While chatting online with a friend that day in July, Hagan was debating the likability of some celebrity spawn.
“I love Suri so much,” she wrote of Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise’s 6-year-old daughter. “I just don’t like any of those Jolie-Pitts.”
Her friend said the Jolie-Pitts “are not very interesting.”
Hagan’s reply: “Omgggg that is exactly the kind of thing I want to post — honest truths about these privileged children. LIKE THAT THEY ARE BORING.”
And Suri’s Burn Book was born.
Suri’s Burn Book, named for the hot-pink tome that wrought so much wreckage on the popular Plastics clique in the 2004 film “Mean Girls,” is a blog that Hagan, a 25-year-old graduate of George Washington University (she received her undergraduate and master’s degrees in public policy from GW), writes from Suri’s perspective. She provides snarky, snobby criticism on Suri’s paparazzi-plagued peers. The blog is a self-proclaimed “study in Suri and the people who disappoint her.” The blog’s tagline: “Just because you don’t have a Ferragamo handbag doesn’t mean you can behave like a child. (I’m looking at you, Shiloh.)”
Suri’s Burn Book launched July 13. Three weeks later, the site was named one of Time magazine’s Tumblrs of the Week. In January, Hagan was approached by an agent and landed a book deal. The result, “Suri’s Burn Book: Well-Dressed Commentary From Hollywood’s Little Sweetheart,” is due out Sept. 4 from Running Press. The 120-page manifesto is “Suri’s guide” to famous families, with chapters devoted to royalty, fashion and Hollywood dynasties.
The blog pairs snapshots of celebrity broods with captions by Hagan-as-Suri. A picture of Holmes carrying Suri on her hip is accompanied by “Don’t worry about me. I make her carry me. These shoes cost more than her car.” Blue Ivy, held sans shoes by her dad Jay-Z, is critiqued with “Going barefoot in Paris is like showing up to the Oscars in a denim miniskirt. A frayed one.” A picture of Suri and her mom at an airport reads, “Fly commercial? You cannot be serious. I am too delicate for peasant travel.”
Hagan has a few ground rules. “I try not to make [the posts] just about appearance. I’m not going to call some kid’s face flat-out ugly. I try to make it about clothes and behavior.”
She also contends that she isn’t violating anyone’s privacy. “I’m really cynical about that,” she said, pointing out that plenty of very famous people — Julia Roberts, Tina Fey — have kids you couldn’t pick out of a lineup. Hagan’s goal, she says, isn’t to exploit. It’s to mock exploitation. “I’m trying to poke fun at how [their parents] trot them out,” she said.
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