At one point in Molly-Mae Hague’s new memoir Becoming Molly-Mae, the 23-year-old uber influencer reflects on her reasons for writing a book. She and her manager, she says, “decided a long time ago not to really do many interviews”, because “when the press writes a story, it’s from the journalist’s point of view”. By telling her story on terms she has set, she controls its narrative in the same way she does via her social media channels, to her six million total followers.
Her attitude is telling of a bigger picture in the world of celebrity. In recent years, as social media has prevailed as a way for famous people to speak to fans directly, so the existing infrastructure of showbiz media has started to crumble.
In fact, a wariness of the press seems to loom: just look at the prevalence of prestige magazine articles consisting of famous people interviewing one another, without journalists. And what’s more, celebrities – particularly those like Hague whose lives and the way they are shared online are huge parts of their careers – have become so used to divulging what’s going on in their lives via their own platforms on sites like Instagram and YouTube that the traditional celebrity publicity machine, with its exclusive interviews and tell-all memoirs, has become somewhat moot.
While Becoming Molly-Mae is replete with stories about Hague’s life, her upbringing, her time on Love Island in 2019 and her career since then, there is also a huge amount of it that doesn’t feel particularly new for anyone who keeps an eye on her YouTube channel. This book begs the question: is there any need for the celebrity memoir in an age of Instagram Stories and vlogging?
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Celebrity memoirs – as they concern pop culture personalities rather than say, politicians bound to silence until after their terms end – used to fulfil a similar function to social media. They allowed famous people to speak to their fans about the intimate details of their lives on their own terms, without an interviewer as a middle-man. It’s true these books are often worked up in collaboration with a writer, but the celebrity still gets the final say on what is included or how they come across.
Books like Victoria Beckham’s 2001 autobiography Learning to Fly, and 2004’s Being Jordan, wherein Katie Price discussed her years as a glamour model and dating history, as well as her early life and relationship with her son Harvey, flew off the shelves in the 2000s (for a time, Being Jordan held WH Smith’s record for the most copies of a memoir sold in one week), as the curious public clamoured to hear about these much-discussed women’s stories in their own words.
Two decades later, things have changed. Social media allows stars, if they wish, to be in touch with their audiences constantly – in fact, influencer culture shows that huge, impassioned followings can be built from their very doing so. Online celebrities in particular, like Hague, will take advantage of events in their own lives by offering the inside scoop – perhaps via a vlog showing behind the scenes footage of a party or photoshoot – on things they’ve already shared on social media, or which have been reported on in the traditional press. The relationship between influencers like Hague and their audiences are based on regular sharing and admissions of personal information, and as a result, her book had to offer something different.
The first part of the book follows the usual celebrity memoir framework – here, she describes her upbringing and way into her current job – before it morphs into a sort of “influencer how-to” about two-thirds of the way through. In this bit, she describes the ins and outs of her day-to-day working life, outlining how she captures her content and essentially offering tips for anyone who might want to follow in her footsteps.
This type of “self-betterment” genre has become a plum area for celebrity books, especially since the rise of social media and its promotion of “wellness” culture and “hustle” culture all in one, as memoirs have become less relevant. Celebrities from Fearne Cotton to Marcus Rashford have released books on self-help-related topics (Rashford’s children’s book is called You Are a Champion: How to Be the Best You Can Be) and while Hague’s book features more practical suggestions, it’s easy to see how it straddles the line between memoir and this new breed of celebrity-led advice.
That’s not to say that Becoming Molly-Mae doesn’t include some personal admissions, however. Though Hague is a self-proclaimed homebody, whose memoir includes none of the juicy kiss-and-tell detail of the celeb autobiographies of years gone by, there is discussion of her feelings on having used injectable fillers in the past and her endometriosis diagnosis, plus a section on her struggles with the paparazzi and body image (though this is as confusing as the poisoned well of “body positivity” discourse in general, because it includes a lot of chat about weight loss before a tacked-on “All bodies are beautiful” sentiment).
Hague also talks about her parents’ divorce, briefly touching on the fact that for a short time afterwards, her mother “turned to alcohol to cope with the pain of the breakdown of their marriage”. This, she says, “explains why I am the way I am with alcohol – I pretty much avoid it”, adding that her only real arguments with her boyfriend Tommy Fury, whom she met during her time on Love Island, “have been to do with him drinking”.
Most of this, however, has been mentioned to at least some extent in Hague’s online content (she has made YouTube videos wherein she had her fillers dissolved, for example). And the issues she has so far avoided speaking on – specifically her viral comments on the Diary of a CEO podcast (“We all have the same 24 hours in a day”-gate), as well as the environmental and workers’ rights concerns around PrettyLittleThing, the fast fashion brand of which she was recently appointed creative director – remain unspoken, except for a mention of the fact that she has “felt horribly guilty” that comments she has made have upset people in the past.
The book was never going to address the aspects of Molly-Mae’s persona that tend to jar with the public – that is, her privilege and her lack of recognition of it – because like most celebrity memoirs of its ilk, Becoming Molly-Mae was written for those already enamoured with her, not her critics. But considering that the book itself is not actually up to date with Hague’s own life (it doesn’t mention her recently purchased home or its @mollymaison Instagram account, which has over one million followers after launching in March, presumably because it was written before this development), how much even her fans will get out of it, plugged in as they are to her constant sharing, remains to be seen.
Becoming Molly-Mae is out now