Review: Mean Baby: A Memoir of Growing Up

Mean Baby: A Memoir of Growing Up by Selma Blair
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Actress Selma Blair alleges here that a former Cranbrook dean touched her inappropriately.

A few months into school, the Dean’s embraces started to linger. He remarked I was pretty. Maybe inappropriate, but of course he was also married. To a woman I respected and found lovely. In fact, he and his wife once took me and my three best friends, Sue, Kelly, and Frances—we called ourselves the Fab Four—away for the weekend to their beach home in Tawas, Michigan.

There may have been more than one "Dean", but this is a specific time and place and tied to a fairly specific property. I am surprised "the Dean" has not been outed. I wonder if he is dead, dissembling, or brought down by similar crimes... There is worse sexual trauma recalled here: multiple rapes. Selma shares this and in narrating her own audiobook allowing her voice to break she delivers an impactful, moving life story. Along with alcoholism the specter of MS haunts her life unacknowledged until she learns of it and confronts it. With stem cell therapy and other help, she really turns things around moving away from self-destructive behavior and toward being a responsible mother and advocate for those that suffer from MS. It is fascinating to me that she has in her life relied so much on tea readers and other psychics, one of which predicted her future role as some kind of advocate. Still, sharing this perhaps questionable behavior is part of her candor in this affecting, moving biography of a life growing up in Michigan and building a career in film.

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