The first thing about Tammy Hembrow that surprises me is that she’s nervous. She doesn't usually do interviews. In preparing to finally sit down with her for No Filter, I went looking for other interviews she'd done. Barely any. So even though she spends a good chunk of her life in front of a camera creating her own content, she's always the one in control of it. She prefers it that way.
Ninety minutes later, when the interview is over and we stand together for a photo, Tammy immediately positions herself to my left after asking if that’s OK. "This is my good side," she explains in a way that's neither self-conscious nor diva.
The woman knows her angles. As I fling my arm around her waist, silently wondering if I have a good side, I notice she's still shaking.
The second surprising thing about Tammy Hembrow is that she arrives for our interview alone. I'm always interested to see who famous people bring with them when they come into the Mamamia office. Entourages range in size. If they’re promoting a TV show, an album or a book, it will usually be a single publicist. If they're a big star, they will usually bring a make-up artist and maybe a hair stylist with them for touch-ups. And if they're a famous businesswoman like Trinny Woodall, Pip Edwards or Camilla Franks, they might also bring their own publicist plus their own social media person to capture behind-the-scenes footage. Running a personal brand in the age of social media means you have to feed the beast with content about yourself. Incessantly. Tammy Hembrow is all of those things and so I expected her to come with at least a medium-sized entourage. A manager. A publicist. A makeup artist. Maybe an assistant.
On the morning of our interview, I was running late and thankfully, so was she. Her 6am flight from the Gold Coast had been delayed, but she still managed to arrive before me and I almost stumbled over her sitting quietly in the lobby on my way up to the office. The publicist from the book publisher arrived at the same time I did, introductions were made and Tammy tried to discreetly ask if she'd have time to change before the interview because she'd spilled coffee all down the singlet top she was wearing under her pale blue shirt. I expected her to have celebrity swagger, but she was clearly embarrassed and a bit flustered in a way I recognise. I spill things a lot too.
Oh, one more thing surprised me. Tammy Hembrow is tiny in that unexpected way famous people often are. She is far smaller than she appears in her photos and there was no sign visible sign of her famous curves. Later, she would tell me she doesn't post photos of her bottom so much anymore and that she didn't know why people make a big deal of it. A few days after our interview, she posted photos of herself in a tiny g-string bikini to promote one of her workout programs called the 6 Week Curve Builder. She looked very different to the woman I’d met IRL.
At first, I honestly thought this was a story about a bottom. Tammy Hembrow has a spectacular bottom according to current beauty standards and for the past decade as a content creator, influencer and entrepreneur, she has posted thousands of photos and videos featuring it prominently in exercise gear, in evening gowns, in lingerie and in swimsuits.
She posts other content too; with her kids, working out and her daily life which is sometimes the same as a regular person (brushing her teeth, making breakfast, changing a nappy, getting ready for work) and other times really not. Like the reel of her running into the ocean at sunrise with her fiance or getting fitted for her Vera Wang couture wedding dress. Keep scrolling and you'll also find videos featuring her getting engaged and giving birth, each for the third time.
Mostly though, it's a slightly whiplash inducing but very recognisable mix of motherhood and sexy fitness that's hugely popular with men who come for the booty shots and young women who come for the reassurance that having a baby doesn't have to mean losing your hotness and that you can indeed erase all signs of pregnancy from your body if you just subscribe to this app and buy that activewear.
There is a lot of controversy around Tammy's bottom (Has she had surgery? Does she digitally alter her photos?) as well as a lot of admiration for it amongst her 21 million followers so it's not weird that it came up in our conversation although I must say it's the first time I've asked "Is your bottom real?" in eight years of doing this podcast.
The thing is, we all currently live in an era where Kim Kardashian and her sisters, along with Beyonce and JLo have shifted beauty standards monumentally from the flat-bum ideal of the 90s to a place where women are risking dangerous, expensive surgery to make their bums bigger with implants or fat transfers.
For the past few years, the desired answer to the question "Does my bum look big in this?" among young women, is an appreciative "Hell yeah".
But this isn’t just a story about a bottom.
Hell no.
What this is, is a story about one of the most successful content creators Australia has ever produced and how Tammy Hembrow utilised both her body and her brain to catapult herself onto the Young Rich List when she was just 26 and who is now estimated to be worth $50m.
The reason she finally agreed to be interviewed is to promote her new book, Show Up, a motivational self-help guide with a light dusting of anecdotes, the most detailed of which is the one about what really happened on that night at that party.
You see, in 2018, Tammy was at Kylie Jenner's 21st birthday party in LA when she collapsed and had to be carried out unconscious, face-down on a stretcher into a waiting ambulance, in full view of paparazzi and everyone with a camera phone.
Undoubtedly a successful and smart business woman, and she's still only 30. Admirable, and a good role model. But famous? Popular in some small segment of the vast web, perhaps, but that's not fame.