There are some things that make a person happy they\u2019re not a millennial mom. Ashley Tisdale\u2019s mommy group drama is one of those things. <\/p>\n
Because Tisdale \u2014 now Ashley Tisdale French \u2014 sounds like she might be stuck in her own \u201cHigh School Musical,\u201d and it looks as if Hilary Duff\u2019s husband just threw a stink bomb under the bleachers. <\/p>\n
Adding to the drama: Duff and Mandy Moore are rumored to be part of the group, though Tisdale French has annoyingly refused to name names. <\/p>\n
\u201cSince becoming a public figure as a teenager, it\u2019s often the thing I least expect that people most want to talk about,\u201d the former child star wrote in an essay<\/a> for New York Magazine that echoes what she wrote a while back<\/a> on her own blog. \u201cSometimes, I\u2019ll say something offhandedly, only to see it turn into a headline or start a conversation on TikTok.\u201d <\/p>\n Bottom line, per the essay, is that Tisdale French \u2014 who married composer Christopher French in 2014 \u2014 was pregnant during the pandemic. She missed out on baby showers and prenatal yoga classes and handing her newborn baby off to acquaintances. Then a friend brought together a group of new moms. <\/p>\n \u201c[F]inally, we were able to be together, and our kids were able to be together, and it all felt right,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n The founder of the Being Frenshe line<\/a> of personal care products thought she had joined a group of cool kids who did cool things.<\/p>\n \u201cI felt energized by being around women who understood the challenge of feeding a baby while taking a Zoom call.\u201d<\/p>\n She literally called them cool. <\/p>\n \u201c[I]t made me hopeful about finding the balance between fulfilling work and family life, since all these cool women were able to do it. Maybe we\u2019d be able to share our secrets to success<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Then social media burst her bubble. <\/p>\n \u201cI remember being left out of a couple of group hangs, and I knew about them because Instagram made sure it fed me every single photo and Instagram Story.\u201d<\/p>\n She wrote that she realized her mommy group was just like high school.<\/p>\n \u201cEven though it had been decades since tenth grade, the experience of being left out felt so similar.\u201d<\/p>\n But now she was a grown-up, so she took a stand. <\/p>\n \u201cSo that\u2019s exactly what I texted to the group after being left out from yet another group hang: \u2018This is too high school for me and I don\u2019t want to take part in it anymore.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n People didn\u2019t react well, she said. One mommy sent flowers, then didn\u2019t acknowledge her thank-you. Another was like, \u201cYou weren\u2019t invited? I thought you were.\u201d<\/p>\n Keep in mind, this is part of a series titled \u201cIt\u2019s Been a Year,<\/a>\u201d which includes essays about a woman learning via DNA test results<\/a> that she wasn\u2019t the person she thought she was and one from actor Rebecca Gayheart<\/a> about going through estranged husband Eric Dane\u2019s ALS diagnosis and subsequent care.<\/p>\n Then again, it also includes a Kathy Griffin essay<\/a> about post-divorce dating at age 65 that includes some serious name-dropping \u2014 \u201cIt wasn\u2019t my idea; it was all Sia and our friend Nia Vardalos\u2019s fault. We were at Sia\u2019s house, just being silly girls, when they dared me to do it.\u201d \u2014 and a detailed discussion of condoms. <\/p>\n But back to Tisdale French. <\/p>\n \u201cWhy me? The truth is, I don\u2019t know and I probably never will. What I do know is that it took me back to an unpleasant but familiar feeling I thought I\u2019d left behind years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n She was more specific about what happened in her older blog post, by the way. <\/p>\n \u201cI realized that there were group text chains that didn\u2019t include everyone, which led to cliques forming within the larger group. And after the third or fourth time of seeing social media photos of everyone else at a hangout that I didn\u2019t get invited to, it felt like I wasn\u2019t really part of the group after all.\u201d<\/p>\n She also shared a revelation with her blog readers.<\/p>\n \u201cIf a mom group consistently leaves you feeling hurt, drained, or left out, it\u2019s not the mom group for you. (Even if it used to be!) It\u2019s no longer serving you in a way that lifts you up, and you don\u2019t have to stay out of obligation or anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n We will never know how far into either essay Hilary Duff\u2019s husband got. We do know that Matthew Koma didn\u2019t hesitate to pull out the Burn Book. <\/p>\n Koma got riled up enough over it that on Instagram, he mimicked Tisdale French\u2019s repost<\/a> of New York Magazine\u2019s promotional post about the essay, slapping a picture of his own face over hers and changing the headline from \u201cBreaking Up With My Toxic Mom Group\u201d to his own: \u201cWhen You\u2019re The Most Self Obsessed Tone Deaf Person On Earth, Other Moms Tend To Shift Focus To Their Actual Toddlers,\u201d with \u201cA Mom Group Tell All Through A Father\u2019s Eyes\u201d as a sub-headline.<\/p>\n Alas, he posted it as an Instagram story, now expired, so we can imagine it only with the help of outlets such as People<\/a>, which for the longest while has been writing about Reddit AITAH posts<\/a> and the subsequent comments telling the original poster whether they are indeed the jerk<\/a> in a particular situation. (Not that any jerks are being discussed here.) <\/p>\n Tisdale French doesn\u2019t name names in her essay, but Koma\u2019s reaction seems to indicate that former child star Duff, 38, might have been one of the allegedly mean moms who was definitely not being named. And Duff and Koma hosted former child star Moore, 41, and her family after last year\u2019s Eaton fire in Altadena, when Moore\u2019s home burned down<\/a>, so some might bet on Moore also being among the mothers of small children in former child star Tisdale French\u2019s group. <\/p>\n Tisdale French, meanwhile, apparently anticipated this kind of speculation in reaction to the New York essay because she had experienced it after blogging about the same topic. And apparently it\u2019s all wrong, wrong, wrong. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a subject that has made women DM me to say \u2018I feel seen\u2019 and to share their most emotional stories with me,\u201d she wrote for the magazine. <\/p>\n \u201cIt has also made wannabe online sleuths try to do some investigating like they\u2019re on \u2018CSI\u2019 (please, don\u2019t even try \u2014 whatever you think is true isn\u2019t even close).\u201d<\/p>\n Cool? Uncool? Christopher French, Ashley\u2019s husband, may have made his own decision on that already. <\/p>\n \u201cUnderrated life skill,\u201d French wrote on Wednesday morning in an Instagram story<\/a>, quoting author and mindfulness coach Cory Allen. \u201cPausing to decide if it\u2019s worth your energy.\u201d <\/p>\n