Semi-Well-Adjusted Despite Literally Everything: A Memoir

Stoner employs a candid tone, representing their experiences with honesty and vulnerability. The genuineness of their authorial voice contrasts with the superficiality of the acting industry, deepening Stoner’s critique of the latter. This contrast is evident, for instance, in their discussion of their struggles with body image. While all of the other young female actresses they worked alongside were “blossom[ing] like flowers,” Stoner felt out of place: “Where did I belong in a group of total babes? How would I fit in while still finding a unique edge to stand out?” (130). Stoner’s informal language (“babes”) and rhetorical questions convey both authenticity and uncertainty, implying that they lacked the life experience to navigate this cynical world. They therefore did what the industry required them to do: manipulate themselves. Losing weight, undereating, and overexercising became Stoner’s ways of exercising power: They might have been unable to control the industry, but they could control how the industry regarded them if they were thinner and more “beautiful.” However, this form of power required Stoner to become ever more estranged from themselves, underscoring the theme of Self-Discovery amid Hollywood Culture and Childhood Trauma: In the same way they learned to tailor their personality to fulfill a desired effect, they began to alter their body to prove themselves worthy of better roles. 

Stoner’s detailed descriptions of their eating disorder launch their commentary on mental illness and the importance of pursuing healing. For Stoner, the Journey Toward Recovery and Healing was doubly difficult because getting better meant jeopardizing their career and letting people down. Even when Stoner “admitted to [themselves] that [they] had an eating disorder, and it was impairing [their] life” (155), they struggled to ask for and secure help. They did go to their mother and a nutritionist, but work always came first. If they took the time to address their eating disorder and emotional unrest, they risked losing work and jeopardizing their reputation. To further complicate matters, Stoner’s eating disorder helped them cope with the stress of their work—an additional reason to avoid addressing it. “There were so many conflicting voices,” Stoner admits with their characteristic candor, and the “mental distress was gruesome” (156). Without support, Stoner did not know how to find and travel down a path to healing, and their juxtaposition of their private and public lives underscores how isolated they were during this period: “[A]lmost nobody knew. Project to project, my persona shined, while inside, I was trapped in darkness” (156). This contrast between professional success and private anguish implies that Stoner would eventually have to choose between their vocational advancement and their personal healing.

Stoner uses their failure to book the Katniss role as a narrative launchpad into their recovery journey: “In the most ironic of fashions for someone with an eating disorder, the role that would test it all arrived on my seventeen-and-a-half birthday. The Hunger Games” (173). Stoner’s identification of the situation’s irony infuses their account with humor, but the moment serves a serious purpose, ushering them over a vital threshold. Committing to treatment at Remuda Ranch was Stoner’s way of taking control of their life and fate in a new way. Having autonomy and being successful, Stoner implies, isn’t limited to acting jobs. Instead, Stoner learned that self-pride could come from self-care. Chapter 14 ends with the image of Stoner praying with their friends before they left for treatment—a scene that affects a bittersweet and hopeful mood as Stoner makes a vocational sacrifice to prioritize their health.