appeared in films such as Cheaper By the Dozen and were used to doing whatever adults asked.
As a teenager, this would lead to an excessive exercise regime and an eating disorder requiring inpatient treatment. Later, Stoner, who uses they/them pronouns, would embrace evangelical Christianity as a way of making sense of their life, undergoing conversion practices to, in the words of a church friend, exorcise the demon of homosexuality. Eventually, Stoner, who is 32, would embrace themselves, come out as queer and become a mental-health practitioner and advocate.
Their experiences as a child star meant, they say when we speak over Zoom, I didn't have a chance to establish any kind of trustworthy connection with my own mind and body. Stoner with their new memoir at the Empire State Building. Photograph: John Nacion/Getty Images for Empire State Realty Trust In their memoir, Semi-Well-Adjusted Despite Literally Everything, Stoner details all the ways being a child star makes for such a weird and damaging life.
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