For millennials of certain age who have lived on the internet for the past 20+ years, Ashley Tisdale is known as THE mid-’00s style icon.
Frederick M. Brown / Getty Images
From her legendary Princess Diaries 2 red carpet look:
Amanda Edwards / Getty Images
To her legendary Tiger Cruise look:
Michael Caulfield Archive / Getty Images
She did the era RIGHT, and I seriously mean that!!
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But for some, Ashley is now that person that made her husband run out and buy 400 books to fill a bookshelf for one of those (already fake/staged) celebrity shoots.
Sooo, Ashley did a tour of her house for Architectural Digest and her book shelf has started a huge debate about buying books as decor.
View this video on YouTube
Architectural Digest
It all started with this tweet:
Architectural Digest
And then all hell broke lose.
This is the bookshelf in question, or “public enemy #1” for some:
In the clip, Ashley says, “These bookshelves, I have to be honest, did not actually have books in them a couple of days ago.”
“I had my husband go to a bookstore and and I was like, ‘you need to get 400 books.'”
“Obviously my husband was like ‘we should be collecting books over time and putting them on the shelves.’ And I was like ‘no, no, no NOT when AD comes.'”
This made people online very angry…
…for, uhh, Ashley buying books.
This person questioned why Ashley didn’t fill the shelves slowly over time.
@sarahccaldwell Isn’t it fun filling a book shelf slowly over time? Or being like I have a shelf. I have money. Let us purchase copies of our favourite books to sniff, stroke, read & love. We will fill the rest of the shelves with books we think the other would like to read & talk about.
Twitter: @rattixempire1
This person said they don’t trust people who don’t fill their bookshelves.
@sarahccaldwell I am not sure that I trust people who haven’t filled every square inch of their bookshelves.
Twitter: @WickedRandom
Basically, the thread was a jumbled mess…
Buuuut then opinion shifted and people were like, “what the fuck is going on, why are people mad at Ashley Tisdale for buying books?!”
Twitter: @gamerharmonyJay
And as the Who? Weekly Podcast said, hey, at least she was being honest.
respect to Ashley Tisdale for her radical honesty here. she bought “400 books” to fill her empty bookshelves in advance of AD’s arrival. (plenty of celebrities do this… they just don’t admit it!)
Twitter: @whoweekly
But really, I think the overwhelming opinion is hey, good on her for supporting bookstores and authors.
The way people are criticizing Ashley Tisdale for…buying books?? Supporting authors and a bookstore??? Like who gives af if she reads them, as if I’ve read most of the books I own
Twitter: @wlwanningsquad
The thread got so wild that Ashley responded to the tweet:
@sarahccaldwell Let’s clear this up. There are some of my books from over the years in there but yea 36 shelves that hold 22 books I did not have and any interior designer would have done the same. They do it all the time, I was just honest about it.
Twitter: @ashleytisdale
So yeah, that’s enough of the internet for the day.
Maybe this thing was a bad idea.