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On May 31, Mandy Moore announced her family of four was becoming a five. She has two sons, Gus and Ozzie, with her husband Taylor Goldsmith, and in a few months, those boys will have a little sister.
Raising a daughter in a society that loves to label, categorize, and chastise women—despite the progress feminism has made—presents a challenge to navigate as a parent. “I don’t even know if I’ve wrapped my head around that,” she tells StyleCaster, speaking at the launch of TJMaxx’s new campaign, Claim Your &, which encourages women to embrace their multidimensionality.
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“For as long as I can remember, I’ve felt confined by labels given to me—a singer or an actress, kind or strong, a producer or a mom—but I’ve never been this or that,” Moore says. “There’s so much power in forgetting ‘or’ and I’m so excited to finally be claiming all of my ‘ands’—on my own terms—at this stage in my life.”
When it comes to how she’s going to tackle these sorts of conversations with her daughter, Moore said parenting can throw you curve balls in ways you least suspect. “My husband and I were talking about this, that you have all of these ideas of what kind of parent you’re going to be, and then, the kid shows up and you’re like, ‘I should never have been so rigid.’” She adds, “I want to make sure that my daughter, much like my sons, has a good model of what it means to be like a decent human.”
In terms of finding good role models for her children, Moore says that, too, presents a challenge. “I want to make sure they’re not just surrounded by one point of view on the world and one singular idea of what it means to have a happy, full, rich life. That takes on so many different definitions.”
Moore has faced her own challenges of Hollywood trying to put her in a box. (In fact, as TJMaxx points out, 94% of women have had labels imposed on them by others, and only 16% feel the labels given to them by others align with how they would define their true selves.) But thanks to some unbridled confidence in her youth, she’s had the pleasure of leading a rich and varied career.
“I was so incredulous when I was a kid,” she says. “I remember opening for the Backstreet Boys and getting on stage in front of 20,000 girls who really didn’t want me to be there, they were just there for the Backstreet Boys. But I had no qualms about it.” Things are a little different now, though, she concedes. “Now if I were to go on stage in front of 20,000 people, I would have a heart attack,” she laughs. “Like, give me all the beta blockers and a bottle of wine.”
