Molly Ringwald is now Pretty in Print.

Featured, Human Issues — By ken on May 4, 2010 at 6:41 pm

1980s teen screen icon Molly Ringwald is back in focus with not only a television series but also a book.

Molly Ringwald became popular with teenage audiences in the 1980s, as a result of her starring roles in the John Hughes movies Sixteen Candles (1984), The Breakfast Club (1985), and Pretty in Pink (1986). She has returned to the public eye with her role as Anne Juergens in the highly popular ABC Family channel television series “The Secret Life of the American Teenager”. In this role she plays a mother and wife.

In April 2010, Ringwald published her first book, “Getting the Pretty Back” with It Books (HarperCollins Publishers).

According to the book description…

The iconic Molly Ringwald shares intimate stories and candid advice in this fun, stylish, and sexy girlfriend’s guide to life.

To her millions of fans Molly Ringwald will forever be sixteen. As the endearing and witty star of the beloved John Hughes classics Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Pretty in Pink, Molly defined teenage angst, love, and heartbreak. While remembered eternally as the enviable high school princess Claire, or the shyly vulnerable Samantha, Molly is now a wife and mother, and just celebrated her fortieth birthday. Facing a completely new, angst-inducing time in her life, she is embracing being a woman, wife, mother of three, actress, and best friend with her trademark style, candor, and humor.

In this book Molly encourages every woman to become “the sexiest, funniest, smartest, best-dressed, and most confident woman that you can be” by sharing personal anecdotes and entertaining insights about the struggle to get through the murky milestones and identity issues that crop up long after prom ends. Whether she’s discussing sex and beauty, personal style, travel and entertaining, motherhood, or friendship, Molly embodies the spirit of being fabulous at every age, and reminds us all that prettiness is a state of mind: it’s “the part of you that knows what you really want, that takes risks.”

Getting the Pretty Back is sure to charm women of all ages with its unforgettably personal, refreshingly outspoken take on life, love, and, of course, finding that perfect red lipstick. . . .

Molly Ringwald Pretty in Print

AssociatedPress May 3, 2010
Actress Molly Ringwald is talking about her new book, ‘Getting the Pretty Back,’ in which she embraces her 40s.

Molly provides a fresh perspective on dealing with aging, overcoming insecurities and blowing up “like a water balloon” during pregnancy.

An excerpt…

Chapter one: Isn’t it pretty to think so

Early on during my first pregnancy, a female acquaintance of mine told me, “you better hope she isn’t a girl, ’cause she’ll suck the pretty out of you!”
I sort of laughed. Sort of.

In a few short weeks, I found out that the baby was a girl. A few weeks after that, I was absolutely sure that the woman was right.

I was not a particularly attractive pregnant person. Every woman I know has wanted to be ‘beautifully pregnant’: the type of cover-girl pregnant where you can’t tell from behind — it’s only until you turn and reveal the perfect bump hovering above your Manolos that you are with child.

Me? I blew up like a water balloon (thanks to a semicommon ailment, preeclampsia … and a troubling, powerful fondness for “macho nachos”). The freckles on my face decided to band together and form a pigment block party, and my ankles swelled as if I’d been stung by a hive of particularly vindictive bees.

In the months after I delivered Mathilda, I would catch glimpses of myself in the mirror, each time thinking the same thing: Is that me? I couldn’t get over the heft of my body. I would breast-feed my daughter and look down in horror to find that my breasts were larger than her head.

My husband came home from work one day to discover me in the bedroom, dissolved in tears.

“It’s true! It’s true …”

“What’s true?” he asked, alarmed.

“She got it all. She sucked the pretty out of me …”

I’m sure I’m not the only woman who has felt this way, and obviously it isn’t only motherhood that can give you this feeling. It can be a relationship gone south, a stressful job, weight gain. What makes it so disturbing when it is motherhood, however, is the completely irrational feeling that your loss is someone else’s gain. Something that is so associated with something so wonderful. The giving of life. It’s the ultimate bittersweet sensation.

Turning 40 for Moll was sort of an angst-ridden time and she wanted to write a book that is really light and inspirational and uplifting and fun and colourful. A book about being a woman rather than a girl.

As a result her book is divided into nine chapters, with each tackling the various elements of womanhood. For example, motherhood, friendship, love, fitness etc.

Molly Ringwald married Panio Gianopoulos, a Greek-American writer and book editor, in 2007. They have a daughter, Mathilda Ereni (born October 22, 2003), and twins, Adele Georgiana and Roman Stylianos (born July 10, 2009). Her pregnancy was written into the storyline of “The Secret Life of the American Teenager”.

Panio Gianopoulos is her second husband and younger than her. He recently published an melancholic essay about romancing older women called “Confessions of a Boy Toy”.

American Teen grown up: Molly Ringwald

Go behind the scenes in Molly Ringwald’s shoot for TV Guide Magazine to promote her new show THE SECRET LIFE OF THE AMERICAN TEENAGER. She waxes poetic about her time as the teenage ’80s icon and being drawn back into that world.