Scarlett Pomers

IMDb Mini-Bios can be an interesting time capsule. There’s only one on which I can give you any particular information. I can tell you with absolute certainty that the one for Dyllan Christopher was written by his mother more than ten years ago, having replaced the one I believe was written by his grandmother that was up before then. I personally wouldn’t call Michael Bay one of the best in the business, and I’m pretty sure Dyllan wouldn’t, either, but it’s certainly true that Armageddon is one of his best-known movies. At any rate, while I can’t tell you when the one for Scarlett Pomers was written—it was by her agency—I can tell you it was some time ago.

This is because she has since retired from acting. She hasn’t been in anything since Reba, which at least is the most recent credit mentioned in the bio. But you’ll note the show ended in 2007. She stayed with it until the end and then walked away. She did music for a while, then walked away from that, among other things saying that there was no money in it. She was in the Adventures in Odyssey radio show from Focus on the Family, and I don’t see any credits since then. She had a business, but I don’t see much from it, and the store page is down.

A little more disappointing is that Arch-Angels, the organization she founded within the National Eating Disorder Association, appears to be defunct. Pomers missed much of the fifth season of Reba seeking treatment for her own anorexia. She was down to 73 pounds at her lowest point, and she was exercising six hours a day. She’s far from the only child performer who dealt with an eating disorder, often exacerbated by their role—talk to Tracey Gold, for example. It’s clear, though, that people were waiting far too long to get her any help. She was seventeen at the time, and there’s no way she looked healthy. Even just looking at pictures is worrying.

There’s a lot of debate about whether child actors should even exist. Leaving out that we in no way currently have the technology to not, and “just don’t have children in media” is not a solution. Besides, there are children who genuinely enjoy performing. I was one of them, and I’ve known a lot of others. Some of whom earned money from it, albeit likely not as much as Pomers did. I don’t know; maybe Pomers really loved the work, but she didn’t love the pressure. I haven’t seen the show, so maybe it was even one of those awful, toxic things where they kept making fat jokes about her.

Long-time readers of the column will notice that Pomers is just a few years outside the usual scope of this column, and that’s true. She’s seven years too young. Leaving aside that she has retired from acting, therefore she won’t exactly be making more stuff to qualify for her for the column, it’s a Voyager issue. There just aren’t that many recurring female characters. We’ve got more men than we can get to in two months, but there aren’t enough women to fill the spaces, especially after one was eliminated for worrying history. At least Naomi Wildman was on a lot of episodes.