The dads enter the toxic mom chat

The first gossip scandal of 2026 keeps giving and we’re currently on day three, and a dad has entered the chat. To recap, briefly:

Ashley Tisdale wrote a piece for The Cut about how she quit her toxic mom group. She did not name names, but the internet immediately assumed, since she is famous, and she’s been friends with other famous women who are moms, that Hilary Duff and Mandy Moore were part of this cohort. Then, as Maria shared yesterday in her Celebrity Social Media column, Ashley denied that that was who she was talking about, but nobody believes her.

And then Hilary’s husband, Matthew Koma, invited himself to the party with this post on IG stories – flip through the carousel:

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You know who wins here? Gossip wins. Those of us who gossip about celebrities win. These people are slapping at each other with pettiness and basically asking us to be seated, and we are. And, hilariously, no one had this on the bingo card because, let’s be honest, it’s not like any of these names were at the top of the hot list in terms of popularity. Like, sure, they’ve all had their day but those days haven’t been all that recent – and suddenly, bleak January comes around and they’re all out here giving gossip sunshine, thank you.

As for the people who are taking sides…

Again, does a side need to be taken here? Everyone in this situation looks like an asshole. Ashley’s accusing the moms of being assholes but, like, nobody was sitting around hoping for a thinkpiece from Ashley Tisdale about who was meangirling her in Calabasas. Every celebrity at this point should be well-versed in social media culture in these times. Everyone with a phone now has a PhD in internet forensics – nobody can claim that they aren’t aware of it, haven’t seen it happening, and are naïve to the behaviour of online citizens. So if you make the choice to write an article at The Cut about breaking up with your friends, essentially a blind item in the form of an essay, how can you then be surprised that people would try to find out who the f-ck you’re referring to?

As for Matthew Koma, let’s not pretend that Hilary wouldn’t have known and signed off on his post. So while she can, in theory, remain one step removed on Instagram from being the one who pulled the trigger, figuratively she would have been standing beside him, fueling the drama, and getting the brief satisfaction of a clapback…

Brief because well what have they all lost in this process? They’ve now lost the ability, for now anyway, to complain about how the media pits women against each other, a common and favourite celebrity refrain. I promise you, our New Year’s resolutions had nothing to do with pitting Ashley Tisdale against the likes of Hilary Duff and Mandy Moore. Ashley pit herself against the mom group and certain members of the mom group seem happy to be pitted and to spit in return.

Oh, wait, another f-cking update – Ashley’s husband, Christopher French, with a pearl of wisdom:

Girl. It took at least a few hours for Ashley to write that article. At least. And then she would have sent it to The Cut for edits and feedback. Maybe let her publicist know. So, at minimum, a whole day would have passed to pause and reflect and consider if it was worth her energy. And it still got posted. What’s the use of sharing this now?!

Attached - Hilary Duff running errands with her daughter in LA in December and Mandy Moore in LA over the last couple of days.