'Becoming Molly-Mae' has become a critic pile-on

At the wise old age of 22, everybody’s favourite Love Island star turned influencer Molly-Mae Hague has announced that she is publishing her first book, a memoir entitled Becoming Molly-Mae. Molly, who came second in Love Island 2019 with her boyfriend Tommy Fury, has gone on to be one of the most successful stars the show has produced. Despite it launching her success, she now does not tend to associate herself with Love Island, having said during her controversial “Diary of a CEO” interview with Steven Bartlett that she could have been successful online without the help of the show.

The content of the book is a little bit of a mystery as, since 2019, Molly-Mae’s life has been very public, with her day-to-day life being shared with her millions of followers and subscribers, as well as paparazzi and tabloids circulating stories too. Even before she entered the Love Island villa, Molly was uploading videos to her Youtube channel, which had roughly 100,000 subscribers already. She had built a big enough following that she was rumoured to be a bombshell before it was announced on the show, suggesting that she was already amassing public interest. It seems bizarre for someone who has shared so much of their life to publish a memoir, regardless of how young she is. What could Molly-Mae have to tell us that we don’t already know but that we actually care about? The memoir’s description on its Amazon page states: “Behind the polished exterior there is a young girl with a unique story.” Although Molly’s rise to success is “unique”, are stories of high-school life or details about how she lives out her day with Tommy really that interesting after she has shared so much online already?

On her Instagram stories, Molly-Mae has teased her followers about the extent of personal detail her memoir will include. She will take oversharing “to a whole new extreme” in the book. Given that she only has 22 years of life experience to share with her readers, it is likely that the book will have to cover everything from her childhood to her role as the “creative director” of fast-fashion giant PrettyLittleThing. Perhaps it will include a step-by-step breakdown of how Molly spends her 24 hours so that we can all become girlboss business moguls too! In her interview with Bartlett, she mentioned that she doesn’t have very many friends and spends most of her time working, with Tommy, or sleeping. If this is going to be the content of her book, who is really interested in reading about such mundane activities? What could the “unique story” that she is boasting actually be?

The problem with the book is that it is difficult to work out who it is really written for. Molly-Mae’s target audience are typically teenage girls who watched her on Love Island and have followed her since. For them, the extra “oversharing” that Molly has promised is surely enticing, but would they be interested in reading about her business ventures having seen them play out online? For those who are interested in business, this is probably not the right book either. Furthermore, despite her claims to Steven Bartlett that she was growing “organically” before the show, she has only had these business opportunities, such as “Filter by Molly-Mae” and her numerous collaborations with PrettyLittleThing, because of the platform Love Island gave her. How is she going to excuse this leg-up? It will be interesting to see how transparent Molly will be, although her promises to overshare to the maximum do imply that she will be honest to her readers.

The book is available for pre-order now, and will be released on 9 June. Like all of her other business ventures, the memoir will likely be successful with many of her audience ready to lap up what Molly has written; but personally, I have little interest in spending my 24 hours reading Becoming Molly-Mae.

(note this article was published in print, hence there being no link. You can find it within https://issuu.com/theboarnews/...)