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It’s happening!
Courtney Stodden announced plans to undergo a breast reduction.
Naturally, her comments were inundated with extremely weird takes, including people “mourning” her bust — as if breasts were people, but Courtney herself were not.
She’s going through with it, undeterred. How much of a change is she making?
As a child bride, she was treated ‘like the scandal instead of the victim’
Fifteen years ago, Courtney rose to fame as a child bride.
She was 16 years old. Her new husband at the time, Doug Hutchison, was 51.
“15 years ago today, a 16 year old girl was married off to a man 35 years older than her,” Courtney reflected in an Instagram post on Wednesday, May 20.
“And the world treated her like the scandal instead of the victim,” she accurately assessed.
“I was a virgin,” Courtney described. “Emotionally still a child. And too young to understand what was about to happen to me behind closed doors for years.”
“Just because a child says ‘I do’ does not mean she understands consent,” Courtney reasoned.
“Tomorrow,” she continued, “I’m downsizing my breasts.”
This was not her first announcement on the topic.
“And for the first time in my life,” Courtney remarked, “my body feels like it belongs to me instead of the public that consumed it before I even became a woman.”
She affirmed: “A child bride is not a love story. She’s a child surviving adult trauma in plain sight.”
She originally got the implants to feel like an adult
Courtney received her implants in 2013 — when she turned 18.
She was newly an adult, but had been a wife for a couple of years already.
To be clear, she has shared that she is only going down by a size.
Courtney has shared this to reassure — or, at least, to reason with — people having pity parties in her comments on social media.
We want to emphasize that, like everyone else, Courtney has every right to do wit her body as she wishes. If she wanted to stop having breasts entirely, that would be solely her business. As it is, this will simply be a mild reduction.
Courtney even shared a video roasting some of the men who had the unfathomable gall to complain about her plans to go under the knife.
Most of the time, her advocacy centers upon broad topics — from animal welfare to, of course, child marriage.
Only a dozen or so US states have taken the step to actually outlaw child marriage. Attempts to ban it are sometimes thwarted by conservative legislators, some of whom argue that keeping child marriage as a legal loophole is preferable to the alternatives — like abortion or child single parents if an adult impregnates them.
No, child marriage is not the preferable alternative. Voters need to oust politicians who fight to keep child marriage enshrined in lawbooks.
Right now, however, Courtney is advocating for herself. We wish her a smooth and healthy recovery.