Demi Lovato's Relapse Makes Her More of a Role Model Than Ever

Demi Lovato has officially brought tears to my eyes three times this year: the first was when I saw her on her phenomenal Tell Me You Love Me Tour in March (right after she celebrated six years of sobriety). The second was when she released a new song out of the blue in June called “Sober,” confessing that she’d fallen off the wagon. The third was last week, when I opened my phone to news that she had been rushed to the hospital for an overdose.

Arguably any artist has a connection with their fans—but Demi’s connection with her fans goes to a much deeper level. Her fanbase, called “Lovatics,” have long since gone beyond simple enjoyment of her music, voice and even looks or appearance. Lovato has prided herself, for the vast majority of her career, on her connection with her fans through her own brutal honesty of who she is, what she has been through, and the consistent emotional and spiritual vulnerability she never fails to portray in her music. Even when she is struggling with her own issues, she has shown she knows how to lift others up and show that it’s okay to struggle, it’s okay to be broken, it’s okay to be raw—it’s okay to be human. Legions of “Lovatics” everywhere, myself included, have found themselves touched, strengthened, and emboldened by the brutal honesty and vulnerability found in any number of Demi Lovato songs, which in turn has given us the strength to power through whatever we are struggling with.

Lovato during her first public performance since admitting to breaking her sobriety at Rock in Rio in Lisbon, Portugal on June 24.

The release of “Sober,” heartbreaking as it was, only elevated Lovato’s status as a brave warrior and advocate for addiction, since addiction is a chronic illness and an everyday battle. She was very lucky to have been sober for six years, but that never meant her battle and her struggles were over, as much as we wanted them to be. It is heartbreaking to remember that the woman who has helped so many through their own struggles is human, too, and she’s going to struggle just as we have. It wasn’t only heartbreaking as it was disheartening to learn that Lovato has been struggling more and more recently (described as not being herself lately by those close to her) when, from the perspective of social media in which almost every celebrity connects with their fanbase, Lovato looks just as strong, happy, and up to the challenge. Social media doesn’t represent all aspects of life, of course—but when fans have developed such a connection with a celebrity the way Lovato has, sometimes we get lost in taking one’s narrative through social media at face value. “Sober” underlines the fact a person isn’t cured when they leave rehab, announce their sobriety, or memorialize it in a song or a tearful message to fans. It’s a constant battle that requires constant care and fortitude. Moreover, it requires constant honesty and dialogue, something a lot of celebrities aren’t always up to doing: struggling with bipolar disorder, addiction, and an eating disorder is hard enough, but put it in the hands of a pop star who has to constantly deal with the prying eyes of the public? Most would take a deep breath, try to overcome it all as best they can, and continue doing what they do. Demi Lovato takes a deep breath, continues to battle her own demons every day, and lays it all out on the table not only for everyone to see, but for anyone who needs someone with their own issues to be there for them.

Lovato during her Tell Me You Love Me Tour, 2018.

But the news of Lovato’s overdose, regardless of how much she has already laid on the table for us, is still heartbreaking, hard to process, and even jarring—Demi has already been so brutally honest with us more times than we can count, but that doesn’t make the sense of an “illusion” being shattered any less real. In Lovato’s case, the “illusion” that perhaps feels shattered is not that she was lying or being dishonest about her sobriety recently, but that we thought she was in a good place—perhaps the best place she’s ever been in—when that is clearly not the case. Not only can we get lost in believing a celebrity is thriving based solely on the productivity of their social media feeds, but Lovato had already cleared the air on things that had happened in her life and career in her YouTube documentary released last fall, Demi Lovato: Simply Complicated. In the documentary, she not only lets everyone in on how she got to where she is today, but she also revealed some fairly new information that certainly came across as shocking to anyone who has followed Lovato since the beginning. As any “Lovatic” knows, Lovato received her breakthrough role being cast in the Disney Channel television film Camp Rock (2008), after which she received a record deal and a Disney Channel series of her own, Sonny with a Chance. In November 2010, after two studio albums, a Camp Rock sequel, and two full seasons of her series, news broke that Lovato had withdrawn from the Jonas Brothers Live in Concert Tour to enter a treatment centre for “physical and emotional issues.” As Lovato also revealed in the documentary, she had become hooked on cocaine after first trying it at age 17 while working for Disney Channel, and had already developed issues with alcohol. She traces her own issues with drugs and alcohol back to her father, who was also an addict: “I guess I always searched for what he found in drugs and alcohol because it fulfilled him and he chose that over a family.” Lovato completed inpatient treatment at Timberline Knolls, an Illinois treatment centre, in January 2011 and resumed work on her next studio album soon thereafter, later announcing that she would not be returning to Sonny with a Chance and would return to acting when she felt confident doing so. Her third studio album Unbroken was marked by the powerhouse lead single “Skyscraper,” which has since become an anthem for overcoming one’s struggles.

But as much as we all believed Lovato was unbroken after seeking treatment for two months and leaving Disney Channel, we learn in Simply Complicated that that was not the case: Lovato did not remain sober for long after leaving treatment the first time, going on a bender of using drugs and alcohol almost daily, saying she was “either craving drugs or on drugs,” admitting to sneaking cocaine on airplanes, faking drug tests with other people’s urine, and even using in secret while in a psychiatric ward after locking herself in her bedroom and downing a bottle of pills. Perhaps the most shocking of the revelations was that Lovato was in fact under the influence of cocaine while being interviewed about her sobriety for an MTV documentary special called Demi Lovato: Stay Strong; she confessed to being dishonest about several aspects of her initial treatment and recovery. Lovato states that her lowest point came in March 2012, when she had invited strangers to drink with her after which she was so hungover that she vomited in the back of the car service on the way to the airport to perform “Give Your Heart a Break” on American Idol. “I felt like that was a moment in my career where I didn’t care,” she admitted in Simply Complicated. “I just knew that I needed to be high to get through whatever I was going through at that point.” Thereafter, since she had become so difficult to work with, Lovato’s management expressed their intention to drop her and it was then that she got serious about getting sober, moving into a sober-living facility (where she had no phone and was required to do chores) and commuted to her new gig as a judge on the American edition of The X Factor. Six years later in March 2018, on the sixth anniversary of her sobriety, Lovato was in the midst of her Tell Me You Love Me Tour and addressed it on stage at the Barclays Center in New York, confessing:

“Yesterday, six years ago, I was drinking vodka out of a Sprite bottle at nine in the morning, throwing up in the car. And I just remember thinking, ‘This is no longer cute. This is no longer fun. And I’m just like my dad.’ So I took a look at my life and I said, ‘Something has to change, I’ve got to get sober.’ So I did. I made changes in my life, and the reason I became so open about my story is because I know that there are people here tonight that need to ask for help, and I want you to know that that’s okay. Mental health is something that we all need to talk about, and we need to take the stigma away from it. So let’s raise the awareness. Let’s let everybody know it’s okay to have a mental illness, it’s okay to have an addiction problem. I’m bipolar—like, whatever! I take care of myself. And I can never say thank you enough to you guys for the support that you’ve given me over the years, and you’ve forgiven me for my mistakes. Thank you for being a part of saving my life. I love you guys.”

Lovato, Tell Me You Love Me Tour.

As much as we will all continue to love and support Lovato during her time of need (that’s one thing that is non-negotiable), it’s so unabashedly and irrevocably sad to remember and be reminded that a woman who has been a soldier for those struggling through something by sharing every single one of her struggles for the public to see and hear is also flawed, because she’s human—everyone is flawed, even your favorite celebrity, and it’s even more painful when your favorite celebrity has already gone through such lengths to share their flaws and not only deepen and strengthen their connection with fans, but deepen and strengthen their artistry. Maybe it’s jarring because, less than a year ago, Demi released a powerful documentary in which she cleared the air about everything she’s been through and appeared stronger than ever. Not only did she appear strong in the documentary, but she also appears her strongest on her most recent album Tell Me You Love Me, which as far as I’m concerned is her magnum opus. It’s hard being strong—and maybe it was the sudden pressure of having to appear her strongest in every aspect of her career that pushed her over the edge again. Maybe we like to think our faves are perfect because they’re our faves. But they’re not. They’re human, and instead of trying to mask the fact that they fall down because they’re human, they’re going to pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and find new ways to stay strong. I’m confident that Demi will be okay, because even if she’s not, the strength of the connection she has built with her true fans is not something that can wither and die easily.

In her latest song “Sober,” Lovato tearfully sings that she’s sorry for the fans she lost, who “watched her fall again / I wanna be a role model / but I’m only human.” The ironic thing here that Demi perhaps fails to realize at this point in her life is that having us watch her fall down again after building herself up so high makes her more of a role model than she has ever been—recovery requires constant work and it never ends, so her unfortunate relapse only heightens her status as a advocate for addiction, bravely portraying all the highs and lows. She is human as we all are, and it is this authentic edge in her music and her artistry that makes her an irreplaceable force not only in today’s music industry, but in the hearts of many. I hope she will be okay.

“The last decade has taught me a lifetime of lessons. I’ve learned that secrets make you sick. I’m learning how to be a voice and not a victim. I’ve learned that sex is natural. I’ve learned that love is necessary, heartbreak is unavoidable, and loneliness is brutal. I’ve learned that the key to being happy is to tell your truth, and to be okay without all the answers.”

Stay strong, Demi.

Book Review: 'My Mother Was Nuts' by Penny Marshall

I feel like a better title for Penny Marshall's memoir would have been Shit Happens, but I'm sure her publisher would have said no.

I wanted to read My Mother Was Nuts because I grew up watching Penny Marshall on Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley as well as watching several of the movies she directed thereafter. Generally, when I read a celebrity's memoir, it's because I have an interest in what they have to say based on how much I like or love them. I like Penny Marshall enough from watching her on TV and the movies she's directed, but this is a celebrity memoir that we can definitely say is...problematic.

Above all, I enjoyed the early parts of her memoir the most as she details her childhood growing up in The Bronx neighborhood of New York. Was her mother nuts? Maybe a little. But no more nuts than any other mothers like hers in the '40s and '50s, I'm sure. The book started to go downhill for me after the chapters detailing her pregnancy in her early 20s, where she forced herself to marry the father because that's just what you had to do back then, but thereafter she seems really hard on herself because they ended up divorcing and she chose to let the father raise her daughter, Tracy, and it seems fake and for show. As a matter of fact, the vast of majority of My Mother Was Nuts seems fake and for show. Example: she feels the need to insert pointless and boring anecdotes about how she was good friends with several of the original cast members of Saturday Night Live and then devotes entire chapters to times she hosted the series or memories she has with the cast members, and it all just reads very inauthentic. Marshall's ego bridges the gap between any sightings of genuine emotion in this memoir.

The parts I was most interested in reading were the chapters about Laverne & Shirley, more specifically Marshall's take on what went down regarding Cindy Williams leaving the series at the beginning of its eighth season, leaving Marshall to carry on Laverne & Shirley without Shirley. But before you get to those chapters, Marshall outlines how she broke into television: her brother, Garry Marshall (producer, director, screenwriter and creator of both Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley) advocated for her. That's it. She is pretty open about the fact that her brother helped her out in Hollywood, getting roles for her or convincing people he knew to give her roles or basically creating roles for her, such as Laverne DeFazio. Marshall acknowledges that her brother paved the road for her in every way, but then goes and doesn't even acknowledge her privilege when talking about how show business worked differently for others. Case in point: she begins one of the Laverne & Shirley chapters reminding everyone that she and Cindy Williams were always close friends and got along, but Williams always thought the writers and producers favored Marshall and Laverne over Williams and Shirley, simply because Marshall's brother created the series. Marshall dictates how wrong she was about that, and that the real issue was her manager who was constantly counting the laughs between the jokes of Laverne and Shirley and would always make Williams insecure. Marshall writes that she too had insecurities, but she didn't have a manager whispering them in her ear every day. I'm not defending Williams or her manager but, UM, you didn't need a manager because your brother got everything for you. Take a step down from the high horse, Penny.

I actually ended up skipping several chapters because, after a certain point, I could no longer deal with most of Marshall's insipid and pointless anecdotes about things that aren't really interesting to read about and only contribute to my opinion that My Mother Was Nuts was written for show. I just wanted to read Marshall's take on what happened when Cindy Williams left Laverne & Shirley, which was pretty interesting. Williams married Bill Hudson (Goldie Hawn's ex-husband) and then when she became pregnant, she started making outlandish demands from Paramount and the producers regarding time off and her salary. Eventually, they had reached a deal, but after the first two episodes of the series' eighth season were filmed, Williams had quit. Marshall tried to contact her just to talk about it, but Bill Hudson (now acting as her manager) never let her speak to Williams, and this would be the case for several years to follow. Marshall was especially hurt when Williams went to TV Guide and said that Marshall had basically pushed her out the door so that she could finally have the show to herself. Years later, when Marshall had heard that Williams and Hudson had divorced, she contacted her and they talked about the circumstances leading up to her departure from Laverne & Shirley for the first time since it happened. As Marshall writes, Williams remained unapologetic for quitting like she did and leaving Marshall to carry the show on her own, as well as her belief that Marshall had always wanted the show for herself. Marshall asserted once again how wrong she was, but that they "agreed to disagree," because that's what old friends do. Okay then. I don't believe you both ran down the street after that holding hands and counting rainbows, but you do you.

The rest of My Mother Was Nuts deals with Marshall's accounts of her progression into directing movies, which is where it definitely becomes clear that she is a snob. This woman has never heard of the word modest, I'm sure. It's almost as if the film studios she worked for all those years had never let her speak her mind and now all of a sudden she's choosing to "set the record straight" with a bunch of stories and rants that nobody asked for or cares about. She even tries to take credit for Whitney Houston being fairly well to work with on The Preacher's Wife and that she didn't believe any of the things she told people like Oprah Winfrey or Diane Sawyer about her drug use. Penny darling, it's not your business or your job but thank you for filling the remainder of your word quota for this book with things that don't concern you. I was actually looking forward to seeing what she had to say about directing Riding in Cars with Boys, given that she dealt with a similar situation having gotten pregnant and married out of obligation. But all she does is talk about how Drew Barrymore wasn't her first choice for the lead role and she kept making "demands" and the movie didn't turn out perfect, but whaddaya gonna do? Someone needed to take the keyboard away from Penny Marshall at this point. She even has to insert a sentence about how Anne Hathaway read for the lead in Riding in Cars with Boys but she was too young, so she recommended him to her brother Garry for The Princess Diaries and "he said thank you to me." Bitch, do you want a medal? Do you want credit for Anne Hathaway's breakthrough role? STOP TALKING.

I enjoyed the parts about her childhood and her take on both the good times and the drama on Laverne & Shirley, but this is not an exceptional memoir, it's someone who no longer has the microphone in her hands and feels the need to prove something to people who don't care. 3/5 stars.

Book Reviews: 'The Broken Girls' by Simone St. James and 'Genuine Fraud' by E. Lockhart

1. The Broken Girls, by Simone St. James:

I really enjoyed this one, and I think it's because I haven't read a good mystery novel in a really long time. The Broken Girls isn't a thriller, it's a mystery, and it's very well done. The book takes place within the past and the present: Vermont, 1950 (past) and Vermont, 2014 (present). In the small town of Barrons, Vermont in 1950, there is an infamous boarding school for the girls that no one wants; the troublemakers, the illegitimate, the too smart for their own good. It's called Idlewild Hall. And there are rumors that the boarding school is haunted. Four roommates bond over their whispered fears, their budding friendship blossoming - until one of them mysteriously disappears. In Barrons in 2014, journalist Fiona Sheridan cannot stop revisiting the events surrounding her older sister's death. Twenty years ago, her body was found lying in the overgrown fields near the ruins of Idlewild Hall. And though her sister's boyfriend was tried and convicted of murder, Fiona can't shake the suspicion that something was never right about the case. When Fiona discovers that Idlewild Hall is being restored by an anonymous benefactor, she decides to write a story about it. But a shocking discovery during the renovations will link the loss of her sister to secrets that were meant to stay hidden in the past - and a voice that won't be silenced. One thing I didn't expect from The Broken Girls is how deep it went with certain themes, one of them being societal expectations and demands for young girls in past centuries as well as women simply lost to history...because they were women. Only once you are reading along as Fiona is discovering more and more things that were swept under the rug from the events that took place at Idlewild Hall in the fall of 1950 do you really realize the reality of how girls and women were treated back then, especially those who were born "illegitimately" and then never treated as if they were worth it for the rest of their lives. It really makes you think about how if no one cared back then what happened to girls no one wanted, would anyone have ever cared if Fiona hadn't started piecing this together 64 years later? It also made a part of me happy that we have long since abandoned certain social norms from past time periods. Although I really enjoyed The Broken Girls, there were parts that I could have done without - mostly the ghosts and the hauntings, but also the storyline surrounding Fiona's sister Deb's death wasn't resolved as satisfactorily as I would have liked, given how much time we spend reading about Fiona's obsession with her sister's murder. However, I still really enjoyed it and will recommend to anyone who likes a good mystery, because above all, The Broken Girls is a good mystery. 4/5 stars.

2. Genuine Fraud, by E. Lockhart:
Since it came out last year, Genuine Fraud has been subject to significantly mixed reviews, and it's pretty understandable given the popularity and outstanding quality of E. Lockhart's last book, We Were Liars. I was immediately interested in Genuine Fraud just based on the premise as well as the fact that it sounded like it could possibly be similar to We Were Liars (which I LOVED) so I was intrigued right from the start. Imogen is a runaway heiress, an orphan, a cook, and a cheat. Jule is a fighter, a social chameleon, and an athlete. An intense friendship. A disappearance. A murder, or maybe two. A bad romance, or maybe three. Blunt objects, disguises, blood, and chocolate. The American dream, superheroes, spies, and villains. A girl who refuses to give people what they want from her. A girl who refuses to be the person she once was. I won't say Genuine Fraud is bad, but it's not amazing - actually, it's a mess. The plot is all over the place but also really fast-paced, so you have no time to figure out what's going on. Which is fine. I'm all for fast-paced thrillers that have unreliable narrators and screw with your head until everything finally comes into focus. That's exactly what We Were Liars is all about. But Genuine Fraud is a tad unrealistic at times and rather undeveloped in parts (it's only 264 pages); that is, way too much telling from the author rather than showing. Not to mention that the story is told backwards - again, not a negative given that a ton of other thrillers have done similar things with their timelines - but the timeline in Genuine Fraud jumps around so much and it's not so much confusing as it is exhausting, because you can tell early on there isn't going to be some mind-blowing reveal at the end like in We Were Liars. Also, there is a total lack of suspense in a book whose premise pretty much promises suspense, and there isn't much of a mystery to solve in the story either. For such a short book, it's pretty boring. But on the plus side, I found the characters were really strong, the book was otherwise really well written (aside from the tendency to tell too much instead of showing), and I liked the interesting social commentary of roles for girls and women. 3/5 stars.

Book Review: 'Big Little Lies' by Liane Moriarty

"Parents do tend to judge each other. I don't know why. Maybe because none of us really know what we're doing? And I guess that can sometimes lead to conflict. Just not normally on this sort of scale."

Here’s the thing, chicken wing. For the most part, I enjoyed reading Big Little Lies. It does have strong female characters and deal with some important and relevant themes in today’s world of parenting and adulthood, but I feel like the fact that this book was adapted into a critically acclaimed and overhyped HBO series with big-name stars has made us lose sight of what Big Little Lies is: it’s pulpy, it’s frothy, and it’s shallow, and it was intended that way.

I was first turned onto Liane Moriarty’s books about three years ago, when I read What Alice Forgot and loved it. I also enjoyed The Hypnotist’s Love Story, but eventually I made my way to The Husband’s Secret and started to get bored: her books almost always deal with slow-moving domestic plots with strong characters, but she started to be a bit of a hit-or-miss author for me when her slow-moving plots started to have unsatisfying and/or anticlimactic conclusions. But I never gave it too much thought, since Moriarty’s books have more or less always been quick and easy chick lit, with just enough substance but not so much that we can consider them “deep.”

Big Little Lies is fine and enjoyable. It deals with relatable characters in relatable domestic situations, and hits the nail on the head in terms of close-knit cliques of moms in elementary schools and schoolyard scandals. But it’s shallow, it’s frothy, and not in any way groundbreaking. And that’s fine. Not every book has to carry the weight of the world and make us see things in a new light or push any boundaries. But I think the fact that this book was adapted into such a high-powered HBO series with some really big actors, directors and producers has made us lose sight of the fact that this was most probably written and intended in the same vein as Moriarty’s other books: quick and relatable domestic stories that are just relatable and relevant enough to not be seen as too shallow or glib. But having an overhyped adaption of a story that isn’t all that special to begin with seems to have shined a light on the bare truth: Big Little Lies is more than a little cliché, and where it fails is that its shallow and frothy nature kind of takes away from the heavy and socially relevant issues it attempts to tackle and de-stigmatize, such as domestic violence (a particular storyline which, despite being such an important issue, I felt should have been more compelling and lacked a certain amount of depth). 

I don’t mean to bash the book in any way. I really did enjoy a lot of it. I wish I could just turn off my critical brain while reading and enjoy froth for froth’s sake. It also just goes to show that I clearly had much more tolerance for froth when I read What Alice Forgot and The Hypnotist’s Love Story years ago. Big Little Lies is very well written, and Moriarty really does hit the nail on the head with a lot of its central themes. You can very easily detect the well thought out structure of the plot and how each character is well-rounded and serves a purpose. There’s an interesting (but not amazingly clever) twist at the end, and everything resolves itself very tidily and satisfyingly. If anything, Big Little Lies is a great template for writing books that will sell, if you ever need a good example. I just think the hype surrounding its cable TV adaption has made people lose touch with what the book really is by design: something to enjoy, but not something to expect too much from. 3/5 stars.