Uh Oh, Jordyn Blum Wants to Write A Book About Her Marriage to Dave Grohl
.... here are ten things she needs to know first before speaking out
It is being reported in the Mail Online today that Jordyn Blum, wife of Foo Fighter’s frontman Dave Grohl, is considering a multi-million dollar offer from Simon & Schuster to write a tell-all book about her marriage to the rock star.
Sources close to the ex-model and producer have said that she has been left humiliated by Grohl fathering a child outside of their marriage. I wrote about that last week, and you can find it here.
Apparently Blum has been holding the marriage together for the sake of their three daughters, Violet, 18, Harper, 15, and Ophelia, 10, which insinuates that this might not be the first time ‘good guy’ Grohl has strayed from the marital bed.
If she accepts, this book will be ‘an intimate look at her life with a rock and roll icon for over twenty years,’ say these sources.
But if Blum really is considering this offer to write about her marriage to Grohl, then here are ten things she’s going to need to know as a woman speaking out about a man in the public eye:
“Yeah, but we don’t know what she was like to be married to”
This is an obvious one and a bit of a catch-all, but any woman who speaks publicly about what a man has done to her, will be scanned first for the fault that made him do it. The public’s go-to response when a man is accused to wrongdoing is to excuse him, for example, lots of people last week were suggesting that maybe Grohl and Blum had an open marriage, if that’s the case then ‘what the hell does she have to complain about?’
“He’s a rock star, what did she expect?”
Again, see my piece from last week which asked why a man’s job should give him a right to cheat and lie. Can you think of any other job where a man is given the same get-out-of-jail-free card? ‘She married a librarian, what did she expect?’ ‘Her old man’s a plumber, is she stupid or something?’
“If it was that bad, why didn’t she leave?”
Oh yes, this old chestnut. You cannot speak out about a man’s behaviour in a marriage without it being turned on you. No-one likes a woman who paints herself a victim, better to find the reason why she should have left him in the first place (ignoring of course his bad behaviour).
“She only stayed because she liked the lifestyle”
Ah, the old golddigger trope resurrected in a slightly different shape and form, even though it is being reported that Blum has tried to keep the marriage together for the sake of her kids, because she is a mother, because she loves her husband, because she doesn’t want his bad behaviour to keep them spiralling, she will be accused of only doing this because she enjoyed his fame, his riches and living in that big old house of his.
“She’s just doing this for her fifteen minutes of fame”
Even though Blum is successful in her own right, all that will be cast aside for the bright light that is her husband’s stardom and accusations that she is trying to bask in it for telling her own story, a story that might help a lot of other women who have been through similar. But we don’t want them to talk about that either, so better to just find ways to silence the one who puts her head above the parapet.
“No-one really knows what goes on in a marriage””
See also the old cliche, ‘there are two-sides to the story’. Well, we know the other side of this particular story, he was cheating and lying, he has said as much himself in his statement, and so we do now know what has been going in his marriage. Unfortunately for Blum, she didn’t at the time.
“She should think of the children”
Ah yes, if she was thinking of the children by staying with him, that’s a defect in her (see the golddigger trope above), but now that they’re separated then she should think of the children by not washing their dirty laundry in public. These types of men, or their supporters, are very good at using children as both sword and shield, the mother will always be responsible for the feelings of the children – sadly no-one wonders why the father wasn’t thinking of his kids when he was hopping into bed with someone else.
“She should leave the past in the past”
Once a man has committed a crime it’s done, ok? Once he has upset a family, caused harm, hurt, obliterated the family life, it is over, it is done and dusted, and it doesn’t need to be dragged up again and again, and if it is, well, see my next point…
“She clearly can’t get over him”
She’s jealous, she won’t let him move on, she clearly wants him back. If a woman wants to talk about that which has harmed her, or rather who, she is almost always accused of doing it because she’s ‘trying to get him back’ or get revenge, or simply that she won’t let him move on with his life and be happy with whoever he’s now seeing.
“Poor Dave, she’s just doing this to hurt him”
And hey presto, it is just a hop, skip and a jump until everyone is feeling sorry for Dave – the villain of the piece, the instigator of all this hurt – because he’s just trying to move on, just trying to be a good father etc etc.
And finally, the fans… oh lord, the fans. My ex was a small-time musician compared to Dave Grohl, but the fans still came for me, they were relentless. It was also not helped by the fact that I knew some of them were sleeping/had slept with him.
But in all seriousness, women speaking out is a problem to a lot of people, what is it that is so frightening about a woman talking about her life experience? It often helps other women to see a woman discussing what is happening to them behind closed doors. I wrote about how women are attacked for speaking out two years ago in this piece, though I will warn you that it contains some details about domestic abuse for those who are sensitive about such matters.
But if having read this (haha) Jordyn Blum decides to go ahead with that book deal anyway, I am, of course, always available to ghost her. And if you too want to throw your hat into the ring, you might want to know a little bit more about the job of being a ghostwriter which you can find here:
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The kids must be devastated by his behavior. Her book probably won’t help them. Years from now this will be out of the public eye and there will be just the wreckage of these relationships. Primal relationships to the children. I hope the parents find a private way to navigate respect for complicated feelings. And stay clear of loyalty games with the children. It sounds like he’s not going to vanish on his kids and so that’s complicated for her (and them). Agree with all the feminist points. I am, however, the daughter of bitterly divorced artists, and an outspoken feminist (whose unfinished tell-all novel I found after her death).
I honestly think Torygraph comments are the worst of all the papers broadsheets and tabs