Ashley Tisdale says the response to her toxic mom group article was “pretty amazing”.
Ashley Tisdale has weighed in on the fallout to her toxic mom group essay
The High School Musical actress sparked plenty of discussions and controversy with her short essay for The Cut, in which she called out “mean-girl behaviour” and wrote about cutting ties with some of her friends last year.
Reflecting on the fallout to the piece, Ashley told WWD: “I think that in the audience it was for, the response I got was pretty amazing. It reached who it needed to reach.”
The article was originally published for her wellness self care line Being Frenshe community, and she is keen to keep fostering that, while giving her shoppers new scents to enjoy.
She explained: “This line means more to me. It’s funny when people ask me the question at events, ‘Do you miss acting?’ I’m like, ‘No.’
“I love acting. I’ve done it for so long, but I’m acting out someone else’s words, and I’m playing a character.
“With this, I get to be myself, I get to create experiences for people, and it has a more meaningful effect. I feel like I’m finally stepping into my power, which I think, I used to be scared of that.”
Ashley discussed leaving her “toxic” group of mom friends in a blog post last year.
She said: “Here’s the thing nobody prepared me for: Mom groups can turn toxic.
“Not because the moms themselves are toxic people, but because the dynamic shifts into an ugly place with mean-girl behaviour. I know this from personal experience.”
Ashley explained there were group text chains that “didn’t include everyone” and there were “hangouts” she didn’t get invited to.
In her essay for The Cut, she went on to open up about how she started to feel “excluded”, writing: “I was certain that I’d found my village.
“But over time, I began to wonder whether that was really true. I 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.
“Another time, at one of the mom’s dinner parties, I realised where I sat with her – which was at the end of the table, far from the rest of the women. I was starting to feel frozen out of the group, noticing every way that they seemed to exclude me.”
