What Caused Ashley Tisdale’s 'Toxic Mom Group' Drama: Report
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock all week, I imagine you’ve heard about this “toxic mom group” drama going on with
Ashley Tisdale French.
On January 1, Ashley — who shares two daughters with her husband,
Christopher French — published a personal essay for
The Cut, in which she wrote about “breaking up with” her “toxic” group of mom friends in LA.
“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,” she wrote. “Another time, at one of the mom’s dinner parties, I realized 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.”
Notably, Ashley did not name any of the moms she was referring to, but it didn’t take long for fans to piece together that Ashley used to be part of the same
mom group as other celebrities like
Mandy Moore,
Hilary Duff, and
Meghan Trainor.
A representative for Ashley publicly denied the widespread speculation that her essay was about that particular group of women; however, Hilary’s husband, Matthew Koma, went and majorly stirred the pot this week by posting a parody of the article on social media, branding Ashley “
self-obsessed” and “tone-deaf.”
Since then, the internet has been abuzz with theories about what may have happened here. And now, a source close to the group has spoken to
People about the cause of the falling out, claiming that it stemmed from “a misalignment of values that Ashley decided to make public.”
"Friends naturally drift apart," they added. "It didn’t warrant a dramatic breakup text."
A second source shared more insight into Ashley’s reasoning for sharing the essay, suggesting that she “put this out there” because she wants people to know that “toxic behavior is not acceptable.” “This is blowing up in the craziest way,” they acknowledged.
At the time of writing, it appears that Ashley no longer follows Hilary or Mandy on Instagram. She does, however, still follow Meghan. We’ve reached out to Ashley’s representative about all this, and we’ll be sure to let you know if we hear anything in response.
In the meantime, something tells me we’re gonna be talking about this for a while…
