Reply to Breaking up with my toxic mom group (Ashley Tisdale essay)

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Tisdale’s article appeared on my newsfeed today right next to the headlines about Tatiana schlossberg’s funeral and untimely death from aggressive cancer. A stark contrast and a reminder of how completely asinine and unimportant this entire topic is. It’s pedantic that cliques exist amongst grown adults and attention and validation seeking that tisdale would write an article about it. People lack perspective on what’s important in life. [/quote]

Of course it seems unimportant compared to someone dying at a young age from cancer. 99% of this website is unimportant compared to that.

But friendships, finding support as a mom, and just generally having community are actually very important. [/quote]

Which you can do without the friend “group” angle.  Your own mom, or other women who have raised kids and share their wisdom and advice, coworkers, one-on-one friends.  There’s so many ways to have the support and community, without the “group” part of it.  
[/quote]

Many, many women find themselves in Mom groups. They want to know other moms in the neighborhood with babies the same age. This isn't remotely weird or odd. [/quote]

The “group” idea is odd. Most people find 1-2 people they like in a group.

In a class of people you find 1-2 friends.
On a sports team you find 1-2 friends.
At work you find 1-2 friends.

The idea you will find a group where every single person is close friends is not real life. [/quote]

Ok? But in that group are people pointedly excluding you, being weird and sitting you far away from the rest of the group, making plans in front of you? We don't all have to be friends but some of these women went out of their way to be jerks. It's not that hard to be nice at a kid's birthday party and not you know, invite all the other girlies for something like a brunch the next day in front of the hostess and not include her.[/quote]

In a class we break into groups and yes I’m not part of every group. In school at lunch the lunch tables are harder to join than sororities. I’m not invited to every study group. In sports I’m not always invited to get food after practice, I don’t sit with certain people at pre-game dinners.

I go to birthday parties and don’t talk to every parent.

Your taking this not talk about something  too far. It reminds me of the movie Booksmart where nobody’s allowed to talk about what school they got into because it might hurt somebody’s feelings.

Here’s the reality people are doing things without you. Some people have more money than you. Some people go on vacation vacations with friends and you’re not invited. You’re not invited to every brunch.

Find your one or two friends and do something with them.

[/quote]

Oh please. This is about what Ashley wrote. If you want to talk about your own personal groups do that elsewhere. What she described sucks.[/quote]

We are in the relationship forum not the entertainment forum. This is talking about women groups in general.

Ashley, just needs to relax. People are mean I could write 20 articles about mean women I’ve met in the DC area.

Really? It’s not new. It’s not interesting.[/quote]

Exactly. She wrote this article like she was me too’d. The mom group sounds like a cult. Just make a few friends and stop referring to yourself as a group.

One of my kids had a small preschool pod that was together for a few years. Us mom in the group bonded. We love seeing each other and some of our kids do some activities together, we have a what’s app group and sometimes get dinner. But some individuals are closer to each other than others and we all have other friends. What tisdale is whining about seems so immature. She’s 40 years old and doesn’t need her friend group to be everything in life, and even weirder to use her kids as a vehicle for it.[/quote]

Sounds a bit hypocritical coming from someone with a group based around preschoolers. Find your own friends and leave the kids out if it. 
[/quote]

We don’t have a “group.” We like each other and stay in touch and get dinner sometimes. We all have our own lives and friends outside of it and there’s no “Queen bee” dynamic.

The irritating parts of this saga are:

- grown women acting like they’re in middle school and having a “clique” that does everything together 
- grown women behaving like their life revolves around said clique 
- rejected clique member feeling so infuriated by her self proclaimed “drama” that they feel the need to expose it on a public way.

Hilary duff and Mandy Moore may be catty (who knows? Not me) but tisdale stirring the pot by creating tabloid fodder - all while framing this like a vanity fair assault expose - also tells you a lot about her level of self absorption as a person. [/quote]

Pp again. And to add to that, I’d say that everything about duff and Mandy Moore is heresay, based on tisdales account. The only thing we actually know for sure is that tisdale is enough of a drama queen to publish this self absorbed, tone deaf article about a saga of her own creation.[/quote]

I don’t think you can say it’s all just Ashley Tisdale airing random grievances and “what’s the other side of the story” when Hilary Duff’s husband stepped in, guns a blazin. Now Hilary (and her husband) both look kind of crazy and guilty. They could have stayed out of it and the whole thing would have blown over in a day or two, now look what we’re all talking about. [/quote]

This. The messiest move here has been Duff's husband attacking Ashley directly, basically confirming for everyone that Hillary is part of the "toxic mom group" even as Ashley was denying that there were other famous moms in the group she was talking about.

Also, just a general pet peeve -- there is no "hearsay" here. It's not court. IRL, people can talk about their experiences and you can decide whether or not you trust their account or not, but there's no rule that you can't share things that other people may have said or done to you. Which, by the way, Tisdale didn't even do because she doesn't even say who any of the moms in her mom group were and [b]she's not actually accusing anyone of anything[/b].[/quote]

I'm sorry, did you read the article? She's definitely accusing people of being petty, mean, toxic, exclusive, etc. If what she said wasn't bad at all then no one would be talking about it...[/quote]

She didn't name names. She also doesn't just name call. She's not saying "ugh all the women in this group were petty, mean, toxic, and exclusive." Rather, she describes her personal experience of feeling excluded or left out, and many people concluded upon reading it "oh that is mean". She calls the group and its dynamics toxic (which, based on what we continue to find out, appears to be spot on) but says she thinks the women *in* the group are mostly good people caught in a negative dynamic. The meanest thing she says is that she thinks one of the women in the group might not be a good person, but she doesn't say who that woman is nor does she describe anything specifically this woman did that might provide hints as to who it is.

I read the piece when it came out and I didn't think "wow she's really calling these women out." My first thought was "yeah it is too bad when women get caught up in those dynamics -- I've been stuck in dynamics like that before and it sucks." I viewed it as a criticism of how women in general sometimes relate to each other, and not an attack on specific women at all.[/quote]

Weird take, but ok. If she was fine with all the women, like you seem to claim, then why couldn't they have either ironed out their differences or left on a good note? Better yet, why couldn't they all have written a joint article about the ways in which groups of really nice women can somehow become toxic when all of them are so nice?[/quote]

It doesn't sound like the other women had any interest in ironing out differences or ending on a good note. Her description of the dynamic is that she felt excluded from activities and sidelined in general, but that when she reached out to say she was feeling hurt, people said things like "oh we just assumed you were invited" or that they forgot.

I've been through this and that's part of the power play. They ignore you and exclude you, and if you say "hey it seems like people are upset with me but I don't know why, can we talk about it?" and everyone says "we have no idea what you're talking about, don't be so sensitive" and then it just continues. There is no closure, just a general feeling of rejection, and that is by design. They think no one can criticize them for their actions because they've gone out of their way to do the whole thing passively and under the cover of "oops I just just forgot to invite you."[/quote]

So what you're describing is mean girl behavior, yes? When she asked why she wasn't invited they lied to her. When she told them she was upset they told her she was crazy. When she tried to discuss things they ignored her. Is that correct? So how on earth is saying that people did those things NOT a criticism of the awful behavior of those women?[/quote]

Of course it's a criticism of that behavior. No one said it wasn't. [b]The point is she didn't name names.[/b] She was talking about her own experience and didn't drag anyone else into it. Whereas Duff's husband launched a direct attack at Tisdale by directly calling her names.

The normie version of this would be like if someone posted on Facebook about how they had a hard year and realized some of their friendships weren't serving them but they are happy to moving into 2026 with good family and friends or something. I've seen people post stuff like this. Is it a little cryptic? Yeah, and if I don't already know, I might wonder about those friendships that "weren't serving them". But mostly I'll just take it at face value and be like "glad you're doing better" or something. Sure, that person might be trying to send a message to some of those former friends like "see, I'm doing great and I never cared about you anyway." That could be a little petty. But the pettiness is private and only the people who know what she's talking about are going to feel a way about it. This is a little messy but not super drama-seeking, IMO.

Now, if one of those former friends were to screen grab that post and re-post it with a nasty comment about the original poster, I would consider THAT super drama seeking and tacky and obnoxious. Especially if the tone of the original post was mostly positive and meant to be like "I was struggling but I'm doing good now." Like, why drag it into the mud.

That's how I read the situation.[/quote]

Oh FFS. It has taken people under a minute to figure out who she was talking about. Please stop hiding behind this " she didn't name names" BS. It honestly makes everything else you say after that totally unbelievable. [/quote]

[b]I think it matters. I think it's tacky for people to go around talking shit about other people by name, but I'm okay with someone describing their own subjective experience without dragging anyone else's name into it, especially if the goal is to connect with others who have had similar experiences.[/b]

It reminds me of the whole Amber Heard drama where Depp sued her for defamation because she wrote an op-ed about experiencing domestic violence (which she definitely did experience) where she didn't even mention his name, and he was like "everyone will know you are talking about me." Well yeah, if you don't want your ex-wife writing about her DV experience, maybe don't be a violent, abusive drunk? Everyone is accountable for their own behavior and the fact that she lost that case is insane to me.

I feel the same way about this. Ashely Tisdale should be allowed to speak publicly about a bad friend experience, especially in the context of an essay where she's just writing about negative friend dynamics and what she learned from it and not dishing dirt on specific people. If those people happen to be celebrities who are now worried that her essay implicates them and that people will get mad at them for what she has described... well, unless she's lying, I don't care. If you don't want to get called out for passive-aggressive mean girl behavior, there's one sure fire way to avoid that, and that's by not engaging in such behavior.[/quote]

It's not like an incredibly prolific actress describing a situation she had with an ex-costar when the person she's discussing could be one of hundreds or even thousands of people. Ashley Tisdale, who is a public figure, was in a moms group with people who she then unfollowed on social media. She also described their jobs. I think it was abundantly clear who she was talking about, so for you to draw this line in the sand and say that you'd think it's tacky if she had named names but you think it's not because she did everything but give the names of the people she was obviously talking about it ridiculous. Also, it's funny that you know what her goal was in posting this. Like she was doing it out of the goodness of her heart for the societal benefit. I think they're all crazy and petty and stupid so I'm not taking anyone's side here. But I find your arbitrary line drawing insane. [/quote]

No, it's not actually "abundantly clear" most people here can't identify most of the women in the pics. Are you one of them to be taking it so personally? [/quote]

So it wasn't abundantly clear who she was talking about and yet...less than 24 hours after her post/article people had figured out who she was talking about. I don't know who most of those people are (I couldn't have told you who Ashley Tisdale was before this other than that I would have guessed she had been in some sort of teen movie/TV show), but the internet seemed to be able to figure it out real quick, and pretending like that didn't happen is nuts. [/quote]

Have they said "yeah it was us!" It's still just speculation. But, so what? You may think it's in bad taste to mention in public that friends disappointed you but it's really not a big deal. [/quote]

Not PP.

Regardless of which of you is 'right,' either way it's done. No one came out looking great, but also no one cares that much.[/quote]

That has been said over and over in here. Most people don't give a flying F about Ashley but they were interested in discussing this dynamic that they have seen on their own. But that conversation keeps getting diverted to focusing just on Ashley and her friend group. Most people in here don't really care about her and have tried to discuss their own relationships.[/quote]

+1 I'm the OP and I genuinely posted this to discuss the friend group dynamic. I don't care about Hillary Duff or Mandy Moore one way or another. But obviously the dynamic in the friend group is not isolated to this specific celebrity friend group -- lots of us have been there.[/quote]

Agreed. This happened to me in high school. I was completely frozen out by friends. No reason given. We eventually became sort of friends again several years laters and they were like "tee hee! we were so mad at you and we don't even know why!" Meanwhile they made most of junior year hell for me by being so baselessly cruel. So I can absolutely believe someone can be blindsided and not need to "take ownership" when confronted by toxic group dynamics that seems to just be for sport.[/quote]

Sometimes the dynamic is that one "friend" is excluded as a way of hiding the rest closer together. The problem is, as Ashley learned, if they do it to someone else, they can always do it to you.

I am curious about this dynamic. Why is it so common and how we can teach kids, and ourselves, apparently, to avoid it?[/quote]

In my case, I brought a new friend to the group. I suspect she orchestrated ousting me to secure her place because nothing happened that I needed to reflect on or whatever. From my perspective I thought the more the merrier. It was weird. Something like that could have happened with Ashley or I think she touched on the idea of being deemed "not cool enough" for the "cool mom group". It's probably nothing overt like the PP keeps suggesting Ashley take accountability for like flirting with someone's husband.
If it was I don't think she would shine a spotlight on the falling out which would likely expose her. [/quote]

Honestly, anyone who claims to be part of a "cool moms group" deserves whatever befalls them. I think Mandy Moore used that exact same phrase at one point (in some article someone linked here). Gross. And I say this as someone who has a lot of friends and am in a lot of friend groups (some coed, some all female, some all moms). I'd never say I'm in the "cool moms/parents/whatever group" because that's obnoxious. [/quote]

Well that's why this is so many pages. [B/] People are having a good time at the expense of these D list child stars [/B] thinking they were some hot shit cool mom club. It's entertaining but also resonates with some people who have had similar issues with their friendships for different reasons.[/quote]

This. It’s just a different way of being mean. Some people don’t think it’s bad to be mean as long as the target is pretty, mean, petty, [insert excuse].[/quote]

Are you the one who keeps going on about how you're above such nonsense and can't imagine how anyone could be so stupid to get caught up in this? [/quote]

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