In the prologue (McCurdy, 2022), Jennette talks about her mother who is in a coma. Her brother’s are all around her and they take turns saying things to try and get her to wake up, saying they are getting married or moving away for example. Jennette recalls telling her that she has got to her target weight, which was her mother’s “current weight goal” for her. She talks about how her fear of her mum going into a coma turned into as she says “the perfect anorexia-motivation cocktail”.
In this book, she talks about how she was never really interested in fame or acting, but her mother was. She says everything she did in all these different shows, such as iCarly and Sam & Cat, were all because her mother made her. She talks about her mother in a very complex way stating that at times she was funny or she liked that she was small with a short temper, but also about how she was abusive towards her and her family and how being a child actor messed her up to the point of bulimia.
Going back to the prologue, Jennette says how when she realized her mother was going to die she thought like she was on her own now, as she had spent her whole life trying to do whatever her mother wanted to do. She was living up to these extreme expectations of her, to the point of showering while her mother was there so her mother could “track her weight”, that now her mother was gone she was feeling like she had no purpose.
I think this is a great example of how child stars often have a lot of pressure on them, which when they get to adulthood they really struggle transitioning into being more mature. I think the biggest example of this is when Jennette goes to Hawaii on holiday with her boyfriend, which her mother doesn’t know about. Then when they arrive in Hawaii paparazzi appear and begin to take pictures of them. Her mother sees this online and starts spamming her with emails and phone calls. This shows how when growing up and maturing as a child star you never really have the chance to grow up because everything you do is completely under a microscope. For example, she talks about how she wanted to do normal teenager stuff such as drinking or smoking, however she never gets the chance because she is always being watched and if paparazzi saw her do anything like that it would be seen as the unraveling of her or I suppose the beginning of the end.
To analyze a fictional source, In the show Bojack Horseman (Bojack Horseman, 2014), the character of Sarah Lynn is a child actress who played the role of Sabrina in Bojack’s breakout sitcom, Horsin’ Around. The scene I’m analyzing here is after the Horsin’ Around years, Sarah Lynn is a world famous pop star currently on tour and Bojack is coming to her with a script for his new TV show.
In this scene, Sarah Lynn is first really excited to see Bojack after many years, and talks about going out with him. Sarah Lynn talks about how she feels like her friends only like her because she’s famous and says the infamous line of “I know I’m smiling right now, but the light inside me is dying”. This obviously makes Bojack feel uncomfortable as he is there to get something out of
her, essentially taking advantage of his relationship of her so he can get a celebrity guest star on his struggle show. When she sees the script he has for her she is visibly disappointed after thinking Bojack was there to see her after many years, confirming her idea that her friends are only there because she is a celebrity.
This seems to be a sort of breaking point within Sarah Lynn, as Bojack places the script on the pile of many other scripts she has been given, as he leaves she is very upset and to me this seems like the moment she snapped. From this point on she relied a lot more on drugs and alcohol and seemed to be having more and more scandals.
Sarah Lynn is a great example of a child star gone wrong, which is something I want to add into Dexter’s character. She has seen the prime male role model in her life growing up, Bojack, turn into someone who was only using her for viewers on his TV Show. It is also interesting to see how because these types of characters are constantly under a microscope, especially while growing up, they don’t mature easily and find it very hard to adapt to the real world. For Sarah Lynn’s case, she became heavily influenced by drugs which is also how she met her untimely death.
McCurdy, J. (2022). I’m glad my mom died. S.L.: Simon & Schuster.
Bojack Horseman, (2014). [Season 3, Episode 12] Netflix.
