Jenna Bush Hager criticizes Ashley Tisdale for scathing essay about ‘toxic’ mom group

Tisdale’s essay came a month after she wrote about leaving the group of ‘mean girls’ in her blog

Today host Jenna Bush Hager was not a fan of actor Ashley Tisdale’s emotional essay about being part of a “toxic” friend group.

The 40-year-old married mother of two and former Disney Channel star wrote an essay published January 1 for The Cut about breaking up with her friend group of fellow moms due to their “high school” behavior. She wrote that while she thought she “found [her] village” among these friends, she later realized through Instagram that they were excluding her from events.

Tisdale’s essay came a month after she first wrote about leaving the group, which she claimed was full of “mean girl behavior,” in her blog, By Ashley French.

However, during Tuesday’s episode of Today with Jenna & Friends, Hager questioned Tisdale for writing about the mom group in such a “public” way, rather than having conversations with her friends privately.

“Feeling left out is public because of social media, but also the fact that she wrote an article and made it public, I don’t know. Good for her for telling her truth,” she told her guest co-host, Matt Rogers. “But I also think private conversations are more and more important. Speaking your truth to the people who have hurt you should be enough. I hope we can also teach that if you feel wronged, if you feel hurt, show love.”

Jenna Bush Hager criticized Ashley Tisdale for her ‘public’ essay about a ‘toxic’ mom group (Getty Images)

Rogers also shared his concerns about Tisdale’s approach, since fans are speculating that the essay is about her friendships with famous moms like Mandy Moore and Hilary Duff.

“She’s talking about how it was on social media that she felt a lot of these feelings, and then when something like this gets written, especially if a lot of people are intuiting that she is part of this famous mom friend group ... it’s kind of a little bit hypocritical to me to then put this out on social media when those women are well-known and could be targeted by it,” Rogers explained.

Tisdale is the mother of two daughters, Jupiter, four, and Emerson, 15 months, whom she shares with her husband, Christopher French. In her essay for The Cut, she recalled how she felt when she was being left out of events with her friend group of fellow moms, whom she connected with during the pandemic.

After she was continuously excluded from events, she then sent a text to her friends and told them she’d be leaving the group, writing, “This is too high school for me and I don't want to take part in it anymore.”

When Tisdale published an article on her blog last month about the friend group, fans questioned whether she was referring to other famous mothers. The Phineas and Ferb star lives in Los Angeles, which is where Duff started the mom group along with, Moore, Meghan Trainor, and others in the area.

The large group used to post about their family outings, baby music classes, and vacations on social media. However, Tisdale recently tapered off from spending time with them. In fact, Moore and Duff went on a trip together in October with a group of other moms, but neither Tisdale nor Trainor was in attendance.

However, a representative for Tisdale told TMZ Monday that her essay for The Cut was not about her friendship with Moore, Duff, and Trainor. The representative also deemed the false narrative disappointing, since Tisdale’s essay aimed to highlight issues mothers face, based on her personal experience with a different group of friends.

The Independent has contacted a representative for Tisdale for comment.