Ashley Tisdale’s ‘Toxic Mom Group’ Essay Backfires With Fans: ‘Woefully Lacked Self-Awareness’

Ashley Tisdale recently published an essay about “breaking up” with a group of mom friends. In it, the actor — who now goes by her married name, Ashley French — described a group of friends as “toxic.” She admitted to feeling iced out of the group in a way that reminded her of high school. Whatever her intention with the essay was, the response has almost certainly not been what she expected. Many people have described the piece as awkward and speculated about why her friendships ended.

Ashley Tisdale wrote an essay about her ‘toxic mom group’

In a recent essay published in The Cut, French wrote about “breaking up” with her “toxic mom group.” While she had once felt close to these women, she began to feel they were purposely excluding her. At one dinner party, for example, she sat on the opposite side of the table from the host. She also noticed that some of the women were hanging out without her.

“I was starting to feel frozen out of the group, noticing every way that they seemed to exclude me,” she wrote.

Many have speculated that the article is about a group of friends that includes Hilary Duff, Mandy Moore, and Megan Trainor. People also began to speculate about the reasons these women may have allegedly excluded French. 

Some have wondered if French’s politics are further to the right than those of the other women, following a post she made about Charlie Kirk. One source also claimed that French didn’t reach out to her friends during the LA wildfires in early 2025.

“It wasn’t an overnight thing. Her politics don’t align with a lot of the group members, which drove a wedge between them,” the source told the U.S. Sun. “But the big straw that broke the camel’s back was how Ashley responded to the group about the LA wildfires last year. Multiple members of the group were impacted, some worse than others, and Ashley hardly checked in.”

Ashley Tisdale’s essay about the mom group has largely drawn criticism

French’s essay has, in general, not been received well. A number of people have described her as just as “toxic” for publishing a piece about interpersonal drama.

“I didn’t find that essay to be beautiful or meaningful.. just seemed like a way to talk s*** about other people while pretending to take the high road,” one Reddit user wrote. “As others mentioned, it woefully lacked self awareness.”

Many people didn’t think the situation warranted a published essay; instead, they thought she should have talked to her friends about it.

“That piece was so dumb, too. No one was mean to her; she just felt left out,” another person wrote. “Fair, but to write a whole public article about it?! Come on.”

“Groups have smaller friendships within them,” one person added. “The group itself cannot be and never will be the strongest relationship overall. Sounds like she didn’t click one on one/with smaller subsets of the over all group and was only invited to big things where all the kids would be there. If your first reaction to a weird vibe in the group chat is to call the whole chat out instead of messaging a few on the side to talk about it, that’s weird.”

While some people sympathized with French, others celebrated getting low-stakes celebrity drama.

“My favorite kind of drama, low stakes with people I don’t have any strong opinions about!” one person wrote.

For others, the story didn’t have quite enough toxicity.

“‘Toxic’ is overused here,” another person wrote. “They left you out of a few get-togethers! I want to hear about somebody banging somebody else’s husband! We used to be a proper country.”

Hilary Duff’s husband responded to the piece

French did not specify which friends she was writing about and even denied through a rep that it was about the celebrity group people are assuming. Despite this, Duff’s husband directly shaded her with a post of his own. 

In an Instagram Story, Matthew Koma shared an image of himself mirroring French’s pose from the photo on her essay. He added The Cut’s logo with a headline reading, “When You’re The Most Self Obsessed Tone Deaf Person On Earth, Other Moms Tend To Shift Focus To Their Actual Toddlers.” The sub-headline read, “A Mom Group Tell All Through A Father’s Eyes.”

Many people have taken this as confirmation of drama in the group.