Mom of ‘Stuff Curry,’ NBA star’s baby lookalike, takes on fat-shaming trolls

Jessica Benton had no idea who Stephen Curry was when she posted a photo of her baby, Landon, to Instagram.

She had no idea that Landon, who is 10 months old, bears a striking resemblance to the Golden State Warriors star.

But other people online saw it. And some got downright nasty about it and mocked baby Landon for, of all things, his weight.

One person called him “Stuff Curry.”

“I didn’t know what it meant at the time and kind of got upset, because a lot of the other comments weren’t very nice,” Benton, of Quincy, Ill., told ESPN. “So I ended up Googling ‘Stuff Curry’ and I got Steph Curry.”

That’s when she saw the resemblance, too. “I mean, he kind of looks like my baby. If they made a baby doll of (Curry), that’s my baby,” Benton told ABC News.

But when she realized people were fat-shaming her son, she got mad.

Then she got even.

“Somebody came across his post and reposted one of his pictures on Facebook,” she told ABC.

“They took his picture without me knowing and said, ‘Give little man a nickname.’ Someone said, ‘Stuff Curry,’ and by the time I noticed it, it had been shared like 50,000 times and there were comments out the wazoo with like 20,000 shares on Twitter. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want my child’s photo out there like that.”

She’d been down this road before. She told ESPN that when she was pregnant with Landon her 20-year-old son killed himself. Kids in high school used to make fun of him and call him names.

“And I didn’t realize how much that had taken a toll with his own self-esteem at the time,” she said.

“I can’t say it’s directly due to bullying or anything, but I have one kid who’s not here with me who told me that people made fun of him. I’m not going to have another kid think that the whole world was laughing at him.”

So Benton decided that if people were going to call her baby Stuff Curry, he was going to be Stuff Curry.

“I’m not going to let them fat shame my baby and put it all over online and I just give up there,” Benton told ESPN.

“I wanted to really turn it into something good and take control of it and say: ‘OK, we’re gonna own this name. Yeah, we’re Stuff Curry. We look like the famous basketball player.’”

Now Landon has nearly 42,000 followers on his BabyLandonLee Instagram page, which his mom keeps stocked with adorable photos.

Fox Sports calls him the “real star of the NBA playoffs.”

Landon’s celebrity — he’s been featured in People, New York magazine, “Good Morning America” and on several sports websites — has earned him plenty of swag as well, with fans and companies such as Under Armour sending him clothes and products.

One admirer sent him a baby-sized Curry jersey with “Stuff” printed on the back.

And just so people don’t forget, Benton recently posted a heads-up on one of Landon’s most recent photos, taken on the shores of the Mississippi River.

“FYI: I will not tolerate any negativity. If I see rude comments I will not respond. You will just be blocked, no questions asked,” she wrote.

“PS: we love reading all the positive comments!”

This story was originally published May 25, 2016 at 9:33 AM with the headline "Mom of ‘Stuff Curry,’ NBA star’s baby lookalike, takes on fat-shaming trolls."