Ashley Tisdale’s essay for The Cut about being iced out of her "mean girls" mommy friend group has officially taken on a life of its own. What started as a vulnerable reflection on motherhood, loneliness, and mean-girl dynamics has now turned into a full-blown guessing game, with fans and insiders trying to piece together who she could be talking about and what really went down behind the scenes.
The mom group that once felt like home
Ashley explained in her essay titled "Breaking Up With My Toxic Mom Group" that she found her friend group after she craved a connection with other moms after she and husband Christopher French had her eldest daughter, Jupiter.
“Most of us had been pregnant through the early pandemic,” she wrote. “We missed out on the activities where you meet other expectant mothers. We hadn’t had baby showers or prenatal yoga, and hardly anyone had held our newborns.”
When the group finally came together, it felt right. “Our kids were able to be together, and it all felt right,” she recalled.
At first, there was a sense of belonging. But slowly, something shifted, and she felt as if she was starting to get left out. She started to notice things like where she was being sat 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."
Then she started not getting invited to things. “I tried not to take things personally,” Tisdale wrote. “It’s not like people aren’t allowed to get together without me.”
But the distance continued, and she felt like she was back in high school, and wasn't "cool" enough to be part of the group. She described realizing there were “group text chains that didn’t include everyone,” which led to cliques forming.
Seeing social media photos of hangouts she wasn’t invited to made things sting even more. She remembered “sitting alone… after getting my daughter to bed,” feeling “totally lost” and wondering what she had done wrong.
Eventually, she sent a text that drew a clear line.“This is too high school for me,” she wrote, “and I don’t want to take part in it anymore.”
While she emphasized that she “never considered the moms to be bad people (maybe one),” she admitted the dynamic had become unhealthy, leaving her “hurt, drained, and left out."
Who could she be talking about
Tisdale never named names, but the internet didn’t need much time to start connecting dots. Fans quickly pointed to a well-documented celebrity mom circle that includes Hilary Duff, Mandy Moore, and Meghan Trainor.
The group has been photographed together over the years and has shared photos on social media. Internet detectives also noticed that Tisdale no longer appears to follow Duff or Moore on Instagram.
Adding fuel to the speculation, Duff spoke warmly about her tight-knit mom crew in a December 2024 People interview, which notably mentioned Trainor, Moore, and Tisdale by name while describing a group she sees “two to three times a week.”
“They were little baby worms when we all first got together,” Duff said fondly, explaining how their bond formed through early music classes and shared motherhood.
The wildfire fallout, according to sources
According to a source who spoke to The U.S. Sun, the rift wasn’t sudden, saying Tisdale had been “slipping away” from the group. But one national disaster reportedly sealed the deal.
“The big straw that broke the camel’s back,” the source said, “was how Ashley responded to the L.A. wildfires.”
Multiple members of the group were directly impacted by the fires, including Moore, who lost her home and was taken in by Duff and Matthew Koma. According to the source, Tisdale “hardly checked in.”
“She didn’t offer to help with the means she has,” the source alleged. “She just lived her own life, and her friends felt abandoned by her.”
The source went further, claiming the group felt her behavior had become increasingly “self-absorbed.” "It was impossible to maintain a friendship with her since it was so one-sided," they said.
They also alleged that Tisdale had drifted apart from other longtime friends, including High School Musical costar Vanessa Hudgens, “for the same reasons.”
When Tisdale published her essay, the source claimed it felt like “a slap in the face” to friendships that had taken years to build.