Babes in Bookland: Your Women's Memoir Podcast
Women have always written extraordinary memoirs. We just haven't always talked about them loudly enough — until now. Babes in Bookland is a podcast dedicated entirely to memoirs by women, for women who are hungry for honest storytelling, big feelings, and real lives on the page. Each episode is part book discussion, part cultural conversation, and entirely unapologetic about centering women's experiences. Think of us as your most well-read friend who always knows exactly which book you need next.
Babes in Bookland: Your Women's Memoir Podcast
Pain into Power // Demi Moore's "Inside Out"
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Think you know Demi Moore? Think again.
My friend, Mackenzie, and I peel back the tabloid myths to trace a far more gripping arc: a child who found safety in hospital routines because home was chaos, a teenager forced to protect herself when the adults failed, and an artist who spent years equating value with a number on the scale while breaking box‑office ceilings and cultural taboos. Guided by Demi’s memoir Inside Out, we connect the dots between early trauma, addiction, codependence, and the relentless body scrutiny of Hollywood—and how those patterns transform when you finally choose yourself.
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Link to this episode’s book: Demi Moore's "Inside Out"
Other links:
Demi Moore's Vanity Fair cover & article
Xx, Alex
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Why Demi Moore Still Matters
SPEAKER_00You think you know Demi more? The Vanity Fair cover, ghost, tabloids, the substance? You have no idea. She dug pills out of her mother's throat as a child. She was sold for$500 at 15, and still she became one of the most iconic actresses of a generation. Today, my friend McKinsey and I are breaking down Demi's memoir Inside Out. And from the very first chapter, our jobs were on the floor. This is a story about grit, survival, and what it looks like to finally choose yourself. Let's do it. Hi McKenzie. I'm so glad that you're here, Jason.
SPEAKER_02I know, thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so you suggested Demi's book to me. Tell me why.
SPEAKER_02Well, after I watched The Substance, which she was in, and she was amazing, we had a conversation about it, and I was like, have you read her memoir? So right after the substance, I got her book, read her memoir, and was blown away by her grit. Like if I had to boil her down to a word, it would just be grit. Yeah. I just had no idea. I mean, I'm a little bit too young to have been super aware of her, right? Yeah, you're younger than me.
SPEAKER_00I'm trying to like do the math, but my mom was a huge, huge Demi Moore fan. So she was always on my radar for sure. Yes, you loved her for forever. We weren't old enough to resonate with her as women, our age. No, and like maybe now we do, knowing her story, but yeah.
SPEAKER_02The nude, which I know we'll get to, the nude pregnant vanity fair cover. It just, I wasn't old enough to have an opinion about that. Yeah. Whereas if someone did that now, I would be reposting that onto my Instagram story on the daily. I would have been like, what a brave thing to do, especially when she did it. Yeah. So I loved the book. I thought it was well written. You know, who knows if it has a ghostwriter or whatever.
SPEAKER_00It does. She actually and she actually credits her. That's right. She does. Which I appreciate. She should, yeah.
SPEAKER_02I know. I'm sorry. You're starring in 10,000 movies, you're married and divorced, you've got all these children. It's okay that you didn't have time to sit down and actually write this.
SPEAKER_00We also don't expect actors to be writers. In what world does that very specific skill. It's a very specific skill. And so, yeah, I completely agree. I was blown away by her story. I had no idea what she had gone through. You know, all I knew about her was yeah, when I got older and then she was in all the gossip columns, and I missed a lot of the Bruce Willis stuff too, because I was too young to really be paying attention to that. But like I said, Demi Moore was a huge person in my mom's life. My mom cut her hair because Demi Moore cut her hair short for ghosts. Like in ghost, yeah. Yes. My mom had always had really long hair. Epic hairdo. Epic hairdo. And my mom did the same. So very influential. Did it look the same on your mom as it did on Demi Moore? Yes. Yes. My mom has very similar features and a very similar face shape. Also, Demi Moore's seventh sign. I don't know if you've ever seen that movie. No. Okay, it's like a horror movie. It's where she has to stop the apocalypse. She's a pregnant woman who is apparently pregnant with the Antichrist. She has to stop the apocalypse from coming. As you do. It's kind of amazing. That was one of my mom's favorite movies, too. So we watched that and Ghost on Repeat. I mean, Ghost is iconic. Yeah, it is. It's iconic. I can't rewatch it though because it has such a special place in my memory that I'm like, if I rewatch it, I feel like it's probably so dated. But I do think you endanger girl all the time when Whippy Goldberg says that. Just all the time in my head. Just lives rent-free.
SPEAKER_02And Whippy Goldberg is so amazing in that movie. She really is. I mean, all three of the leads are so good. Yeah. Patrick Swayze. I remember finding it scary, like the scary guy down in the subway station.
SPEAKER_00I mean, it was honestly just scary that a man could want to kill your boyfriend and then be into who played who played the really creepy, who played the guy?
SPEAKER_02I'm not gonna be able to come up with it.
Writing, Ghostwriting, And Cultural Memory
SPEAKER_00I know. And he's actually Gary Sinise. Am I wrong? That is a great actor. We can just say it's Gary Sinise. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then we'll look it up later. It's fine. It's fine. Okay, so Ademi Moore's Inside Out was published in 2019. And this is her dedication for my mother, my daughters, and my daughters' daughters. Just keeping that going. Okay, and we have an epigraph, which is very fun. McKinsey, will you read it?
SPEAKER_02I'd be happy to. The guest house. This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness. Some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all, even if they are a crowd of sorrows who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture. Still, treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing and invite them in. Be grateful for whatever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond. And that is by Rumi himself.
SPEAKER_00Yes, the third 13th century palette.
SPEAKER_02He knew what he was doing.
SPEAKER_00He really did. What is that?
SPEAKER_02Unbelievable. What does that poem mean to you? I love this poem. It's very close to one that I would butcher if I tried to get correct, but it basically you have to be as grateful for the seemingly bad as the seemingly good because they are both necessary for your growth. And teachers. And teachers. And it's always the shitty stuff. It's easy to feel grateful when you're having an awesome day and doing a podcast with your friend and you're getting a coffee and nothing's hard. And it's really hard to feel grateful when people are in bad health or you're going through a breakup, or you know, these things that we think are so terrible, it's really hard to find that gratitude. But this is sort of saying it's a momentary awareness that you're gonna get. Like you're you're not gonna feel this all the time. And when I teach my Pilates classes, I say to people, if even your brain is turned off from the outside world for 10 seconds, that's good because you're not gonna be able to do it all the time. You're gonna go through a bunch of shit, you're gonna go through a bunch of joy. And hopefully, for at least some of those moments, you're able to appreciate what you're going through.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I completely agree. And I feel like it's just this reminder for herself and from her to us that all of these things, these experiences, our thoughts, they're just visitors for a short time. The good, the bad, like you said. And so when you kind of zoom out and you realize that this spiritual experience is this actually very lengthy thing, it maybe can help give you a little bit more perspective.
SPEAKER_02And also the thing that also just hit me was for someone at her who had so many body image issues to remember that we are spiritual beings having a physical experience and that your body is this teeny little nothing in the end, you know? Yeah, it's hard to remember, it's hard to be a woman.
SPEAKER_00It is, it is, yeah. I mean, when you have a lot of stuff coming at you, and Dimmy had a lot of stuff coming at her, which she did. Which we will get to. But first, we're gonna start with our quick topics. What is your favorite Dimmy Moore movie? I mean, I think I'd have to go with a few good men. Okay. She's so good in that. She's badass. I feel like she was given an opportunity. And she writes about that in her memoir, and I don't really have it in the outline, but she talks about really being proud of that role and that movie, specifically because she played a strong woman and there wasn't really romantic arc that was going on, which she just felt. I mean, and I'm sure so many women can attest you in Hollywood. Pretty much you're just a part of a couple. That's like you're there to aid the man's story. Exactly.
SPEAKER_02And she was her own story.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, she was. I think that that really showed audiences what she was capable of and gave her an opportunity that not a lot of films did at that point. Yes.
Childhood Chaos And Hospital As Refuge
SPEAKER_02She's a good actress. She's an incredible actress. I mean, I have to put an asterisk by the substance because I thought she should have won the Academy Award for that. No offense to Mikey Madison, I don't know her, but if you're listening, you were great too. But she was so incredible in the substance. I just can never watch that movie again because it scared the life out of me. Yeah. And I can't look at the Squelchies anymore. But asterisks of if I just had to say her performance, I would say the substance. Movie as a whole, few good men.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And we talked about the substance. And I told you that was too much for me. It is too much for me. I appreciated what the director and what they were saying and doing. I really appreciated it, but ooh, blah. No, so gross. So gross. So bad. So gross. I think I'd have to say ghost just because it feels like this monumental thing in my own life. But Demi Moore is just, she's just adorable in everything she does. And she has such a unique quality with her voice, which she kind of credits to getting her her start, I think. It's just a reminder to lean into your uniqueness, especially right now, where I feel like all of these young women are just trying to look like one another. And it's like, no, everyone's so beautiful. I know. The one thing that you can bring to the table, the one or two things, you know.
SPEAKER_02Well, Jamie Lee Curtis said that it's been a genocide of women, this plastic surgery craze.
SPEAKER_00Interesting.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And she looks like herself. She looks fantastic. She's amazing.
SPEAKER_00And yeah. That's actually a really interesting point.
SPEAKER_02We could go off on a whole tangent for that, but in the podcast, we'll do it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we will. We'll find a book for that. Jamie Lee Curtis, please write a memoir. Yes. Oh my gosh, her story would be incredible.
SPEAKER_02I would read that in a heartbeat.
SPEAKER_00Me too. Me too. Okay, next quick topic: Kabbalah. Am I saying that right? Yeah. All right. So if you lived in LA or paid attention to celebrity gossip in the early aughts, you heard about Kabbalah and you knew about that little red string. But I realized I never really understood. I don't even think I realized it was a part of Judaism. I definitely didn't. Honestly.
SPEAKER_02No, I thought it was ancient Judaism.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_02That's what I thought.
SPEAKER_00I did not. Yeah. I was like, what's happening? What are these people do? So I found this great YouTube video, which I will link, and it's from Judaism Unpacked. It's 15 minutes long, but it's incredibly well done. So, like I said, I'll link it in the show notes for anyone. But a super shortened version is that Kabbalah is the Jewish mystical tradition that was perceived from God through the prophets to give people insight into the nature of the world in a way that we can't perceive with our senses. So there are three main types: there's theoretical Kabbalah, thought experiments, and analogies that help us make sense of the idea of God and the nature of existence, meditative Kabbalah, meditating on names of God to bring powers into your body, and magical Kabbalah. It ties into the power of consciousness and intentions. And you do need to watch the video to kind of dive into more of it specifically because he expands on all of them. But it sounds really fascinating to me. And I could understand how someone would not get sucked into it like it's a bad thing to get sucked into, but why this would be inspiring or appealing to someone, especially like Demi, who I think was just trying to grapple with why her life had unfolded the way that it had unfolded thus far. And she famously gets into this with Ashton Kutcher. Okay, so why the red string? Well, according to Google, in Kabbalah, a red string, especially when worn on the left wrist, is a protective talisman believed to ward off the evil eye and negative energy. I want to get us some red strings right now. I'm into it. Whatever helps. Honestly, whatever helps. Whatever helps. This seems like, I mean, sitting there just ruminating on how to be closer to God and what spiritualism is and like how to find a peaceful path. There's nothing wrong with that in my book. No, I don't think. So the red string is rooted in the tradition of Rachel's tomb from the Old Testament and protective energies associated with it. It's a reminder to cultivate positive energy and avoid negativity, acting as a shield against harmful influences and a symbol of connection to spiritual protection. Sounds pretty cool. Would you consider yourself a spiritual person? Do you meditate?
Addicted Parents And Early Adultification
SPEAKER_02Yes, I meditate. Yes, I would consider myself vaguely spiritual. My parents, my mom was an atheist, I mean is an atheist, and my dad was is. I don't know why I'm saying was, but I'm referring to when I was a kid. They're still alive and well, thank God. My dad was kind of a pot-smoking hippie who thought that God was in the garden. Okay. And also an a very high-powered environmental attorney, so it was an interesting kind of thing. But we didn't go to church. I had no I don't care what the specific answers are. And I don't think that anybody or any sect is right. And that's my big issue with any group of religion, is that they think their way is correct and other people's is not correct.
SPEAKER_00And that they have to do something about it. Because you can think that your way is correct and other people are wrong, right? That is kind of, I think, what having faith is, but then who cares? So Demi is one of the few celebrities who's been very vocal about her ghostwriter, Ariel Levy, even thanking her first in the acknowledgments. And I just think that's cool. I think that's remarkable. Yeah. Like I said, no pressure, celebs. You don't have to be it's okay. Everything. Yeah. Lord knows we all feel that pressure already. Okay. Let's dive deeper. Let's do it. We're gonna start with Demi's childhood. So I really truly shocked to read about her childhood. How delicious with each each thing. Honestly, you know when you watch a movie and you're just like, this is ridiculous.
SPEAKER_02There's no way this also happened. Yes.
SPEAKER_00So she kind of starts off letting us know that she suffered from kidney disease as a child and she spent a lot of time in hospitals. She writes that this was a life-threatening condition about which very little was known, and it had really only been studied in boys to the extent that it was studied at all. I thought that was crazy, so I wanted to double check that. And yes, according to NIH.org, neprotic syndrome is not very common in children. On average, fewer than five in 100,000 children worldwide develop nephrotic syndrome each year. And it does mostly affect boys. They're not sure, but they think it could have something to do with testosterone in their bodies. So I thought that was crazy. And that must have been terrifying for her and her parents.
SPEAKER_02What I found so fascinating about this section was the hospital was the safe place for her. Because at the hospital, she knew she was gonna get taken care of. There was a routine. There was, and we know we both have young kids. They need routines. And I feel like our generation, we are so good at it, you know? Yeah. There was no routine in her house. She never knew what was going to come next, even as far as school was concerned, because she was always, you know, going to a different school. The hospital was her like her happy place. I know. I mean, that's fucked. Like so sad. That's that's not a great childhood if you're like, God, I can't wait to get back to the hospital.
SPEAKER_00I know. And she talks about just having attention on her and care. Yeah. Let's talk about her parents. Okay. So her mother, I know, I know. Virginia. She was a teenager when she got pregnant with Demi. Demi writes, There was a part of her that did not really ground in reality, which meant that she was able to think outside the box. She came from poverty, but she didn't have a poverty mindset. She didn't think poor. She wanted us to have the best. She would never have allowed a generic brand anything in our house, not cereal, not peanut butter, not laundry detergent. She was generous, expansive, welcoming. She was always reaching for something glamorous. She got my name from a beauty product. I love that she gave us that because I always wonder, I think Demi is a cool name, but I was like, where'd it come from? And I also, she didn't tell us what beauty product though. No. And I Googled it and Demi Wispies, they're like the little lashes.
SPEAKER_02Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_00That's the only thing I could think of.
SPEAKER_02I always just thought it meant half.
SPEAKER_00Right, because the Demi and a Demi bra is a thing, but she says beauty products, so I don't know. We come to understand Virginia as a very complicated character. We have our feelings about her because we are not Demi, and and we are mothers and we are daughters. And I think Demi, it shows you what a wonderful person she is because she has a lot of grace and compassion for her mom. And we will get to some more stuff that her mom does. And we'll circle back to the fact that Demi comes to a very peaceful place with her in her life. But it's always, you know, reading about these parents in these memoirs, there's a lot of bad.
SPEAKER_02It's really tough.
SPEAKER_00It's really tough. I don't know if I could be so forgiving.
SPEAKER_02I think that you find the forgiveness that you have to to live a, if not happy, happy adjacent life.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Because if you were holding on to that kind of anger and resentment, it will kill you. And I think it's deeper and internal. And how could she have, first of all, Demi Moore as a sober person would have worked through all of this in her step work, in her therapy, in her whatever. But you're right. I mean, this is extreme. This isn't like, yeah, hey, my mom called me fat one time. Right. This is really extreme.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Let's get into more extremes. Let's talk about Demi's dad, her father Danny. Danny. She writes. She writes, Danny always had a mischievous twinkle in his eye that made it seem like he had a secret you wanted in on. He also had a lazy eye, like Demi, and she writes that to her it was their special thing. But she mentions that Danny's father was a terrible alcoholic, and Jenny, her mother, Virginia, Jenny, wouldn't leave Demi alone with him later, and there were whispers of sexual abuse. So I thought it was interest, like we'll put a pin in that, right? That Jenny at that point in her life was keeping Demi from sexual abuse. Right? She continues, like me, my dad was raised in a home full of secrets. Okay. What was your childhood like? You had your pot smoking hippie dad also defending the environment, which I love. Could you relate to Demi in any way? Or did you had a Mayberry?
SPEAKER_02Thank God no. I mean, I had a really great childhood. My grandparents founded a community theater in the town next to where I was from. And so I that's where I started doing plays when I was five years old. I'm really close with everyone in my family. It's not like there aren't problems and issues, but these sort of, you know, capitalized letter issues. Yeah. No, thank God. Thank God, knock wood. I mean. Yeah, I know. This is a really tough. But can I also just say when she gives those descriptions of her parents, all I think when I hear those is addict. Really? Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02That sort of charisma, that je ne sais quoi, that thing, it's just it sounds so addict to me.
SPEAKER_01Mm-hmm.
Moving, Masking, And Coping Skills
SPEAKER_02Even before we get into the fact that they are clearly addicts.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02It's just such an addict description. Yeah. And sort of that everything is a party, everything is the biggest it could possibly be always.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And they were also very young. Yes. And I think she paints them with actually this very kind brush at first, right? It's like my dad had a secret that you wanted to be let in on.
SPEAKER_02My mom's an adventure to it. Yes. When you uh until you get older probably and know better. Yeah. It's fun. Right. I mean, I I will say there are a number of alcoholics in my family, and I just always thought they were fun until I got older and realized, oh, that feeling that I have when I'm around them. I mean, particularly my aunt, she's not gonna listen to this, so it doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I was like, oh, that oh, I was scared. It seemed fun, but I was actually scared. Interesting. And so I think that's a very confusing thing for a kid.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02When there's an addict around or an alcoholic who's fun and outrageous and gregarious. And yeah. So that's what I heard in the description of her parents. And they do not have a healthy relationship, Demi's parents.
SPEAKER_00Nobody in the fucking book. Nobody had nope. Nope. Now we're hoping Demi has it with her kids. But yes, a thousand percent. They just both seemed incredibly immature, which they were young. Her parents had started dating in high school. Danny graduated the year before Jenny, and then he had a female roommate in college, which pissed her off. Demi writes, she would continue to do what she did throughout the relationship whenever she felt a threat. She started seeing another guy to make him jealous. We learned that Jenny got married to another boy named Charlie, but that union was short-lived because Danny came running back to her and she ditches Charlie, marries Danny, and then nine-ish months later, Demi is born. She writes, or so I thought. Okay, so how did your parents' relationship affect how you viewed or felt about relationships or marriage growing up?
SPEAKER_02Um, my parents met their freshman year of college and started dating, had a teeny breakup, but then basically got married and are still married today. I think they're going up 43 years of marriage, something like that. Woo! Remarkable. My grandparents, the same ones who founded the community theater, met in the same field at the same college their freshman year, stayed together the whole time. So I constantly felt pressure to stick with it, stick with whoever I was with, stick with my college boyfriend, and then I had like two serious college boyfriends, and I just always thought, well, you just stay because that's what happened. And my parents met freshman year and their parents met freshman year. And so whoever I meet freshman year has got to be a bit a little bit. Yeah. And I, you know, then when I married my now husband, we had a big rocky start. He is an alcoholic, he's sober now, but he didn't start getting sober until after we got married, and it was horrible, gnarly. We will certainly get to it when we get to the addiction sections of the book. I thought I was bringing great shame upon my family for marrying an alcoholic because I thought my parents had a perfect marriage.
SPEAKER_01Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_02So I thought, I cannot believe that I am bringing this to my family when my parents have worked so hard to have a perfect marriage. And then I really had to dissect, like, well, no, no one has a perfect marriage. But it took me that that put me into Al-Anon. I don't know if you know what Al Anon is. Okay. I do. Al Anon, that is really the only let's um say what it is.
SPEAKER_00Oh, so let's say what it is in case people don't.
SPEAKER_02Al Anon is basically for family and friends of alcoholics. If someone's drinking or their sobriety is bothering you, you're in the right place.
SPEAKER_00It's a great I've been to a couple of meetings. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Most smart people have. Well. Or should. Yeah. Yeah. We've all probably been touched by alcoholism in our lives. Yes. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Well, actually, think about one alcoholic or addict is a how many people does that person know? How many people are close to that person?
SPEAKER_00Especially when they're gregarious, charming people.
SPEAKER_02Yes, and yet AA and NA, Narcotics Anonymous, are such bigger programs than Al Anon. But it's because those of us who have been affected by somebody else's behavior don't think we need to take the time and work on why we were affected by that behavior.
SPEAKER_00Right. Or how we were affected or how we don't want to longer be affected. Yeah. It's so crazy the things that it feels like our parents think they're doing right. Right. It's like my parents were, you know, they probably just didn't want to make me feel like something was wrong. And it's like something was wrong. The things that we see and don't see, we all pick up on it. So okay, let's get back to Demi. Okay, Demi. Do you say Demi or Demi? It's not Demi. Demi bra. It's Demi Moore.
SPEAKER_02Demi Moore.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Like there's a little like uh on the eye. Demi more.
SPEAKER_02You're right.
SPEAKER_00Right? Yeah. Demi Moore. Oh shit, now I'm over the Did you listen? Didn't you listen to it? Yeah. How did she say her name? Demi Moore. By Demi Moore. Demi Moore. Oh my God. Okay. Listen, Demi. If you ever listened to this episode and super fans of hers, just know we adore her and we love her. And I've heard her name so many different ways in my life.
SPEAKER_02I've heard it so many different ways, and I hear it's different when they put it with the last name. Demi Moore.
Family Secrets And The Price Of Silence
SPEAKER_00Yeah, Demi. Okay. We'll keep going. All right. So, like I said before, her childhood is rough. And it feels like she had to grow up really quickly because her parents were children who couldn't provide stability, like you said, physical nor emotional. She writes that her father's quote, recklessness made me anxious. I was always on guard, on the alert for whether somebody was going to get angry. Ugh. Her little brother Morgan is born, and she writes about the time when he was two that Demi was told to give him a bottle of beer on a road trip so that he'd quiet down. And Demi knows from a very early age that she has to be the one to look out for him because her parents very clearly won't. That story made me so Yeah.
SPEAKER_02To finish that story, the baby drinks the full bottle of beer and is obviously not crying by the time they get to their destination.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And it's like, Morgan, I hope you're doing okay now.
SPEAKER_02I did think to look that up and then forgot.
SPEAKER_00I feel like she would have, if he wasn't doing okay, that would have been like a part. Okay, we'll look it up later. Yeah. Yeah. They move around a lot, like you had mentioned. She writes, My brother and I calculated that throughout our childhoods we attended at least two new schools a year, and it was often more than that. I didn't realize until much later that this wasn't how everybody lived. Which, ugh, God. I moved to schools once and I knew people who went to my new school, and that was so tough. I couldn't imagine. And she'll write about this was kind of her first um foray into acting, if you will, because she would just look around and be like, okay, what character do I need to play to fit in as quickly as possible? And obviously, depending on where you go in the United States, even parts of the different state, different things were popular, different ways of existing were cool. Was there anything later in life that you realized, oh wow, not everybody did that growing up?
SPEAKER_02I didn't realize how many people came from families that don't really like each other.
SPEAKER_01Oh okay.
SPEAKER_02I I thought mostly families got along. Yeah. It turns out that's not really the case.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I thought that mostly families had enough money and on a global level, or at least our country, that that's not the case. So I had sort of the different the opposite learning curve in, you know, a pretty sheltered upbringing, and realized that, oh, that's not. That's I've had a very good life.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02You know, because you everybody as a teenager thinks that they're angsty, unique, special, tortured is angsty and unique.
SPEAKER_00And yeah, yeah. No, that's true. That's really sweet then. But that must have been a little bit. Did that kind of happen in college or well?
SPEAKER_02I moved to Chicago to go to college. So I was 18 when I started college. And yeah, I mean, I lived in Chicago basically by myself. So I mean I lived in a dorm building, but yeah, it's a big city. You see, you see everything there is to see. That's true.
SPEAKER_00That's true. I do love Chicago, though.
SPEAKER_02I do too.
SPEAKER_00I have a very romantic view of Chicago. I went there on my baby moon. Yeah. Just stopped in, took in a show at Second City, went to the Bean, you know, not a big deal. Never had a winter there.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Or really a summer. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I had nine or ten, ten. I think I lived there for nine or ten years. Anyway, I was done.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. You're like, I love you, Chicago. Are you a Cubs fan or a white sock?
SPEAKER_02Shining Cubs if I had to choose for sure.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Good.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00Okay. So then they move. There's one move that's a lot further than the usual ones. It's across the country because her mother had found a red pubic hair in her father's laundry. So they go to Pennsylvania. You're just like, wow. It was very different than Roswell, New Mexico or California. And Roswell, New Mexico is kind of if we had to pick a home base for her. Yes, it's that. That would be expensive. Yeah. She writes, like I had alluded to earlier, my coping mechanism was to go into every new situation and immediately start operating like a detective. How does it work here? What are people into? Who are my potential allies? What should I be afraid of? Who holds the power? And of course, the big one, how can I fit in? I would try to crack the code, figure out what I had to do, and master it. These skills became essential later on. Is there anything looking back at your childhood that you can kind of connect the dots and be like, yep, that's where that coping mechanism came from?
SPEAKER_02I will go back to the alcoholic ant as the best example of I didn't know that things that felt scary or or rather fun in that sort of scary way were probably dangerous.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I just didn't know.
SPEAKER_00How could you?
SPEAKER_02How could you?
SPEAKER_00Especially if you're kind of looking around and no one is calming the situation down. No. Did you seem normal to everybody?
The $500 Betrayal And Flight
SPEAKER_02Did you ever have a moment with her that you remember kind of did cross a line, like she stumbled and fell somewhere, or it got there was a lot of like when we would be on big family trips, she would have me and my sister run around with her and like put the pool furniture at the hotel into the pool. Just like weird How old was she? She's only two years younger than my mom. So Okay. Yeah. But she was so my sister. So I have a sister and a brother. So my sister and I would stay with my aunt, and then my brother, who was littler, would stay with my parents, thereby having only two hotel rooms. Okay. There's the base of it. And then there was this one night when I think I was 13, 12 or 13. We were in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, and she decided she wanted to go out bar hopping. So we went out bar hopping, and there was a band, a live band at one of these bars, and she, my sister and I are s sing, and she said, Well, why don't you girls get up on that stage and sing? And I was like, No, that's okay. I'm 13, and this is a bar in Mexico. This isn't we're not at the hotel. There's nothing safe about this.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So she basically bullied me into getting up there and singing, and I sang some door song, and it was shit like that. Just like.
SPEAKER_00Ooh. And did you talk to your mom about this? To your parents?
SPEAKER_02I have talked to my parents about it subsequently because she, I mean, she did other things that made it clear she wasn't the safest person in the world. Nothing physical to me or my siblings, nothing like that. But she made bad decisions. She made really bad, yeah, just really, really, really bad choices. Yes, I have as an adult. Yeah. Told them that she made me feel unsafe. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And what did your mom say? You know, they're they're sorry.
SPEAKER_00Like they get it? Yeah. Oh, I think a lot of times people don't want to see, so they don't look, you know?
SPEAKER_02I also just think, you know, you were saying that your parents got divorced. It was such a big shock. They never fought. I think when we were growing up, the generation above us didn't talk about anything. Yeah. So obviously this person's an alcoholic, but why would we ever say that? Right.
SPEAKER_00Why would that ever be?
SPEAKER_02Limit the time we're spending with them.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. It's interesting though, because at some point, don't you want to help that person? Like you just get through the your time with them and then you hope that they're okay, I guess.
SPEAKER_02No, it's a cycle.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Okay, back to Demi. She writes about the time her father drunkenly accidentally shoots off a gun he was cleaning.
SPEAKER_02I couldn't even with this part. I could I was just like seriously, girl.
SPEAKER_00Like it's like the baby bottle full of beer. Oh, okay. He's just shoots a gun off with the two children in the home. Yeah. The bullet grazes his forehead, goes into the wall, there's blood everywhere. And the next paragraph is Demi telling us about the time that she had to dig multiple pills out of her mother's mouth as her father held her down during her mother's attempted suicide. She writes, something very deep inside me shifted then, and it never shifted back. My childhood was over. Any sense that I could count on either of my parents evaporated. I moved from being someone who they at least tried to take care of to someone they expected to assist them in cleaning up their messes. That's it right there. I mean, that's the sentence of the book.
SPEAKER_02That's the sentence of the book. Because that is what propels her into the rest of her life. Yeah. Into her addictions, into her, you know, destructive behavior.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Whether it's with men or drugs and alcohol. That's it right there. She didn't have someone to take care of her.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02On the very fundamental level.
SPEAKER_00On the very fundamental level.
SPEAKER_02It was heartbreaking. Oh, that was. And she talks about that he wanted her to do it because her fingers were smaller and it could get deeper down the mom's throat.
SPEAKER_00I just couldn't even imagine doing that.
SPEAKER_02One of them.
Modeling Breaks And Body As Currency
SPEAKER_00Honestly, how this woman is still existing today. And thriving. And thriving as like honestly the pillar of strength that she is. Girl, magical. Okay, so all of that was chapter one. That's chapter one. Dear listeners. Um, it just completely broke my heart, gave me so much respect for her. And really, I had always loved Demi, but after reading this, and just right away, I was just like, oh my God. Oh my god, this woman's incredible. The things that we all go through, right? And we'll talk more about the hell that she will continue to go through. Okay, so speaking of therapy, her mom starts going in the 70s. Right. And things get better, question mark. She writes, I could feel the dynamics shift just a little in our house. For years, my mom had put up with my dad's cheating and had been completely dependent on him financially and emotionally. It's sad to say, but when she tried to kill herself, it had the effect of reclaiming a little power. She had shown my dad that she might be capable of leaving him in the worst way. Unfortunately, she had shown her children she was capable of leaving us too. So, speaking of generational trauma, Demi tells us about Jenny's mom and how Jenny felt neglected by her and never got over that. She writes, Jenny wasn't able to put herself in my grandmother's shoes and imagine what it was like for her as a young woman, living with a cheating husband for whom she'd given up her dreams. And I thought that was interesting, and we've sort of talked about this a little bit. Do you think it's the child's job to understand where the parent is coming from? Never. But it felt to me like Demi was defending the grandmother here a little bit.
SPEAKER_02She isn't a how old is she when she wrote this? She's like 62 now, so she wrote this. She's in her mid-50s, mid- to late 50s. Sure. I think at that point, yes.
SPEAKER_00Also, I think the grandmother, to Demi's.
SPEAKER_02Well, the grandmother had changed significantly. Right.
SPEAKER_00Or she was a safe place for Demi.
SPEAKER_02So Demi never she didn't see her grandmother the same way. And the other thing that happened was when Demi's mom became pregnant, she was so young. Of course, she still thought her mom sucked. She was still in that angsty kind of teenage phase. And then she became a mother herself. So she never had a chance to heal her feelings towards her mom. Right. And whether they were justified or not. But it would be pretty hard to be as bad of a mom as Demi's mom was. Right. So it doesn't seem like her mom was as bad as she was. Right. Yeah. That's a really good point. I just kept thinking that I was as I was reading it. I was like, no, but it's not the child's responsibility. And it's not the child's responsibility to make you have a good relationship with them. Yeah. That's the adult's responsibility.
SPEAKER_00Right, right. It felt like there were a lot of answers generationally that people needed and they never got. If you do grow up with seeing a mother who stays with a cheating spouse and you know that there's cheating, I would feel like I would need to know why my mother did that. My mother didn't do that. But you know, because look what it caused. I mean, Jenny did the same thing. Yeah. You know? I love that what you said to your son, where it's like, look, you're not responsible for my feelings, but the way that you act does affect people. You know, because I struggle with that with my kids. Because I get my feelings hurt too. Like your kids hurt your feelings because you're a human. Because you're a human. And they're mean. And also like you love them. And anytime that they're like getting over you, you're just like, no, you used to love me so much. And you know that they still do, but I I really love that because I was made to feel like I was responsible.
SPEAKER_02I think a lot of, especially girls are.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, for people's feelings. So I do want to empower my children. But you're right, you still should be careful. That doesn't mean you can walk around being a dick all the time.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. It's one of the pendulum swings in the wrong direction that has happened with us all going, I am fully responsible for my life and my choices and my outcomes and blah, blah, blah. And yet, no, if you hit me, it hurts. That's not my fault.
SPEAKER_00Right. So it yeah. Yeah. But it's a tricky thing to like simplify down to a child. And I think the way that you just did that is beautiful. So thank you for sharing. You're so long. So I'm gonna take it and you steal it. Take it and run it.
SPEAKER_02Take it and run.
SPEAKER_00All right, let's get back to Jenny. So she leaves Danny again for her shrink.
SPEAKER_02Yep.
SPEAKER_00So many lines crossed there. I feel like that happened a lot in the 70s and 80s. Yes. It was a very manipulative, power dynamic. That is not okay.
SPEAKER_02If you were someone psychologist, no, no, of course it's not okay. But also, maybe they had never been listened to ever in their lives.
SPEAKER_00True. True. But will he continue listening when he's not being paid to? Probably not.
SPEAKER_02No, he's a pretty bad person and not a good therapist. But like if that's what he did. But I think that it would track.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think that's a really good point. The shrink prescribes her uppers, which mixed with alcohol, make Jenny even more unpredictable. We didn't think she could get there, but she did. Danny kidnaps Dimmy and Morgan, takes them to Ohio for the summer, violating the custody agreement. But this works because Danny gets Jenny back and they are happy. Question mark. Her dad gets into a shootout outside of a bar. You guys, I'm telling you, see, just when you think it can't get wackier.
SPEAKER_02You would have to edit it if it were a screenplay.
SPEAKER_00You would, because people would be like, this isn't real.
SPEAKER_02Not that many things happen.
SPEAKER_00He has a gambling debt. And once again, her mother's hot I with Danny shit, and she takes the kids back to Roswell, where fortunately Demi has family she can finally turn to. She writes, Jenny wanted me to take her side and tell everyone how horrible my dad had been to her, but I couldn't. I felt they were equally to blame. I started to wall myself off from her. With my grandmother around, I didn't need to overlook my mother's craziness to survive. That's, I mean, to survive the what she had to do. This is the grandmother that we mentioned earlier, and it's always interesting to me how, like I said, you know, to our parents, their parents are obviously one way. As a grandparent, there's a little bit of a relief, maybe, or whatever.
SPEAKER_02It's true. You do have these different relationships, but also grandparents don't have the burden of parenting. And so it can be a different relationship.
St. Elmo’s Fire, Rehab, And Sobriety
SPEAKER_00Okay, so Jenny wants to leave Roswell again. Again. But this time Demi says no. She stays in Roswell with her grandmother. For the first time in her life, she lives like a normal person where her grandmother takes care of her with a consistency that Demi had never experienced. She writes, It was a Halcyon period of safety, a time when I saw what a parent could be, should be. An example I would look to when I became a mother. But Demi writes that she gets restless. She's not used to being in one spot for very long. I had learned to crave extremes. After six months, she goes back to her parents. I think I screamed, No, Demi! Same. But you know what? Habits are it's hard to break. And her parents had passed down this way of life and this lifestyle. And she's gotten used to it. She's like 14-ish, 13-ish at this time. Okay, so there's more moving around, so more of her father getting into trouble. They end up in SoCal and they used Demi's aunts and uncles' names. That hurt was giving me so much anxiety. And then the aunt and uncle want to move in, and they're like, oh, you used our names. I guess we'll just use your names.
SPEAKER_02Bananas. None of that would fly now. No. There's too much paperwork, I think. Well, especially it's really hard to get an apartment in Southern California, so it really wouldn't fly. That too, that too.
SPEAKER_00But I was like, well, if Demi's parents didn't feel safe using their names. Why these other people? Listen, I have the same questions. Yeah, it's okay, it's fine. It's fine. And Uncle are fine, as much as we know. Demi's in seventh grade at this point. She starts smoking, partying. She's 13, and she's allowed to take their car and just claim she did it without her parents' permission if she gets pulled over. She writes, My parents didn't set boundaries for me because they couldn't even set them for themselves. Yeah. Okay, so her mother gets a job as a bookkeeper for this man, Frank Diskin, who gives her mother nice presents and pays for the family's rent when they move into a home in Marina Cause I'll rack.
SPEAKER_02That's what you do for your bookkeepers. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Nothing weird going on there. Well, there was. There was. Because the divorce finally all I took was Frank Diskin. Right. Given her presents and all that fun stuff. And yeah, she probably finally saw a life where she was like, oh, this is nice. Danny only consented to the divorce when Jenny gave him Morgan. And Demi is like, well, wait, doesn't he want me? No, he didn't. Soon she and her mother move into an apartment in West Hollywood. Frank at this point is out of the picture because Danny gave the IRS dirt on Frank Diskin to get the IRS off of his back. Again, like a movie that you wouldn't believe. Like a bad movie. Like a bad movie, like an overwritten movie. Yes. Her life is so insane. Okay, so they moved to West Hollywood, and this will be very fateful for Demi. Yes, here we go. Here's where her path to stardom starts. She meets a young actress, 17-year-old Natasha Kinski, who needed Demi's help reading scripts. Natasha couldn't read English, and she was set a star in Roman Polanski's new film. But it was on hold because Polanski had been convicted of having sex with a 13-year-old girl. Which is wrong, right? It's wrong. Which is so wrong. Yeah. Demi writes, I saw this dynamic all around me. 13 was a little extreme, but in my world, believe it or not, relationships with underage girls was the norm. Mackenzie, I know. When I got to an age where I looked back and I started to see the amount, I mean, pretty much every huge musician from the 70s or 80s grooming. I mean, even like Paul Walker grooming, he was like dating a girl who had just turned 18 when he died, and he had been talking to her since she was 16. Like this shit is still happening. Yeah. It's gross. How do we stop this? I don't understand. How are we okay with this?
SPEAKER_02Well, I mean, we're not okay with this. I of course I don't understand, but I think it does happen more than we want it to. I know.
SPEAKER_00And I realized grooming was a thing because I didn't kind of understand that that, you know, these men start friendly relationships in order to gain trust with these young people. And I just am like, where are the parents? Where are your parents? Are they just so readily ready to just hand over their child's innocence?
SPEAKER_02Like I They're not paying attention.
SPEAKER_00They're not paying attention. Yeah. Or they are and they're just they just don't care, which is worse. Yes. Yeah. I don't know. This whole thing, it's so crazy to me looking back when you really look up almost any like notable man.
SPEAKER_02I mean, I feel like Elvis is sort of the go-to in my mind of I mean Priscilla was 14 when they met.
SPEAKER_00Oh my gosh. Um we'll get back to Demi, the actress, but first, she discovers some information that leads her to believe that Danny is not her real father.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, Danny is not her real dad.
SPEAKER_00And that Charlie, her mother's first husband, if anybody remembers.
SPEAKER_02Yep, yep. The mom's first husband.
SPEAKER_00The blink husband. Blink and you miss him.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And everyone in her family knew this.
SPEAKER_02Everyone but her.
SPEAKER_00Everyone but her. Has there ever been a family secret that you were in on or that you later discovered?
Bruce, Babies, And Big Stardom
SPEAKER_02I have had to be the keeper of a family secret and wasn't supposed to tell anybody for two years, something a long time. And it was brutal.
SPEAKER_00I also knew something. And I found out about it, and it was a very casual, it was a thing where it was like, this may never come into play. So, okay, you know, but don't tell this person. And then it came into play later. And when that person found out that I knew, I think it did damage our relationship. We've never talked about it, but something shifted.
SPEAKER_02For sure. I am now at the point in my adulthood where if someone says, I need to tell you this, but you can't tell blank, I am going to make them stop talking and say, I'm probably not going to do that.
SPEAKER_00You want to be a Joey. You don't want to know anymore. Don't want to know. I don't want to know. Just give me a sandwich and two pizzas. That's what Joey wants.
SPEAKER_02You know, like, I don't want to know. Don't tell me. Don't tell me. Yeah. Yeah. No, if what you're saying is don't tell the general public, yeah, of course. Sure. But if you're saying don't tell this person who this information really matters to, yeah. I was put in that position this summer and it really sucked. And I then made a big decision where I said, I will stop someone in their tracks and say, Yeah, I'm not going to do that. I'm not your girl.
SPEAKER_00Good for you because who is that helping? Is that just how that person just needed to get something going on?
SPEAKER_02Literally, no one. Yes. That person thinks that they're saving this person hurtful information. That's not what it does. That person is going to, of course, find it out because that's how things go. Yeah. So then that person is everyone's pissed. Everyone's pissed for not telling the truth.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_02And you become part of that. And unwillingly. I just won't do it for my stress level. I'm not willing to.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And I'm not willing to be that fake around people that I love.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Good for you. I love that. I'm learning a lot of stuff from you today.
SPEAKER_02You should write a memoir. One day. Do you think you I have, but I'll I'll come back to it because I did it. Anyway, we'll get to that another time.
SPEAKER_00Ooh, I love that. Okay. All right. So back to Demi. Demi wants to meet Charlie, who had desperately wanted to know her.
SPEAKER_02Broke your heart. Didn't it break your heart? Broke my heart. Broke my heart.
SPEAKER_00Seems like a nice seems like a nice. Oh, would Charlie have been a stable parent all along? You wonder. I know. Okay, this is a side note, but did you watch the Mariska Hardigay documentary yet? Okay, do it. Okay. We can't talk about it more. Great. Do it. Um, so things are strained between Dimmy and Danny, who, you know, is her dad. Like, and and she is very clear about that. Like she wanted that relationship with him.
SPEAKER_02He couldn't do it anymore. He was too full of shame.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think so. She writes, he ceased making any effort to see me. He stopped calling. When we did see each other, when my mom and I visited Morgan, he barely looked at me.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. She's in seventh grade at this time. It's not like she's in her twenties and dad flakes out, which still sucks.
SPEAKER_00But she must have just been so confused. Like, how can you be discarded like that? It's a discard.
SPEAKER_01It's a discard.
SPEAKER_00She continues like every child in history who has been let down time and time again by her parents, I held out the irrational hope that my mother would change and become someone I could count on. Instead, don't do it.
SPEAKER_02It doesn't happen.
SPEAKER_00Her mother's faux suicide attempts become a regular occurrence.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_00Instead, her mother sells Demi's body to a man for$500. Yeah. I'm okay. I have a friend who's like, you cry every episode, and I'm like, I do. I can't imagine this. And that's why when I said earlier, I thought it was so interesting, right? Like she didn't leave her around the grandfather, but clearly something, it's like she just got worse, more desperate. So Jenny, you mean? Jenny, yeah. So Demi is 15, and this pedophile starts hanging out around her. He has like a restaurant and he pushes himself into her life. Or he meets her at a restaurant. He starts offering her rides home, taking her to lunch at his restaurant. He makes her extremely uneasy and she actually goes out of her way to avoid him. But one day, she comes home from school and he's inside her apartment. She writes, For decades, I didn't think of it as rape. I thought of it as something I caused, something I felt obligated to do because this man expected it from me. I had let him expect it from me. I couldn't see that I was an easy mark for a predator. I had no one to protect me. As with any human trauma, denial is a natural response. Things we can't handle, things that are just too frightening and destabilizing, the psyche suppresses until the day comes when we can deal with them. Unfortunately, even as we try to submerge our pain deep down inside, it finds a way to bubble up through addiction, through anxiety, through eating disorders, through insomnia. These incidents may last minutes or hours, but their impact lasts a lifetime. And that too, I think, is a key sentence of the book, right? This is the cause, this is the effect. She writes about this man, Val, asking her, How does it feel to be whored by your mother for$500? Demi writes, it feels like you are an orphan. Okay, so again, let me remind y'all, Demi comes back and makes peace with her dying mother in the end.
Pregnancy Cover And Cultural Backlash
SPEAKER_02And also, so another piece about this part, that guy was helping them move, helping them pay for things. And Demi doesn't know if the mom exactly gave him the key or unlocked the door for him. She does it, she never got to the bottom. And her mom's dead now, but she never got to the bottom of exactly how that transaction went down. But that is what happened that this guy gave the mom$500 for access to do.
SPEAKER_00Yes. And so, yes. Was it like you can have sex with my daughter? Yeah. Give me$500. Probably not. Probably not. But Jenny knew exactly what the fuck she was doing. She did. Of course she did. She knew what she was doing. Yeah. Okay, so Demi leaves her apartment the day after her 16th birthday and she moves in with the boyfriend. Then her motherfucking mother reports her as a missing child. No.
SPEAKER_02Because she's under 18. And this boyfriend was actually way too old. Yes. They she says they had a very like he was he was nice to her, you know, he treated her well.
SPEAKER_00And she talks about how she would tell him these things, and he listened to her. She was able to be heard by someone and her experiences and feelings validated for the first time in her life. And her mother takes her away from that. Again, she's forced back to Roswell at this point. But despite the charade, Demi writes about thinking at that time that, quote, they don't care about me. She continues, 40 years later, I no longer think of it in those terms. They loved me, but they loved me the way they loved each other, the only way they knew how. Inconsistently and conditionally. For them, I learned that love was something you had to scramble to keep. The kind of love I grew up with was scary to need and painful to feel. If I didn't have that uneasy ache, that prickly anxiety around someone, how would I know it was love? Yeah, there were a lot of work. She's she's given this time in her life the vocabulary. I think that is necessary to process it. Because sometimes we don't have the words and we don't find them until much later. But that's when you have to go back and you have to validate this experience for yourself. Write it down in a memoir. Yeah, share it with the world if you want to, but even just like she talks about like it bubbles up, it affects your life, and you have to deal with it. You have to go through and maybe even relive the trauma in a way so that you recognize what it is. What did you know love was growing up?
SPEAKER_02I did feel that my parents loved me unconditionally. And I think that that sets you up for so much success just as a human being. Everything after that is details, and it's not that they were perfect, it's not that they didn't fuck up, but I knew that they did love me unconditionally.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02For sure.
SPEAKER_00But they taught you, you kind of had this wrong belief that marital love was this perfect, no argument, no fighting love. Yeah. And you had to learn that.
SPEAKER_02That everybody is getting along all the time.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Yes. Okay. And now you know that that's not true. No. Yeah. It's really not.
SPEAKER_02Because nobody sorry, guys. Sorry to break it to you if people fight.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, nobody gets along all the time. All right. Let's get to, I would say, a more fun section, but it really, it's not fun for a while here, y'all. I mean, it's entertaining, I guess. We'll get to the entertainment section. That's what we'll call it. This is her acting career. I believe she calls this section success. Yes. Yes. And there are times where we're gonna try to make some long story short. Obviously, please pick up her memoir because it's incredible. And we only have so much time today. We both have early pickup today for our children, so we're gonna rock and roll. So she dates a man named Freddie Moore. She's taking an acting class, he's in a band. She leaves her previous boyfriend for him. She quits school. She does this session of nude photos for Japanese magazines, but they weren't allowed to show pubic hair. So in her mind, she's only semi-nude. And this leads to her shooting with a man named Philip Dixon, which leads to her getting signed by elite models, which leads to her being the body double on the movie poster or the body on the movie poster of the original I Spit on Your Grave. I thought that was a little like fun factoid. I didn't know. Absolutely. Also, her body is killa. And it also almost killed her. So let's get to that. I know it's like I feel weird. I was watching strip tease. I just fast-forwarded through it because that movie's actually ridiculous, but I'd never seen it. But I was watching some of her pole dancing, you know, strip scenes, and I was like, wow, she has a fantastic body. And then I remembered what she was going through, and I was like, ooh, this is why maybe we shouldn't tell people they look good or bad.
SPEAKER_02I know.
SPEAKER_00Because it just, you never know what someone's doing. No, you really don't.
SPEAKER_02She was killing herself.
Eating Disorders, Pay Parity, And G.I. Jane
SPEAKER_00She was killing herself. She really was. And we'll get there very soon. So this is the first time in her life that she's tasting success, but it also, quote, threw me into a world that seemed tailor-made to lower my self-esteem. I had landed in a profession that focused entirely on how I looked and what size I wore, which reinforced the idea I'd absorbed that my value lay solely in my attractiveness. I think she definitely got that idea from her mother. I mean, she's named after a beauty product, for God's sakes, but it does feel like Jenny used her beauty, like her beauty was currency, and that's how she moved through her life, and that's what she taught Demi. Okay, so I know that you have been in the acting world. Did you ever do any modeling or anything like that? No. Okay, but being an actress, how do you feel you absorb this idea that your value lay solely in your attractiveness?
SPEAKER_02Oh, I I mean, I think I got that at a very young age, way before. I mean, I was acting doing theater, but it's different.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. It is different actually. Theater actors are not.
SPEAKER_02It's more about your talent. It is more about your attraction. It's true. It's way more about your talent. And yeah, I mean, I think my mom got that from her mom, and I think I got that from my mom. That you have to be pretty, you have to be thin. You have to be, you know, put together. I'm yeah, I I don't know a single woman who didn't get that messaging. I think we all got that messaging.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And it's a struggle. I mean, as a 42-year-old, it's less of a struggle, but it's been a journey to get there. Um, I've never gone through anything like what she's gone through. Her hers, what's great about her story is it takes every single thing addiction, sexual abuse, uh, eating disorder. And it's like, here's this thing to the nth degree. Totally. Extremes. Here's the extreme. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00She really felt the extremes of things and and and the extreme of success. Right. And that might have gone hand in hand with the eating disorder. I mean, who knows, honestly? Because again, that is that is a disease. And once you start down that path, it's a really it's something that you deal with for the rest of your life. Body dysmorphia. Yeah. Okay, back to Demi. Her father commits suicide. He's 36. I know. Danny. Crazy. Yes, Danny. Yes. And this gets even more horrible.
SPEAKER_02Morgan finds him, right?
SPEAKER_00Morgan finds him.
SPEAKER_02Awful.
SPEAKER_00Demi feels guilty that her father never knew how much she loved him, and that his biological state status didn't mean anything to her. And when Morgan finds him, he's 16. 16 years old. Danny's family blames Jenny for his death, and Demi feels it's spilling over onto her. Her father dies in October. She turns 18 in November and gets married to Freddie Moore in February.
SPEAKER_02And she said he changed my life, or at least my name. So that's where her name comes from. Freddie Moore.
SPEAKER_00She can't even remember where she married him.
SPEAKER_02She changed it once and she didn't want to change it back.
SPEAKER_00I mean, Demi Moore is a pretty great name, so I kind of. Yes. But then we learned that she cheated on him the night before her wedding.
SPEAKER_02I think she probably cheated on most people for a while.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Yeah. Because I don't think she knew how to be in a relationship where cheating didn't exist.
SPEAKER_02Nope.
SPEAKER_00Because that's what she was taught. Okay. I think now we're getting to success.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00She writes, as my family disintegrates, my career was picking up. Doesn't it always happen like that, though? It seems to. It really does. So she gets cast on General Hospital and she credits her raspy voice for helping her land the role. She writes, I guess because it suggests toughness and vulnerability at the same time. Which I would agree. I thought that was she nailed it. The role ends up being a pretty big role, and she's making great money. She has a lot of self-doubts about her talent, herself. The drinking quickly gets out of hand. She can't even stay upright in her seat at a panel for the show. That made me sad. But this was kind of the moment for her. She made a realization. She decides, all right, I'm gonna stop drinking cold turkey, and she does. Then she gets cast in a little movie called Blame It on Rio, which shoots in Brazil. And this is where she starts doing a lot of cocaine. Yeah. So much that she nearly burned a hole in her nostrils. That is that seems like a lot to happen that quickly. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02For two people who have never done cocaine. I mean, right.
SPEAKER_00We're just like, yeah, yeah, that seems crazy. She writes, I didn't drink because I knew I couldn't handle it. It's not safe for me. I didn't give a second thought to the effects of cocaine. And it is weird, right? Well, we can kind of pick and choose.
SPEAKER_02Well, she saw her parents destroy their lives via alcohol, not because of, I'd say through alcohol. Yeah. But yeah, cocaine was new. It was flashy. It was It was an upper, right? Not a downer. And I also think business people did it, especially in that time. I think it was not considered a deadbeat thing to do. I think drinking was a deadbeat thing to do in her mind.
Kabbalah Strings And Seeking Meaning
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I I think that's a really good point. I think you're you're you're right, right there, right spot on. But she has this epiphany on set. She wants to be an honest person. So she goes home and she tells Freddie about her infidelity and that their marriage isn't working and they get a divorce. Then her gig at General Hospital is up and there are no new roles coming in, and she starts drinking again. She becomes addicted to cocaine. She's blowing through most of her money, but luckily a job comes down the pipe. A movie with John Cryer. He falls in love with her. I mean, duh. Obviously. Hello. And she writes that he loses his virginity death. And she regrets how callous she was with his feelings. And you know, was that her secret to tell? And then I Googled it and that didn't even end up being right.
SPEAKER_02That's not his version of the story.
SPEAKER_00That's not his version of the story. He says, no, actually, I wasn't a virgin when I had sex with her. You know, you never know.
SPEAKER_02Maybe he told her that at the time. This is a tricky thing about writing a book that includes other people that are real people who are still alive.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And you know, that little thing, the stuff with her parents, I always understood, but this felt so unnecessary. It really did. Well, he's a person in the public eye, and and it's like just call him, call him and tell him that you feel bad, that you were so callous with his feelings. You didn't really need to uh admit that to us. I don't know. That was the- We also don't know them.
SPEAKER_02We don't know that she didn't. I know he said that she didn't. Yeah. In so many words.
SPEAKER_00This was just a one little thing where it's like, I understand so much of why people include things in their memoirs that affect them. Oh, yeah. But this was the one time where I was like, hmm, this might have gone a little touch too far for me. Like I didn't need to know that you took it for, you know, like nobody really that doesn't how did that add to your story here?
SPEAKER_02I don't know. I mean, maybe her editor was giving her pressure to put more Hollywood gossip in it. And that is certainly Hollywood gossip.
SPEAKER_00That's true. Very true.
SPEAKER_02You would think there'd be enough.
SPEAKER_00It's to be more, but I mean we're about to get into Bruce and Ashton. And see, that's the thing too, is like I actually felt like she handled both of them with a lot of respect. Well, they're both still in her life. They're both still in her life and restraint. I mean, she does, she tells her truths about them, about how they made her feel and why she feels certain things played out the way that they did. But and she doesn't hold back. I mean, we'll get to Ashton. Lord, will we get to we gotta get there? We gotta get there. Okay, we gotta keep going.
SPEAKER_01Let's cook.
SPEAKER_00All right, so she meets John Hughes at an audition, and that doesn't go well, but as she's like walking out, she catches, she just catches the eye of Joel Schumacher. Not a big deal. Apparently, he loved her long hair. She has like hair down to her ass at the end of the dark black. Dark black. He wants her to come in and read for the part of Jules in a little movie called St. Elmo's Fire. Which I have never seen.
SPEAKER_02Me neither.
SPEAKER_00I was not a big brat pack.
SPEAKER_02We were too we're too bad. That was not our time, right? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so so it's kind of funny that she rem disremembered a thing about John Cryer because she writes about how Rob Lowe in his memoir wrote about that how they had this like Torrid love affair, and she was like, that's not how I remembered it. So funny. Yeah. I just didn't.
SPEAKER_02They were all doing a lot of drugs at the time. They really were. So it's gray.
Ashton, Loss, And Relapse
SPEAKER_00Yeah, who knows what was really happening there. This is where she's she starts really doing a lot of drugs. She writes at one point she went through an eighth of Coke every two days by herself. And that's just an ex like on top of a bad physical habit, that's an expensive habit to have. And so she's like, maybe my memory wasn't the best. Okay, so she's told she has to go to rehab by the producers of this movie. I'm saying almost fire. If she wants to protect her career. It's supposed to be a 30-day inpatient program, but she's supposed to film the movie in 16 days. So they work something out to where she's there for the two weeks, basically. And then when she's on set, she has someone with her every single day. A sober coach, hold her accountable. She writes that she feels that this was divine intervention. Yeah. And if she hadn't had the film at stake, she's not sure she would have found it within herself to do what she needed to do to get sober. And then, but then she writes as soon as she made the decision to be sober, it was actually fairly easy to stay that way. St. Elmo's Fire famously puts her and all of these other young people on the map. The Brat Pack, there's a great documentary about it, which I actually did watch. I thought it was really well done. And Demi starts dating Emilio Estevez, which I didn't know. This was this was new news. I did remember that. Yeah. Um, he and his family are good influences on her. Demi finds a sponsor, she finds a mother figure, and then she's up for a part in a movie, and she's told by the director, I'd love to cast you, but you need to lose weight. And she's not a large one. Like, she's, I would even say she's a thin woman at this point. I would no, she's thin. Like, I think she does write that she put on a little weight after getting sober, as tends to happen. By no means should this woman have been told you need to lose 10 pounds to get this. No doctor would ever say that to her. Yeah. Yeah. She writes, and so began the process of trying to dominate and control my body and of equating my worth to my weight, size, and my exterior. Okay, Mackenzie, you're a Pilates instructor on top of many other wonderful things. What is your relationship like with your body and how has that evolved?
SPEAKER_02Oh God. It's I feel for her so hard in that sentence. If I had been that age with that upbringing, and someone said, here's this starring role in this film, but you have to lose weight, it would have changed my mindset for the rest of my life.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02No question.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I would have done it. I would have been like, okay, yes, I will.
SPEAKER_02Oh, of course I would have done it. It wouldn't have even crossed my mind to say maybe, maybe you shouldn't be saying that. Yeah, yeah. So I would say that these are all such big questions. That's the reason it's a good book. Growing up, I did think I I just always thought I needed to be thinner. I developed early, had big boobs. My mom is very thin, doesn't have big boobs, so we just kind of have a different body type. So I thought I needed to look like that. And I did, I mean, listen, everyone was reinforcing that message.
SPEAKER_00It's not like the early aughts were a very, very tough time to beautiful girls. Yeah. Beautiful girls. Any age, probably. But yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02And so I went to theater school, graduated, lived in Chicago, had an agent, was professionally acting. I did have an agent tell me you have to lose, we think you need to lose some weight. I know, terrible. It's the worst thing. So, like, you know what's so fucked? I would rather you tell me I'm not talented. Yeah. Because that I don't believe. Yeah. I don't believe you. Yeah. I think I am. I know I am. I know I'm you've worked hard to be hard. I you know, I can at least I'm not great at everything, but like I know myself in that way. You tell me that I need to lose weight, especially at that age, it just crumbles all of it, right? So what's amazing is I did a movie around that time, and so I, you know, there's still stills from that movie, and I looked at the still the other day, and I couldn't, I looked at this picture and I was like, look at this girl's body. It is small waist, big boobs, skinny legs. It is what everybody thinks that you're supposed to be aiming for, the stereotypical version. I was topless in that movie. And that fucking agent told me that I needed to lose weight. So while I had had times in high school where I like dabbled in disordered eating for sure, yeah, this was like, oh, well, you know that you are terrible and and that you need to fix this, is how I felt when that agent said that to me. So then I would say in my adult life, it it's, you know, up and down, up and down, much better. I don't, I now at least know that's not what anybody else is thinking about me. And if they are, I don't give a shit. I like to feel good in my skin. I like to feel strong. I like to feel all of those things, but it's still hard. I don't, when I go to the doctor, I don't want to look at the scale when they weigh me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
Rock Bottom, Reckoning, And Repair
SPEAKER_02Because I I will get in my fucking head about it. And I did it yesterday, and I was like, well, that number is too high. Well, then I need to lose it. So then it's the whole thing. But the difference is I'm not responsible. This is I learned this in Al-Anon. I'm not responsible for my first thought. I'm responsible for my second thought and my first action. So my first thought back in the day would have been, all right, bitch, what are we gonna do? Yeah. Let's solve this. Yeah. Now my first thought is, okay, if you don't feel great, there are some healthier options that you could choose in terms of very few things, but I would never again go back to counting my calories. I would never again go back to really restricting food. I would never go back to like the manic exercising. I would never go back to any of that. And she does every single one of these things. And it's so heartbreaking.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Because it it never gets her the result she wants, which is happiness, which is to feel secure in her body. Right. It gets her the fucking success she wants or thinks she wants. But I'm sure she would at this point in life go, yeah, I'll take none of the movies and a healthier relationship with my body, please. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00My guess. I hope that she's I think she's found that.
SPEAKER_02So hard to say.
SPEAKER_00But her life is so it's so crazy too, because she's being told to lose weight here and then later she'll be told to gain weight.
SPEAKER_02Really, it's just a man in both of these situations saying, be what I want you to be. Yes. Be exactly what I want you to be. Yes. And because I'm dangling this job in front of you, I can tell you that and either give this to you or not give this to you. And here's the fucked up thing about Hollywood, he'll find someone else to do it.
SPEAKER_00And that's what's not going to change.
SPEAKER_02Nope.
SPEAKER_00I think all we can do is keep the conversation going. I don't, I don't know that it'll change. I know that like I don't want my daughter associating a number on a scale with her worth.
SPEAKER_03No.
SPEAKER_00It's about what our bodies can do and not what they look like. And like, that's all we can do is just keep trying to hound that message in because the world will hound the other messages in. That's right.
SPEAKER_02If you want to be the change, you for your daughter, me for my nieces. I mean, I have boys, but they'll go through a version of this.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02None of us should die saying just five more pounds.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Let's get back to Demi, because we'll definitely, you know, touch on this a little bit more too. She books more parts, but she struggles even more with her body. She gets engaged to Emilio, and after mailing out invitations, she finds out he had been with another woman and had gotten her pregnant. Yeah, not good. She talks about going to a therapist at this time, and she writes that the therapist says, Ordinarily, I prefer for a patient to come to an understanding on her own, but I don't have time for that to happen. And I have to tell you, if you marry him, the way things are right now, you're going to ruin your life. All right, let's get into love. So, Bruce Willis, right? She meets him basically right after Emilio and her, they just like stay friends, and she goes to his next movie premiere. And that's when she meets Bruce Willis.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, movie premiere.
SPEAKER_00And he was very assertive. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02He loved it a bit.
SPEAKER_00He really did from the first night that they met. They meet and he, you know, kind of zones in on her and he won't let her leave without getting her number. And then she's driving home and she hears like honking and she looks out, and it's Bruce Willis. I mean, it's one of those weird things where when you're into it, like if it's a guy that you're into, you're like, yeah, big romantic moment. If you're not into that guy, that is really fucking creepy. So clearly they were vibing.
SPEAKER_02It was reciprocal.
SPEAKER_00Yes, yes. She writes basically from that first meeting on, Bruce and I were rarely apart. He made me feel like a princess. She continues, when Bruce and I got together, our traumas met. Bruce had had a difficult childhood. He was a stutterer and he was freed of his speech impediment on stage. So Bruce and I had both grown up performing, role-playing for survival. Demi goes into a lot of fun and interesting details about their courtship, right? It was a whirlwind, and they decide to get married really quickly. She gets pregnant on their wedding night with rumors. And rumor was born on her due date, which only happens to about 3% of all babies. That's crazy. They have the second wedding on the studio lot. Like that's bananas.
SPEAKER_02No, it all sounded pretty great.
SPEAKER_00Princessy, fairy tale. Big, big, big. You're so caught up in the moment the dust hasn't settled yet. And it will settle. She writes, being a mother felt totally natural. It's one of the few things I can confidently say I was innately good at. Nurturing rumor, having someone to love, and who loved and needed me right back, unconditionally, exactly as I was, without any performance, was euphoric. Her relationship with Jenny takes a positive turn. Yep.
SPEAKER_02After rumor's birth. Often happens once you become a parent. Yeah. You forgive a lot of shit.
SPEAKER_00And you see how wonderful they are with your child. Yeah. Things are okay.
SPEAKER_02And you want your kid to have the relationship.
Forgiveness, Agency, And Lasting Takeaways
SPEAKER_00You do, because I think she still wanted that relationship. So she and Bruce are the it couple. They're making more money than they know what to do with. Life is good. She writes, but as I would soon find out, if you carry a well of shame and trauma inside of you, no amount of money, no measure of success or celebrity can fill it. The good thing with Jenny is short-lived. Her mother ODs recovers and then is arrested for driving drunk. Demi checks her into rehab, and Jenny sells the story of her recovery and her troubled relationship with Demi to the tabloids. Demi is understandably, I mean, beyond betraying. Yeah, yeah. It's terrible. Just when you think Jenny can't get any lower, she does. And she continues to get lower when she sells photographs of Demi, including one from the hospital when she was suffering from kidney disease as a child. Demi writes, the only thing that's surprising about all of this is that I was, yet again, surprised. Children are hardwired to trust their parents. It's amazing just how long it can take to override that wiring. All right, Demi and Bruce, they decide to raise their family in Idaho, far outside of LA and paparazzi. But at this point, she still very much wants a career. And she's offered a movie with Robert De Niro, and she's like, yay! And Bruce is like, yeah, I don't think that's gonna work because I'm making movies. And if I'm making movies, have you heard of movies? Yeah, how can you make movies? And this is kind of the first crack, right, that they see. Uh Demi's like, well, look, we're gonna make it work because I still want a career, which she's very much entitled to. I mean, she's still Demi Moore, for God's sakes. And this is when she's offered ghost. She tells this amazing story of I think she's in Europe and she just goes into a salon in Paris and is like, I want to cut off all my hair. She had been offered ghost, hadn't really accepted it yet, shows up with all of her hair cut off and says, I'll take the role. And they're like, Okay. Oh, okay, yeah, great. Demi talks about feeling nervous about filming ghost because she didn't know how to cry. Do you remember that? Literally in her life, she had never cried. Clearly, a defense mechanism. Right? And then she she works with someone to release her emotions. And she writes that the gym that film gave me, it pushed me to figure out how to access my emotions, particularly my pain. So her career is going well. But her marriage.
SPEAKER_02Not so much. Not so much.
Closing Notes And Next Week’s Tease
SPEAKER_00She gives Bruce a lot of grace and understanding, which, like I said, I'm not sure if this is something that she's figured out in retrospect or knew at the time. That's the tricky thing about memoirs, too, is like she's kind of telling us the story and being like, well, he did this because he was like this. And I was like, did you know that then, or have you just figured that out now? But she's she just seems like a very kind person, honestly, at the end of the day. Yeah, good point. And he's the father of her children. Like there's always a love there and a respect. Actually, that's not always given to uh to people, but I think it's a really important to her because she saw what that disrespect and tumultuous, what that did to her, and she wants to save her daughters from that. And that's obvious, I think. And it seems like she did. I think so. Okay, and just kind of when something is really going bad, they like fight, they're like, Will our marriage make it? Then they have sex and she gets pregnant. Yeah. And then so she's pregnant a second time, and all their concerns about their relationship have been shelved. And this is when she does the Vanity Fair cover, which you talked about earlier, and you said that you were just celebrating it left and right. It is really epic. And I loved the background she gave about this because I had no idea. I remember this cover being a thing. Me too. I was too young to understand what that meant. Yeah. Yeah. But it was just beautiful, right? It was beautiful. And she talks about how actually the photo shoot was really set up. She had all these things on. Well, these like articles of clothing, pieces of clothing. And that towards the end of the shoot. Anne Annie Leibowitz. Thank you. Annie Leibowitz. I was saying Anne Geddes, which is the baby photographer. Annie Leibowitz is like, let me shoot some of you for you, for you and Bruce is like a gift. And it's her, you know, fully nude. And they're looking at these pictures and they're like, wouldn't it be something if Vanity Fair was brave enough to use one of these as the cover? And they were like, okay, we'll leave it out. But that would just be cool. And then they did. That's great. And it's beautiful. It's really iconic. I mean, it was so controversial. Yes. Right? There were women who thought, yes, this is motherhood. This is beautiful. This is empowering. This is sexy. Why do we make mothers feel like they have to hide their bumps or hide themselves away? Should we just pretend women don't have sex? Like we all know where babies come from. Like, let's be real. And then of course there was the camp where people were like, this is pornography, like blah, blah, blah. I thought it was really interesting. When I was pregnant with my first, I loved wearing the like tighter bump showing dresses. It was the first time in my life that I had really felt I was able to celebrate my body and my curves in a way where like I felt a lot of pressure to stay thin, you know? And my husband's grandmother, who was in her 90s at the time, was like, it's just so fascinating to me that you show your bump so much. It wasn't like a judgmental point.
SPEAKER_02What her experience was.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And I thought, wow, okay, there have been some steps forward. I think Demi's photo shoot, I think that was a huge step forward for women feeling free to celebrate their pregnant bodies. I really do.
SPEAKER_02And it seems that it was one of the only times in her life she was comfortable in her body.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Yes. And it's gorgeous. It is well done. It looks like it should be in a museum. Like an artist.
SPEAKER_02Yes, it's stunning.
SPEAKER_00So, you know, you read this part. What do you think of America's reaction to her cover?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, it's so prudish, it's so typical, it's not shocking at all.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I think that's human, that's the cycle of life.
SPEAKER_00That's what we all want is procreation. And to can this continue. Yeah, it's crazy.
SPEAKER_02And I didn't feel and I'm so gorgeous because she's so gorgeous, but yeah, it's not like she's trying to look like a sex symbol. It's not trying to look pornographic. No. It is a naked person.
SPEAKER_00Right. But there's we'll we'll um I'll put it up on the Instagram and we'll link it in the show notes. But it's it's shadowed and beautiful, and it's really like her cradling and celebrating her bump, her child inside of her. Yeah, that's crazy. It's so crazy. All right, so fast-forwarding a bit, her third child is born, and her mother, Jenny, y'all, just when you thought we like seriously, every time you're like, can you get lower? Jenny starts selling nude photos of herself.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_00Demi goes no contact. It's a big market for that, you know? I mean, I guess so. I mean, we have to remember she's not old, that old. She's like probably in her 40s, her late 40s. I think Demi is like in her early 30s. Speaking of Demi, her disordered eating and over-exercising increases after Scout was born. She feels a lot of pressure to get back to a certain look because she's about to film a few good men and she wants to fit into the uniform. Then she's on indecent proposal and she's told she's fired if she doesn't gain 10 pounds. So there's that we were talking about earlier. Um, then she does get pregnant with her third and bonus info, Meg Ryan. Bring in Meg Ryan back in. She suggested the name Talula, which I thought was really cute. But her doctor tells her she has to stop exercising because Talula is not growing in because she's exercising too much. She's like she's not getting the nutrition that she needs. Yeah. In what Demi feels is a life-saving call by her doctor, she's in due stuff just after reaching full term and Talula is born. Okay. She gets offered$12.5 million for striptease. Yep. The highest rate a woman has ever made for a film thus far. Meanwhile, y'all, just a little perspective. Bruce was paid over$20 million for the third diehard movie. At the same, around the same time. So Nimmy Moore writes this instead of people seeing my payday as a step in the right direction for women or calling me an inspiration, they came up with something else to call me. Gimme more. Rude. Also, we do learn that this happened because she was in talks to do G.I. Jane at the same time. And so she was like, Well, I'm gonna make G.I. Jane for this, unless you pay me more to do striptease first. And that's what they did.
SPEAKER_02It's a business. Why is anyone made to feel badly for trying to make money at their job? Right. Yes. Because they're a woman.
SPEAKER_00Because they're no man would have been called Gimme Moore.
SPEAKER_02No.
SPEAKER_00No, they would have been like, look at him. He's earned. Yeah, exactly. G.I. Jane is the film that she's the most proud of. She recalls training for it, how important it was for her to get her body in that real shape. And she talks about being able to like really do those push-ups and stuff. She was doing it now. I mean, she really was. There are no stunt doubles. But after that film, she's reached her limit and she has another epiphany. She's finally able to let go of hard exercise. She goes way deeper into all of this, but we have got to get to Ashton, y'all, okay? We gotta get our kids soon. All right. So before that, though, her mother is diagnosed with cancer. Dimmy realizes that she has one last shot to finally come to some sort of understanding and make peace. And she does. She writes, I have come to understand that there is no such thing as someone loving you enough to be better. People can only be as good as they are, no matter how much they love you. That's the bad news. The good news is that you have the power to hold their actions differently in your mind and heart. You can choose to believe that your value is inherent. It's yours. And the way your mother treated you says something about her, not you. I love that.
SPEAKER_02It's really beautiful.
SPEAKER_00It really is. She has a lot of beautiful takeaways from this that really women of all ages can take in. People of all ages. It's just a good story. It's a great story. It's a great story. So her marriage to Bruce Ends, she comes, she writes that she comes to realize that she's not even sure they ever really knew each other. Yeah. You know, like they just got married, had kids, then they were working. And that that's probably a really sad realization to come to. Yes. It was just such a whirlwind. And she's determined to do it differently next time. In comes Ashton. She steps away from Hollywood first. She raises her kids. She's playing with them. And Drew Barrymore calls and says, I have this role for you. We're re we're redoing Charlie's Angels as a movie franchise. Yes. It's written for you. You have to come back. You have to do this. And she's like, Okay, I'm ready to get back in the game. Okay, so I remember that because Demi had been such a huge part of my childhood. Right. And then she did. She took a step away. Good for her. Beautiful. Lived a different life. I mean, she had done the damn thing. Like, come on. Yeah, she nailed it. And I remember going to Charlie's Angels. And when she is revealed, and she's beautiful and she's powerful looking, she's the villain. You're just like, yep. She's like the dark angel. She meets Ashton. She meets him. So look, reading it, he seemed to be what she kind of needed in many ways at this point in her life, right? I thought it was really sweet that he would leave post-its around their house saying, remember you are magical. Like I think that's really lovely. Of course. I do that for myself through phases of my life. Absolutely. I read somewhere Jennifer Lopez has affirmations written somewhere in the live. I'm like, okay. I love the statement that their relationship seemed to make. I mean, we were kind of talking about age gaps, like, not for me, but like enough men do it. You're kind of like, yeah, why can't a woman do it too then? Exactly. Right? Why not? It's 15 years, by the way, their age gap. So that's pretty significant. He tells her he doesn't really believe in alcoholism. This is where I just wanted to throw the book. Yes. And so she starts drinking again to appease him, I guess. They try to have a child together and she ends up losing that child that they had named Chaplin after Charlie Chaplin at around six months, which is brutal. That's devastating. It's devastating. It's really late. She writes, I was decimated. It was my fault. I felt sure. If only I hadn't opened the door to drinking, I never would have lost the baby. I was racked with guilt and convinced what had happened was my doing. Drinking became interwoven into my pain. But she still feels she's young enough to try again. So she and Ashton decide to get married and she throws herself into wedding planning. And meanwhile, her children aren't feeling too sure about Demi being drunk. They've never experienced this before. Her daughter Rumor, she writes that she found it funny, but to Lula, the younger, the youngest one, not so much. She talks about kind of that anxious, scary feeling that you talked about. And there was one time where Demi got so drunk that she like fell over and she had to tell everybody, no, don't call the ambulance. Like she didn't want them to, she didn't want it to become a big deal and have the paparazzi find out. She goes through four or five cycles of IVF. I couldn't believe that. Like I know I have friends who have done one or two, and that is like emotionally and physically exhausting and painful.
SPEAKER_02But that is her normal.
SPEAKER_00Yes, and that's part of her like she's discomfortable in the chaos. The chaos and the just try again, just try again, just do it. And she says that each time the cycle fails, she relives Chaplin's death.
SPEAKER_01Oh God.
SPEAKER_00And she goes into a really dark place only to, you know, have to pull herself out of it again. She writes, I wanted to be the carefree girl who could have a casual drink. I wanted to be the fertile woman who could have a baby. I was starting to worry that I was past my sell by date. She was horrible. Things start really falling apart for her. Her daughters start pulling away, or Demi writes that maybe she's unknowingly pushing them away. She's navigating her own trauma. Ashton lies to her about his co-star. Yeah. Not wanting Demi on set. He's starting to get even shadier. Demi writes that when she finds out that it was a lie, she's devastated. She writes, Bruce always felt that he wasn't needed and that I gave him too much space. I'd been trying to not repeat that same mistake. I had made Ashton the focus of all my attention and was putting too much pressure on him. I was losing myself. That's on me. Listen, I love when people take accountability. I really do. You're not buying it. I don't think there's ever. I don't think he was communicating to her. Hey, this is too much for me. He lied to her about his co-star feeling uncomfortable when it was really him. I think it's great that she understood the part she played in it, but I think he played a really big part too. And I don't know if she understands. Like to me, I felt like she gave him a little too much slack. What do you think?
SPEAKER_02I think in the book it's easy to see it that way. But I again, I think that she's working hard to tell us all of these things and still say, but I'm not a victim.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And I'm not playing a victim.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And, you know, there is no way with her childhood that she would know what is an appropriate amount of attention to another human being, especially in a romantic relationship.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02It's like the kids, okay, that's clear cut to me. I love them unconditionally. I know what I'm supposed to do there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02That's why she loves having kids. Yeah. But with the men, and he's young and he's stupid, and I'm sure he has really wonderful qualities. I don't know him.
SPEAKER_00But I don't know. He's done some things since their marriage.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Not a good fit. Not a good fit. Okay. We'll leave it at that. That's fine.
SPEAKER_02I know you want more anger from her about him.
SPEAKER_00I kind of did. I kind of wanted him to be like, but he also was an asshole. But am I coloring him who I know he is to be now? Okay, so she becomes addicted to Vicadin after a back injury. At one point, she's taking 12 a day. She finally recognizes it's a problem and she's able to detox over a week while Ashton is on set. The girls are with Bruce. And when Ashton comes home, there's no compassion for her. He continues to pull away, and eventually, word leaks that he had cheated on her in their home. Demi just tries to love him harder. She writes, I was addicted to him, is the best way I can put it. She did, she's just kind of trading one addiction for another, you know, until she finally does the work to where she can stop. Two of her daughters stop speaking to her. It's it seems like it's such a mess. It all comes crumbling down when Ashton decides to move out. She's like, We're married, we need to work on this. But he's completely checked out. They don't have sex, they're not, they don't touch. And this is all throwing Demi for a major loop because he had been encouraging her to find an egg donor, wrote her an email about how he was the luckiest man in the world to be with her, and then he just turned around and was so cold. See, that's the stuff where I was like, I mean, she tells us. She's not like making him sound like a saint for sure. He cheats again. Finally, he leaves. She writes, I couldn't eat. I shrank down to 96 pounds. And we forgot to mention she's tall.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, like 5'7, 5'8.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. She writes, I started getting blinding headaches. My body hurt all over. And inside of it, my heart was broken. I felt like giving up. She starts misusing migraine medicine to dull the ache in 2012. And she does a whip it at a party and she has a seizure. This is when she has to stop her friends from calling 911.
SPEAKER_02So the start the book, in fact.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Yes. She's like, How did I get here? And this is her rock bottom. She writes, I knew I had a choice. I could die alone like my dad, or I could really ask, How did I get here? And have the courage to face the answers. And then she lists how she got there. And that was such a powerful section. Absolutely. We've all got something on that list, by the way. Yes.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_00You can resonate. I mean, we talked about her. Her life is really kind of to the extremes. Yes. But we can all resonate with some of the things.
SPEAKER_02That's almost why you can resonate. Yeah. But these examples are so extreme. Well, no, it's not that, but it's a version of it.
SPEAKER_00It's a bit of that. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. She really put the mirror up to herself and she examined it and her life. And I think that's incredible. I don't think it's ever too late to do that. She could have very easily given up and given in. And I think the love that she had for her daughters, I think she doesn't really like she talks about how much she loves them. I think they were kind of a lifeline. And I do wonder, you know, paralleling it to her father's experience, I don't, and she felt guilty that he didn't know that she had that love for him. I think her daughters, even though they, it was like, we aren't talking to you because we love you so much and we need you to change and we need you to be better. And she didn't do that to her parents. So she writes, What did I want? It was nobody's job but mine to figure that out and demand it. And it was nobody else's job to convince me that I deserved it. And that's a big through line through her memoir, too.
SPEAKER_02And that's it with the Ashton stuff. It's just not his job to take responsibility for this. And I I think she's so clear on that of like, yes, there are a lot of fucked up things that happened to me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I mean, the Ashton stuff honestly is at the bottom of the list as far as I'm concerned. I mean, the parental stuff is so much worse.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. I mean, the trauma of losing their baby at six months is a pretty big thing, and him maybe not being there for her uh how she needed him to be. Yeah. Definitely, that's something. I mean, she's just, it was all piled on. It just was piled really piled on. Like this lady has been through the ringer. I know. And that's why I think it's so wonderful that these women do share their stories.
SPEAKER_02And that she that this came to me when the substance came out, which was in a way her comeback. Uh not that she needed one, but hadn't worked, hadn't done a movie of that caliber in a while. And she was so celebrated for it, and you know, got nominated for an Oscar, and that's remarkable. And I feel like there are more women stories, later in life stories coming out these days that are so inspiring because you can feel sometimes like, well, right now I'm just a mom, you know. And I know we've talked about this, and that of course isn't the case, but it's very hard to see the future and go, well, this is so temporary. Right. It doesn't mean you have to enjoy it. It doesn't mean you have to love every second with your kids because that's bullshit. You don't love every second with anybody. Yeah, yeah. You love that. Not even myself. Right, exactly, of course. Anyway, it's a remarkable story.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I think what makes this memoir so powerful and so remarkable is that she is on the other side. It seems that way. It does, it does. And look, it life is a journey and and and it is ongoing. And I'm sure every day it is with alcoholism. We know this. With body disorders, we know this. It's one day at a time, every day it can be a struggle. You have triggers. There's this thing that I read and I've shared on the show your triggers are not your fault, but they are your responsibility. I think she took responsibility for a lot of things here.
SPEAKER_02Very mature.
SPEAKER_00But I think she also finally acknowledged to herself that there were a lot of things that happened to her that were not her responsibility.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. This book is her kind of going, Wow, how did I get here? What why am I in this terrible low moment? Oh, maybe this is why. Yeah. Maybe it was getting whored out by my mom for$500. Yeah. Or my dad not being my dad, or him abandoning me. Maybe it was all of that. All of this. And now I'm going to be different.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I love her. I know. I love her too. I'm gonna leave us with this. When I had nothing left to lose, I could finally exhale, stop gripping, goes to treatment, she works through all the trauma, and she says, that doesn't mean that now I'm Saint Demi and I have no pain. It just means I can finally admit that I have weaknesses and needs and that it's okay to ask for help. I can't fix everything. I can feel sorrow and self-doubt and pain and know that those are just feelings. And like everything else in this life, they will pass. We all suffer, we all triumph, and we all get to choose how we hold both. And it's so true. It is so true. Oh, to me, thank you for sharing the story. It couldn't have been easy. It couldn't have been easy to go through all of this again. And you listened to her narrate it. Did she get emotional at any point? No. Interesting.
SPEAKER_02I mean, she's such a pro, you know. She is, but still involved invested in the story of in the storytelling. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But you never once feel like, oh, you're not taken out of it because she must feel like I would feel like a badass if I like came out on the other side of all this stuff. Right. It reminds us we're all very powerful. Yes. Every day that we get up and continue trying is a good day. It is. Yes. Maybe we need to remind ourselves of that sometimes. You know? Yes. McKinsey, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you for having me. Oh, you brought so many wonderful things to the table. I can't wait to have you back on and get some more McKinseyism.
SPEAKER_02We'll talk about all the other subjects of this book that we didn't get to.
SPEAKER_00Lots to get to. Thank you all out there for listening. And yeah, we'll have you back on soon. Thank you. Bye, McKinsey. Bye. Thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to further support the show, you can subscribe to Babes and Bookland Podcast on Apple or Patreon. And you'll also have access to some extended episodes and some bonus content. You can also find our shop at TPublic where we have some pretty cute merch. Next week, make sure you tune in for Christina Applegate's memoir, You with the Sad Eyes. She grew up on camera, became a household name as a teenager, and spent decades making us all laugh while carrying a story the world never fully saw. Raw, darkly funny, and deeply honest, You with the Sad Eyes is a story of a woman who has had to let go of so much and found a way to keep going anyway. Join us next week. My friend Lizzie's here for a book club episode. We can't wait to bring it to you. Until then, take care of the
