by Mamrie Hart
“Harper Valley PTA”—Jeannie C. Riley
This song came out in ’68, and I’m pretty sure it’s the first song ever written about slut shaming. The subject of the song is given a note from her daughter’s PTA saying she wears her skirts too short. Homegirl walks in there with her miniskirt and drops the mic, saying things like, “You’re a drunk,” “You got your secretary pregnant,” “You keep asking me out and I say no.” By the time she walks out of the meeting, she has spilled all the PTeaA. Don’t come for Jeannie’s wardrobe unless you ain’t got any dirty laundry yourself.
“The Pill”—Loretta Lynn
Y’all, Loretta Lynn is just the badass of badasses. I mean, besides the old stuff, she made one of my favorite records of all time with Jack White (from the White Stripes) when she was seventy-two! But back in ’75, she was pissing off conservatives, aka my current favorite pastime on Twitter. This song’s basic message is that it’s not fair that her husband gets to go out and have all this fun while she’s just at home popping out babies, so she decides to start taking birth control. Considering Christian folks thought BC was a sin back then, this was a risky move. But Loretta got married to a dude known as Doolittle and had four children before she was even nineteen, so I’m pretty sure she had some real-life experience to draw from. She must be honored for such badass-ery.
—
AND, LAST BUT not least, of course, ANYTHING DOLLY PARTON. The woman is a goddess and hilarious and one of the greatest songwriters of all time. I mean, how can you not be in awe of someone who was born in a dirt-floor shack and now has a theme park named after her? One day I hope to gouge all of you with admission and overpriced turkey legs at Mame Town, but until then I will continue listening to “9 to 5” and “Why’d You Come in Here Lookin’ Like That?” on repeat.
—
LOOK. AT THE end of the day, there’s always going to be “cooler” music, more obscure or classic tunes that are more impressive to name-drop. But, I’m telling ya, when you fall in love with some pop country, you fall hard and you don’t care who knows it. You will blare those tunes to the eye rolls of other friends and significant others. You will love it and not care what others say, like Trisha Yearwood’s protagonist in “She’s in Love with the Boy.”
Go forth and get your female country on. I recommend cruising around with all your windows down, singing at the top of your lungs. Or singing these after a few glasses of wine at karaoke at your local watering hole. For myself, it’s more powerful than therapy . . . but like a real therapist. Not a scarecrow, Sara.
Sliding into My DMs
PEOPLE SAY THAT we are living in the golden age of television. More and more channels are pumping out artful and cinematic series with boundary-pushing content. “Prestige” TV, if you will. But sometimes you don’t want highbrow art. Sometimes you don’t need a Michelin-star meal with foie gras cotton candy; you crave a Hot Pocket. Or even a gas station meal. And the gas station meal of the small screen has got to be reality TV.
Personally, I’m a sucker for the type of show whose reunion episode ends with crying, screaming, and “To Be Continued” flashing across the screen as a stretcher is being rolled out. The shows you can only watch in total solitude, and even then, you can tell your dog is judging you as you’re reacting to it. For me, at the top of this watch list is none other than Dance Moms.
IT. IS. THE. BEST.
For those of you not familiar with this garbage fire of a show, it centers around a dance teacher, Abby Lee Miller, and her dance company of young stars. Every week, the girls learn a new routine to take on the road to various competitions, which happen in exotic locales like a community college’s performing arts center in Akron, Ohio.
Business Opportunity Sidebar
Thinking of starting your own dance competition? I’ve got you covered. First you need a name, so choose one word from each of these lists:
Power
Elite
Platinum
Encore
Star
Showbiz
Dance
Talent
Competition
Showcase
of America
Championship
Now, put that name on a large banner,* grab yourself some trophies and a sexually ambiguous male host to hand them out, and VOILÀ! You’ve got yourself a money-making dance machine.
While putting children and tweens under intense amounts of public scrutiny is a perfect recipe for meltdowns, the girls on this show handle the pressure with grace, even as their stage moms have epic shit fits every episode. How much drama can a low-stakes dance competition with suburban moms really produce? Oh, it gets WILD. Every episode includes a backstabbing, screaming spectacle with mothers raising hell because their daughter “deserved a solo.” Add that to the fact that they clearly always have a few glasses of pinot grigio at Panera Bread on their lunch breaks, and BOOM. It’s a recipe for disaster, and the chef controlling all of it is Abby Lee Miller.
Abby is a tornado of teased bangs straight outta Pittsburgh: she’s brash, she’s terrifying, she’s manipulative, and she’s fun as fuck to watch. Just when you think her conniving has hit a new low, she takes out a shovel and goes lower. I’ve watched her scream at mothers and pit young girls against each other, I’ve seen her choreograph countless dances about death for ten-year-olds, and I’ve eagerly read every article related to her bankruptcy fraud charges. This story is about the time Abby Lee Miller kept me out of jail. But before we get to that, let’s take it back to trace the roots of why dance competitions are so close to my heart.
From the time I was four years old through high school, you could find me at my local dance studio, tapping and turning and complaining that my feet were bleeding when I eventually went on pointe. Dance classes taught me discipline, teamwork, and (most important) that I had an insatiable hunger for the spotlight. I may as well have been a moth in a tutu considering how badly I wanted to flutter around in the warmth of that light. Dancing was my first foray into being in front of an audience.*
Here are some top highlights of my years on the scene:
Kindergarten recital: On the first shuffle-ball-change of “Jailhouse Rock,” I kicked my tiny tap shoe into the audience.
Junior year: I am Michael Jackson in the big company number to “Thriller” and am worshipped by the younger girls who are super scared of the dance.
Five years after graduating and on the studio’s twenty-fifth anniversary, I am asked to revive said “Thriller” role and come home to North Carolina thirty pounds heavier after quitting smoking. The little girls are still scared of the dance, but mainly because my out-of-shape ass almost coughs up a lung in the wings.
My sister and I were notorious for losing pieces of our costume. This usually ended with me freaking out at the studio on picture day and then us hanging up a sheet in the living room and doing our own DIY photo shoot.
Like the Dance Mom girls, I performed as part of a troupe, but, luckily for me, Dance with Mitzi was run by the kindest and sweetest lady alive. Mitzi ended her classes early on Wednesdays so she could walk across the street and lead the Boonville Methodist choir, and she once described adding more sequins to a costume to distract the judges from our sloppy routine by saying, “Let’s throw some glitter on this chicken shit and pretend it’s a rhinestone!” Years later, when she came and saw me do a live comedy show in Charlotte and I broke out a split onstage, she stood up, did the Arsenio Hall Dog Pound arm, and screamed, “You go, girl!”
The point is, Mitzi is pretty much the opposite of Abby. Yet as much as Abby was brutal on-screen, I was convinced her ruthlessness had to be an act, that there was some amount of “putting it on” for the camera. No woman would tell a crying child that they need to suck it up and only cry if their “arm is hanging off or somebody died,” right?*
Well, let me tell you, I was a
bout to find out. A few years ago, my friend Grace Helbig was hosting her own show on the E! network and had been kind enough to ask me to be a guest on it several times. But one day she gave me the opportunity of a lifetime. “Mames, you have to come on next week,” she said with a quickened breath. “Because my guest is . . . Abby Lee Miller.”
The concept for the segment was that Grace and I would interview Abby and then perform a quick, ridiculous dance for her. She would then decide who out of the two of us would make it onto the ALDC (Abby Lee Dance Company) elite team.
On the day of the taping, Grace and I were insanely nervous. What if she yelled at us? Or didn’t understand our humor? Before we could imagine all of our worst-case scenarios, homegirl came in barefoot and braless like she’d just escaped a house fire. When the producers told her that her dressing room was down a flight of stairs, Abby wasn’t having it. She changed right then and there in the set kitchen, whipping off her caftan faster than a Golden Girl on spring break. In fact, she was in the middle of putting a shirt back on when Grace and I approached her to introduce ourselves. Grace, being the host, led the conversation.
“Hi, Abby! We are big fans and—”
“Which earrings should I wear?” Abby said, cutting off Grace mid-gush. She was holding both a massive silver star and a massive dangly rhinestone earring over each lobe.
“Definitely the star. ’Cause you are one!” I responded, grossed out by myself. “Hi, I’m Mamrie.”
Saying the woman gave zero fucks is an understatement. But there was no time to attempt another intro. Before we knew it, we were mic’ed up and sitting on a tiny couch, Abby firmly planted in between us.
“You need to raise the camera,” she said, directing the professional cameramen whose living is based on knowing how to shoot a camera. “See, if they shoot you from a higher angle, your face looks thinner,” she said as Grace and I acted impressed, as if we don’t each take four hundred selfies a day and haven’t been editing our own faces for years.
We kissed her ass made small talk as best we could while the crew continued setting up. I have no clue what actually came out of our mouths but clearly Abby could tell we were fan-girling, and so she blessed us with some DM dirt, going off about certain moms and dancers. She was one second away from telling us what she really thinks of Kendall’s music when she stopped dead in her tracks.
“Is that a two-way mirror?!” At first, we didn’t respond. “Is that a two-way mirror?!” Abby asked with heightened alarm, pointing at a mirror above the fireplace.
“No, just a regular mirror,” Grace assured her as we cut eyes to each other. For a woman who talks a lot of shit, she sure was paranoid. Her eyes looked crazier than they do when Nia falls out of a turn or when Kendall is a beat behind in every trio she’s ever done.* “Are you sure that’s not a two-way mirror that the producers watch from behind?” I half-expected her to get up and pound her fists on the glass like an enraged convict being questioned on Law & Order.
“No,” Grace said, her brown eyes as big as Cinnabons. “I’m pretty sure behind that is just a wall and then behind that is a hallway.”
“Good, because I do not need the producers hearing what I say.”
Grace and I shot each other another look. Here this woman was bossing around the crew like she was Scorsese but didn’t realize that we were mic’ed and everything we said was being directly pumped into the headphones of every producer and agent sitting around the monitor?
The actual director called, “Action!” and Grace immediately snapped into host mode. She conducted the interview like a pro, very Diane Sawyer meets Pee-wee Herman.* Meanwhile, I AM NERVOUS. Grace and I had choreographed a thirty-second routine to an (obviously) royalty-free song, just like they do on Dance Moms.
Here Abby watches as we perform a dance with wooden emoji heads that I’m pretty sure we titled “Cat Shit.” You could almost hear her eyes roll in their tan sockets.
Oh, what? I didn’t mention my favorite thing about the show, which is how all the dances they perform have to be done to royalty-free music because the budget is so low? IT IS THE BEST. For instance, they did a commemorative dance in honor of Prince’s passing, but since they obviously couldn’t get the rights to “Purple Rain,” they danced to a sound-alike entitled, no lie, “Purple Pride” by Evan Olson. This was no Prince. More like Pauper.*
We finished our routine and waited to hear who she thought would win. Y’all, after years of showing up to the dance studio for hours every week, torturing my feet in those pointe shoes, forgoing weekend keggers to attend dance competitions . . . all that hard work become worth it when I heard Abby say those three magical words: “Mamrie is decent.” It was like a son pining for his father’s affection finally getting an “I love you” from Dad’s deathbed. I was satisfied.
A few months later, I was home between some of my international jaunts. Not much had changed except that I was off the air mattress and in a real bed now. My mornings were spent nursing red wine hangovers and taking out the dried contact lenses* that I fell asleep in after my usual late-night dance party in front of Beanz. This particular morning was especially tough because I had to go to a promo shoot.
In a few weeks, I was set to host the Shorty Awards in New York City. If you’ve never heard of them, congrats! You are the majority. The Shorty Awards are basically the Oscars of social media, and I was going to be their Billy Crystal. We were shooting a funny intro to the show, which combined my two favorite things—Dance Moms and dogs—the concept behind the video being that I am the Abby Lee Miller of pups, turning average pets into Insta celebs.
In the spirit of everyone’s favorite Pittsburgh dance czar, I had my makeup laid on thick and my hair teased to the heavens. Seriously, there was enough hair spray lacquered on my head to deflect a bullet. I spent the next few hours corralling commoner dogs and yelling at their owners for their lack of Instagram presence and unimaginative captions. Guys, y’all have not lived until you’ve looked a tiny French bulldog in the face and made fun of him for not being able to breed naturally. It felt SO evil. I felt SO Abby.
Once the shoot was over and I was done individually apologizing to each of the pups, I headed to my ex’s to drop off Beanz and pick up the last of my stuff from the house. It was quite the haul—the back seat alone had five garbage bags of clothes, not to mention trinkets, books, toiletries, the whole shebang. And don’t get me started on that trunk, which was packed full of random shit I was saving for future videos.
While I was driving, I couldn’t help but notice people were checking me out. Every light I stopped at, people in the crosswalks were giving me the eyes. I was serving young, skinny Abby Lee realness. It didn’t hurt that I was also in a major bodysuit phase and rocking a white turtleneck à la Claudia Schiffer during the Fashion Cafe days. I looked good and I knew it, nodding as passersby checked me out. I wasn’t even considering the fact that they could have been staring because they wondered why this woman, who was clearly a homeless hoarder living out of her car, would splurge on professional hair and makeup.
I was en route to Joselyn’s to decompress over some wine when at the busiest intersection, in the hippest neighborhood in LA, I heard it. The woop of a cop car.
I looked in my rearview, and, sure enough, there was a cop with his blue lights behind me.* I immediately broke into a cold sweat. Did I have a gun in my car? Did I have condom filled with heroin up my ass? No matter that I don’t even own a gun and there’s no way I could fit that up my butt, but these are the things that run through my head when I’m around any type of law enforcement.
All the people I thought were checking me out before were really checking me out as two LAPD officers surrounded my car, one at each front-seat window. I was simultaneously mortified and terrified. I rolled down both windows and looked to the officer on my left.
“Ma’am, are you aware that your registration is six months expired?”
FUCK. I had totally forgotten. My registration had expired in October, then I filmed a movie, went to Australia, traveled for a month, then broke up with my boyfriend, then traveled more. I hadn’t been driving consistently in six months. Also! I had never gotten my own car registered. To me, that was one of those boring tasks that my boyfriend took care of and I just assumed happened on its own, like the garbage being taken out, or the romance remaining intact despite not putting any effort in.
“I’m so sorry, Officer,” I said, fighting back real tears. “I haven’t really been in the country the last few months, and it completely skipped my mind.”
“Let me see your license.”
Let it be known that I am one of those idiot people who refuses to carry a wallet. I stick my ID and cards in the back pocket of whatever pants I’m wearing. It’s a great way to avoid carrying a purse and also a fun way to induce a panic attack every time you think you’ve lost your ID . . . which is weekly-ish for me.
I began frantically looking through my things. “I know it’s in here somewhere, I just—” I looked back at the driver’s-side officer, who was having none of it. “Sorry, I’m just a little unorganized because I’m going through a major breakup and my stuff is everywhere and—”
“Ma’am, do you have your license or not?” he asked sternly. I swallowed hard and turned to him with eyes sadder than a geriatric basset hound. “I—I—I don’t think I have it.” I could feel a lump start to form in my throat like I’d swallowed a softball. I did not want to cry. Hordes of hipsters were walking by, and I felt pathetic.
“I’ll be right back,” he said, walking to the cop car. I looked in my mirror, wiping away the tears that had fallen.
