Armpit Botox, postpartum depression, extramarital fantasies—nothing is off the table when Tinx and Sarah Hoover sit down for lunch. Both Page Six fixtures released books this year that explore the inner lives of women and push against the societal expectations that seek to constrain them. First, Hoover dropped The Motherload, a memoir about developing, diagnosing, and emerging from postpartum depression. Then, in May, Tinx, known to her followers as “TikTok’s older sister,” released Hotter in the Hamptons, her fiction debut about a rivalry between two women who share a fence out East. Ahead of its release, they connected for a fittingly no-holds-barred midday catch-up.
Sarah Hoover: You have a fucking book coming out, girl.
Tinx: You just had a book come out. We’re just two bookie gals.
Hoover: We know the pain, and the glory—so much glory. You’re going to [California]. I love to see a girl get what she wants in life. Here’s my problem: I sweat a lot, especially in direct sunlight.
Tinx: I’m sweating a lot lately because I tried a new birth control. Have you ever done Botox in your armpits? Does it work?
Hoover: It makes you not sweat, but you still smell, which is weird. First of all, it really hurts. It’s not just three little pricks in your forehead. Who knew armpits were sensitive? It lasts for four months or whatever. I’m like, Well this isn’t worth it. Armpit sweat isn’t actually my problem. It’s the fact that sweat is running down my thighs and down my forehead in public. My goddaughter—who’s the most beautiful, perfect, 24-year-old, coolest angel on the planet—is Italian, and she’s baking in the 100-degree sun in Corsica and would not have a drop of sweat on her ever. It’s so cool to be that pretty.
Tinx: I love those girls. Those girls are the truth, man.
Hoover: It’s a different kind of human. That’s just not me. I was trying to remember how we met and I truly cannot.
Tinx: It’s killing me that we can’t remember. I feel like maybe it was in Paris… Let’s just say we met in Paris because that feels very us and very fun. We both really care about women, and we both really care about opening up conversations by using our own experience, which to me is so powerful because I think when I was younger, if I heard a girl talking about something it made it so much less scary.
Hoover: Any time I’ve ever been embarrassed about something and then said it out loud, 10 other girls were like, “Oh yeah, me too,” and you’re like, Wait, what? I spent years hating that about myself and turns out that’s totally normal and everyone feels this way. Being in your own silence and shame, it’s so lonely. If l’ve learned anything as I’ve aged, it’s that these experiences are much more universal than we give them credit for. Once you say something out loud, it just takes its power away so fast.
Tinx: l always go back to my original kernel [for Hotter in the Hamptons]: This girl asked me on [Reddit] AMA, “Tinx, I watch lesbian porn; is that normal?” The next day, someone was like, “Tinx, I have to think about being with a girl to finish with my boyfriend. Is that normal?” I want girls to be excited about those thoughts and fantasies and not have any shame around them.
Hoover: Do you think it feels generational to you? When you talk to girls who are 20, is the situation dire for them? Sometimes I feel like it’s worse for girls like me who are in their late 30s, who lived under the misogynist oppression of the Britney Spears era of sexuality.
Tinx: We grew up in a time where shame was the name of the game. If you go back and read the magazines that we were given when we were younger, there was so much shame about everything—about your fantasies, about your body, about your private parts, about your hair, about your ass. All of us are still dismantling that internally and figuring out who we are. Every generation has their shit, but I do have to say I think we millennials got a big dose of shame. Who did you look up to when you were younger?
Hoover: I’m a huge ballet nerd and an art history person, so I was always obsessed with artists and dancers. I would nerd out about Wendy Whelan in the New York City Ballet. The Internet was nascent, but I would buy every book about her and subscribe to dance magazines. The most pop culture icon would be someone like Gloria Steinem.
Tinx: She’s a great role model. What do you think about being a role model for your daughter?
Hoover: I feel a lot of responsibility because I remember so distinctly the ways that men broke me when I was young. I remember the first time I got checked out by a guy. I remember watching men check out other women. l remember recognizing that I was a sex object, and I know how that impacted my self-esteem and my sense of self. I cannot let that happen to my sweet, truly innocent small child.
I also didn’t have an open dialogue with my mom about sex at all. It’s still hard to even say the word sex around her, which is obviously stupid because she knows I’ve had it and I have two kids. It really failed me because I didn’t have anyone [to whom] I could say, “This guy I dated in high school was totally abusive in retrospect.” I had shitty boyfriends after that, and I wish that I had a mom that I was friends with on a certain level who could have said to me, “Babe, this dude sucks.”
Tinx: I love that phrase “It’s your mom’s first time on Earth, too.” I think that generation of women didn’t have anywhere to turn. They were just doing their best to keep it all together. Have you read any parenting books that you actually took stuff from?
Hoover: In my first pregnancy, when I had postpartum [depression], I was an ostrich who buried my head in the sand and was scared to read anything about parenthood. But I love Aliza Pressman’s book, The Five Principles of Parenting: Your Essential Guide to Raising Good Humans. Most of them I can’t even get through because I also don’t live a life like most moms do.
I need parenting strategies for taking a 7-month-old to Bali. I have a therapist for my mental health and I have a therapist for how I parent. I have a parenting-specific therapist, which I realize someone is gonna be like, Oh my God, rich white lady. I get it, but the thing I’ve definitely learned is if you can fucking afford it, there’s someone out there to fix any problem.
in your life?
