feature image photo of Alyson Stoner by Maarten De Boer / Contributor via Getty Images
My fellow millennials have been seeing non-binary actor Alyson Stoner’s face on our televisions for decades. From Missy Elliott’s “Work It” video to Cheaper By the Dozen, their face became a familiar one. Hell, even their voice was familiar as they voiced Isabella in Phineas and Ferb, a role they’re still playing in the new 2025 season. But while they were often seen smiling on Mike’s Super Short Show or happily tapping out a beat in Camp Rock, things behind the scenes weren’t always so cheerful. They lay all this out in their debut memoir, Semi-Well-Adjusted Despite Literally Everything.
This memoir covers their strained relationship with their parents, after their divorce and also after their mother mishandled their finances. They talk about the physical and emotional trauma they endured, from as young as ten when they were told to ignore a heart murmur in case it kept them from getting roles, through 17 when they put their body through hell to audition for Katniss in The Hunger Games, a role they didn’t even end up getting.
They did, however, stop short of writing about their relatively recent gender journey. They came out as queer in 2018, and more recently as non-binary, but this memoir focuses more on the first 25 years of their life. They’re not opposed to writing about it eventually; it just seemed like a lot to contend with combined with everything else they were laying bare.
“I feel like I could write a whole book on it,” they say, “because once you unpack gender, now you start to deconstruct every construct in society. I was trying to think of everyone who’s going to be reading this, and how many things I could tackle in one book before it actually was too much to process.” Though, of course, I have no doubt that some gender feelings will end up coming out in their own ways in the memoir. Also just because the memoir doesn’t go into details about their gender journey doesn’t stop them from being hilariously queer in their promo for said book. I haven’t read the book yet, so I don’t know if they talk about coming out at all, or if that’s also in the next chapter of their life, but I do know their social media and promo has all been unapologetically queer for ages now. We love to see it!
While they definitely still are acting and performing, their focus lately has been on making the industry a better and safer place. They want to restructure the whole damn thing and prevent experiences like they had. While far from the first, they hope that their memoir about the struggles of being a child star are among “the last of its kind.”
I’ll leave you with this cute, nostalgic clip of Raven interviewing Alyson on her podcast in which she asks them to do the Mike’s Super Short Show outro.
@itstteattime and now you know… @Alyson Stoner is here! 🤍🫖 @ravensymone @miranda v. pm #mikessupershortshow #disneychannel #nostalgia #childstar
Valerie’s Super Short List of Links
+ Aubrey Plaza is going to be on Amy Pohler’s Good Hang podcast tomorrow THIS IS NOT A DRILL
+ Natalie Morales will play Claire Danes’ ex-wife in upcoming Netflix show The Beast in Me; Brittany Snow will be there too and after The Hunting Wives, who KNOWS what she’ll get up to
+ Alt-rock band The Beaches released their newest single, “Lesbian of the Year”, which is about coming out later in life
+ Mae Martin stars alongside Toni Collette in new thriller series Wayward, about a sinister school for troubled teens (and based on the description, it seems their character will use they/them pronouns too and also have a wife!)
+ Chantel Everett from 90 Day: Hunt for Love officially comes out and admits she has feelings for someone back home
+ The third installment in Tricia Cooke’s lesbian B-movie trilogy, alongside Drive Away Dolls and Honey, Don’t, will be about “a crew team who gets together for their reunion, and they start dying off one by one.”
+ And Just Like That used its final moments on this earth to punch down at queer people
+ Sophie Turner had to kiss her brother in her new film The Dreadful, and of course by brother I mean her former on-screen brother Kit Harrington
+ The TV show Fallout (who had a subtle, dark, blink-and-you-miss-it queer story hidden under the dust) released first look photos for its upcoming second season
+ Out country singer Chely Wright is now in board rooms fighting to keep DEI practices thriving
+ Don’t forget, you can vote RIGHT NOW in the Autostraddle TV Awards
