Under a microscope. Courtney Stodden details the “hate” and “judgment” she received when first becoming famous in excerpts of her new memoir obtained exclusively by In Touch. The model came into the limelight when she was only 16, having just tied the knot with 51-year-old actor Doug Hutchison in 2011. 

In her new tell-all, Courtney addresses the ridicule she was subject to upon her arrival in Hollywood in the chapter, “How to Deal With Bullying 101.”

“The mob that came after me with pitchforks made of words, tormented me internally,” the star, now 25, writes. “It truly left scars on my soul. I wanted to crawl into a hole and hide forever. But I couldn’t.”

Courtney Stodden Running on the Beach with her Dogs Courtney Stodden Details Hate and Judgement She Received When She First Became Famous in New Memoir
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“The beast was too big to run away from,” she adds. “Doug and my mom told me I was beautiful, and that everybody else was just jealous.”

In order to cope with the cruel comments, she had to turn herself “off” and “mentally shut down” so it wouldn’t destroy her self-confidence. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to survive. I couldn’t start a new life. This was it,” Courtney explains. “So, I became what everybody was calling me.”

For a time, the media personality’s “true self” didn’t matter anymore and she noticed a change in her own character. 

“Any trace of the little girl who loved listening to Avril Lavigne and Kelly Clarkson in her Happy Bunny bedroom was quashed. My sexuality was the most grown-up thing about me, so that was what I emphasized,” she explains.

Courtney began to “model” her behavior after the late Anna Nicole Smith because everyone “compared” them, which led her to “build a wall” between the person she “actually was” and the woman “people clearly wanted [her] to be.”

“I wasn’t the first 16-year-old to dress ‘scandalously,’ and I certainly won’t be the last,” she points out. The singer also ponders what the public reaction would have been if she was still in her “Avril phase, or if [she] was a quiet, nerdy girl, or a confident tomboy, or if it was 2016, or 2021, not 2011.”

Courtney Stodden Selfie
Courtesy of Instagram

Courtney and her ex-husband, Doug, ultimately parted ways and finalized their divorce in January 2020, three years after they made the choice to separate. She has since been romantically linked to Brian Austin Green after they were spotted grabbing lunch together in Los Angeles on June 15. 

The star’s highly anticipated memoir will be hitting shelves a little later than anticipated due to the coronavirus outbreak, but is expected to arrive in early 2021. As of now, the title for her book has not been released.