Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Kayleigh Donaldson | Celebrity | July 21, 2026
Child marriage is currently legal in 34 states across America, and 4 of those states do not require any minimum age for marriage, with a parental or judicial waiver. Three years ago, California rejected a bill that would have banned child marriage. Campaigners are pushing for the implementation of AB 1267, a bill that would ban all child marriages in the state, requiring a minimum age of 18. One of the campaigners leading the charge is Courtney Stodden, someone who, unfortunately, knows all about being married off as a teen.
At the age of 16, Stodden was married to Doug Hutchison, an actor who was, at the time, 51 years old. Rather than be terrified for the fate of an adolescent who seemed to be an obvious victim of , pop culture and the media mocked Stodden. They smeared Stodden as a slut, an attention seeker, and the conniving schemer who somehow tricked poor 51-year-old Doug into marrying her. Even by the low standards of 2010s media failings we all regret, this one was ghoulish (I wrote about it here!) Stodden is now 31, married to someone who isn't a loser pervert, and they're speaking out over the nightmare of that marriage. When the divorce was announced in 2020, they said that they felt "absolutely taken advantage of" and "groomed" by Hutchison. And they want everyone to know just how humiliating it was to be objectified and mocked as a literal child bride.
Last month, Stodden shared a post on Instagram of when they appeared on Dr. Drew's show and he "had me undergo an ultrasound to see if my breasts were real or if I was lying about my breasts. I wasn't an underage girl. I was a minor trapped in a situation that I wasn't able to get out of legally. I had no rights at the time. The money he paid me to be on the show went straight to my abuser."
They also shared an image from a "comedy skit" they did with Jason Alexander, who they said "repeatedly rubbed his phone across my breasts while saying there was "no signal" in my head but "plenty of signal" in my chest. Later in the sketch, he joked that when I turned 18 he'd like to take me behind the couch and "have his way" with me." At the time, Stodden was 17. "How did so many adults look at a minor and decide this was acceptable? That's exactly why I speak out today."
Reading coverage of Stodden's teen years is honestly some of the bleakest celebrity reporting I've ever seen. Not a single person seemed suspicious of why a man in his 50s would want to marry an adolescent, a process that required parental permission. Because Stodden seemed to dress and act older, everyone thought it was acceptable. "Well, she looked older than 16" is always something you love to hear people saying out loud, right? I watch footage of Courtney at that age and they seem so lost, trying to act like a sheltered teen's idea of a sexy adult lady. And everyone, including legitimate news sources like CNN, essentially decided Courtney wasn't a victim because of it. Chrissy Teigen repeatedly tweeted at Courtney, telling them to die, and we all laughed!
It fully exposed the ways that the world wants to have its cake and eat it: to ceaselessly sexualise kids then blame them for being "loose" when they're preyed upon. I remember the countdown clocks to the 18th birthdays of Emma Watson and the Olsen twins. I remember the "comedy" bits about Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan's boobs. I remember Jerry Seinfeld dating a 17 year old. Courtney was but one of many canaries in the coalmine.
A hell of a lot of people owe Stodden a hundred apologies. Until then, Courtney's at work ensuring nobody else ends up a child bride. In their own words, "i cannot rewrite my childhood, but i can spend the rest of my life helping rewrite the future for children who deserve more freedom, more protection, and more choices than i had. beauty may introduce a woman to the world, but purpose is what allows her to outlive it. the world met me as a headline. i hope history remembers me as a turning point."
