By: Tori Spelling
Year: 2009
Genre: Biography
Tori Spelling might have grown up with everything a girl could wish for, but these days she’s just another suburban working mom…whose toddler regularly recognizes her in the pages of Us Weekly. Welcome to Mommywood, where the stars are two feet tall and your neighbors know who you are before you move in.
Like most parents, Tori wants her children to have the one thing she didn’t have as a kid—a normal family. On their hit Oxygen reality show, Tori & Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood, the starlet and her husband Dean McDermott regularly wrestle dirty diapers, host the neighborhood block party, and tackle temper tantrums on the red carpet. But when the cameras aren’t rolling, Tori’s still having awkward run-ins with a former 90210 costar at a laser tag birthday party, scooping rogue poo out of the kiddie pool on a resort vacation, and racing to win back her pre-baby body before the media starts calling her fat. For all her suburban fantasies, Tori Spelling is no June Cleaver.
With the same down-to-earth wit that made her entertaining memoir sTORI telling a #1 New York Times bestseller, Tori tells the hilarious and humbling stories of life as a mom in the limelight. From learning to be the kind of parent her own mother never was to revealing what it’s like to raise a family while everyone is watching, Mommywood is an irresistible snapshot of celebrity parenthood that you won’t get from the paparazzi.
I had read and loved “sTORI Telling” and immediately put my name on the reserve list at the library for “Mommywood.” Finally my name moved to the top of the list and I ran to the library through the first of our snowy weather to pick up my reserved copy. I got home, snuggled in and started reading. That turned out to be the high point of this book.
The first book was full of the behind-the-scenes gossip readers look for. Spelling showed herself to be intelligent, self-effacing and funny. In this second book, Spelling focuses on what it is like to be a mother in the world of celebrity and Hollywood. She spends a lot of time talking about what her mom did wrong and how she is going to be different.
So what did I learn about Tori Spelling from this book? She’s is whiney, spoiled and more passive aggressive than a church full of Minnesota Lutherans. She puts her children before her husband, but it would appear they are all after her career (though she doesn’t let us forget how guilty she feels about it). Spelling has no idea how to interact with “regular” people (as can be seen by her neighbor issues through a good chunk of the book) but she thinks she’s more “regular” than celebrities (see how she reacted to meeting P.Diddy at his daughters’ birthday party).
And there are the issues with her mom. When I read the first book, I thought Spelling was absolutely right about her mom and their broken relationship. When I finished with this book, Tori Spelling’s mom might not be the villain we are led to believe. Tori wrote some angry things about her mother in the last book and instead of addressing them before (or even after) the book came out, Spelling offers some half-assed, “I didn’t know what to say in an e-mail so I figured I’d let her come to me” excuse. If I was her mom, I be pissed with that reply too.
Then there are her parenting techniques. Let me share one with you. Her two-year old throws a tantrum about who is putting him to bed (he wants daddy, Spelling wants to bond with her son and insists she’s going to put him to bed). So, how does our “regular” celebrity deal with this bed-time tantrum? She spends 45 minutes talking him “through” the tantrum. Things like, “I know you’re angry.” “Daddy’s in bed” and “Mommy loves you.” I’m sure this will be a kid who grows up well-adjusted and able to deal with things not going exactly how he wants them to. When they’re at a resort (where they got to go for free), they stay in their suite after her son poops in the pool. Because no other toddler has ever done that. And he won’t feel like there is something wrong with him because every time he’s in a pool he poops and his mom freaks out. I’m sure this kid is destined to be normal and well-adjusted.
I was surprised at how upset this book made me. I have always been on Tori Spelling’s side as a “down-to-earth” celebrity. Really, after this book? She’s just whiney, passive and non-confrontational. (But I’ll probably still watch her show.)
My rating: 2 out of 5 stars