Tori Spelling takes on ‘Mommywood’

As anyone who read my first book or has glanced at the tabloids in the last couple decades knows, I didn’t have a normal childhood. My dad, Aaron Spelling, was an extremely wealthy TV mogul. I starred in 90210 — a show that my father produced — for ten years starting when I was sixteen. My mother and I have a difficult (at times publicly so) relationship — when we have a relationship at all. My whole childhood I wished I had a normal family. I’ve spent much of my adult life working to prove that I’m a real person, a normal person, not the punch line of a joke.

Now I have two children of my own and I want them to have a normal childhood. I want them to have a happy life. I want to have a close, loving, joyful relationship with them for the rest of my life (though I realize that the teenage years are a bitch). My mother and I had and have our troubles, but I was raised by a nanny I called Nanny, and I learned plenty about being a good mother from her. Now is the time for me to take what I learned and to be the mother I always wished I had. But knowing you want to do things differently doesn’t mean you know how to escape the way you were raised. This wasn’t just about me worrying about the size of my unborn child’s nose. Now I was struggling with the much greater fear that when push came to baby, I was going to be just like my mother.

Video   Tori Spelling on her mom, weight loss April 15: TODAY’s Meredith Vieira talks to actress Tori Spelling about motherhood, rumors about her weight loss, and her second tell-all book, “Mommywood.” Today show

I grew up in the public eye. I don’t think of that as a bad thing, but I think it’s pretty obvious that being regularly watched, photographed, written about, and sometimes chased like an escaped prisoner by the paparazzi must have had an effect on me. It’s made me care a little too much about how I and, by extension, my family, look in pictures, be they candids, glossy magazine shots, or — ahem — ultrasound images. Obviously that’s something I have to work on. But what else is there? What other special effects has my unusual upbringing had on me?

How has Hollywood shaped me? How will it shape my children? Can a celebrity be a good mother? Can children grow up in the spotlight without being scarred for life? Will my children play kickball in the street with the neighborhood kids, or will they grow up thinking that the reality show cameramen who follow us around are their best friends? Can I give my children privacy from the media but still let them have friends and neighbors like normal kids? Above all, will my children and I develop the relationship that I had always dreamed of having with my own mother? I may care about a nose for five minutes in a doctor’s office, but these are the real issues that I worry about every day. I want my children to have a happy, normal childhood, but “normal” can be pretty elusive around here.

The fact that my life isn’t normal doesn’t make it any less real. My struggle to balance work and home life may show up on TV sets across the nation, but lots of moms who aren’t on TV have the same challenges. My attempts to get along with my neighbors may be complicated by their preconceived notions of who I am, but I’m still a mother, hoping her children can be friends with the kids next door. I grew up in great wealth, but I work as hard as the next person to make a home, to pay for school, and to give my children a world of choices and opportunities. I strive every day to be a good mom, like moms everywhere.

Hollywood is a glittering, glamorous, superficial land of dreamers, wannabes, and stars. Mommywood takes place on the same set — the palm trees and eternal sunshine of Los Angeles.

But casting is difficult and requires nine months of faithful commitment to rocky road ice cream, plus labor and delivery. The lead roles are played by stars who are finicky, in need of nonstop coddling, and around two feet tall. My own Mommywood life is full of drama (an awkward encounter with a former costar at a children’s birthday party), tragedy (the death of a diva pug), horror (when poo meets pool), and farce (being the only one in costume at a Halloween party), but at the center of it is the greatest love story I’ve ever experienced, greater than any love story on the small or silver screen, the same amazing love story that all mothers go through with their children.

This is the story of my definitely amateur, sometimes serious, often bumbling, never-to-be-finished attempt to make it in ... Mommywood.

Excerpted from “Mommywood,” by Tori Spelling. Copyright (c) 2009, reprinted with permission from Simon and Schuster.

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