Sometimes, a celebrity will find some sponsorship deal that seems to be a perfectly built collaboration. This is one of those things: Mindy Kaling and her curated Amazon Handmade shopping list. Mindy is all about shopping and buying cute things. I don’t like to shop, but I would love to shop with Mindy. Her deal with Amazon meant that she got to curate a list of items from small, independent vendors and highlight independent artisans and small business selling their beautiful items on Amazon. You can see her list here. There are definitely some good Christmas gift ideas. To promote this Amazon Handmade thing, she chatted with People Magazine about holiday traditions and why we won’t see her kids’ faces on Instagram anytime soon.
Why she keeps Katherine & Spencer’s faces off Instagram: “I have no judgment for people in the public eye who share photos and videos of their children. My sense is that [my kids] have no real consent right now to do that. … I feel like I might as well wait until they get old enough so they can tell me if they want to be part of my social media or not. Sometimes it’s just a safety thing. I don’t want to be at the airport and have someone be like, ‘Spencer, Katherine,’ and have them look to the people as though they know them or they’re friends. I think that could be really confusing as a kid. So that’s the reason I’m doing it, but it’s hard because they’re such a huge part of my life. And I’m like any parent where I’m proud of the things they do. I think they’re so cute, and of course, I want other people to see it!”
Holiday traditions from her late mom, Swati. “The biggest tradition I had in my house [growing up] was that for a holiday like Thanksgiving, we dropped everything and just helped my mom as sous chefs. We would come home, I would sit there with her and I would just be endlessly chopping vegetables and peeling vegetables and baking pies. And I think my mom, who was a really busy doctor, someone who didn’t have a lot of hobbies, she immigrated here and just fell in love with basically all of Americana … She loved throwing a huge Thanksgiving and preparing for three or four days beforehand. So, to me, the tradition of, if my kids go to college and they have the week off for Thanksgiving, they don’t come in the day before. I want them there the whole week helping set up, helping clean up the house. And it’s all for a two-hour dinner, but for some reason, it becomes more than that. It’s the bonding.”
Her tip for Christmas presents: “It really helps if you’ve been paying attention to things they’re interested in … I think back on conversations … and go through their Instagram.”
She loves her Amazon Handmade list: “I love shopping, particularly around the holiday time, so that felt really just organic and exciting to me. I’m just super passionate about small businesses and helping them grow and gain exposure. Obviously, I get sent and exposed to a lot of different gifts and clubs and things, and what I liked about these is that they’re handmade from local artisans around the globe. I just love handcrafted items.”
She’s done a good job keeping her kids’ faces off Instagram but she does post photos of the backs of their heads. It will probably get a lot harder for her to keep people from seeing her kids as they get older, and they’re bound to get pap’d once in a while. I think that’s why she’s trying to assume a non-judgmental stance: she can control it only so long, and then eventually she won’t be able to control it and that’s fine.
As for holiday traditions… my Indian father was like that too about America. He loved India, of course, but no zealot like a convert. He loved Thanksgiving and American Christmas traditions, Santa, Rudolph, decorating the tree, all of it. He loved the Founding Fathers too, and early American history. He loved instant mashed potatoes and thought they were one of the best inventions of the past century.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid and Mindy’s Instagram.
I would love to know the story behind her kids names!
I totally agree. I think this should be the norm.
Big fan of Mindy, I own two copies of “are you hanging out without me?” Great read
Did she… name her kids after Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy?
That is exactly what I would do if I were a celebrity with kids. Children deserve as much privacy as possible, until they’re old enough to understand it and decide for themselves.
I highly recommend shopping for handmade and/or local gifts, this year and every year. It means a lot more to an artist/artisan or small business when you purchase something from them, than from a big corporate entity.
Reading about how kids of influencers completely hated that their parents put them in the spotlight, I think this is a great idea. It would be even worse for the child of a celebrity.
I remember when North was born and Kim K said she was going to shield her from the spotlight. Lmao
I would be so mortified if there were baby/childhood pictures of me all over the internet instead of stuffed away in photo albums that are dragged out once a decade. I guess it’s the new normal. At this point, the first generation of kids has grown up having no control over their online presence. But I was such an awkward kid and I love that I’ve always been able to write my own narrative meeting new people. There’s still very little one can Google about me other than my LinkedIn page, which I control the settings on.
This is my approach with my kids. I will share funny stories about things that happen but I’ve given my kids nicknames on my SM accounts because only people who actually know them get to know their names. My older kid will occasionally ask me to share something now, and sometimes I do. Other times we discsuss and I let him know that that isn’t information people need to have about us/him.
I love that! In the early days of social media, think MySpace, I couldn’t believe the stuff some of my childhood friends were posting, like the actual locations of the parks they took their kids too. We were so unsophisticated about social media back then. Parents should really have to take a training course on using it.
Hillary Baldwin should take some notes and stop posting her kids for attention and money. That level of exposure is gross and not healthy. (Also I’m dying for CB coverage of the Baldwin’s train wreck post shooting. That family is truly in crisis and I’m worried about the kids. Hillary and Alec made the whole thing about them and are going batshit crazy.)Mindy seems like such a good mom and fun person.
I think this is a really sensible strategy of Mindy’s – she won’t be able to control it in a few years, but why not try to keep the kid’s world private for as long as possible.
I would also love some coverage of the Balwin situation. I think Hilaria has a personality disorder, so I’m not really surprised she couldn’t keep herself off social media. I really feel for those kids – it doesn’t matter how much money you have, nothing protects you from having a mother like Hilaria.