She's now in a place to take her career to the next level––that is, to grow a successful empire outside of reality television, a la Jessica Simpson or Kim Kardashian. So far, all of her ventures have been paved by the infamous name that Snooki built––and all of them are a means to leave that name behind.Read more: How Raven-Symoné Became This Summer's Biggest Contrarian
Nicole the Mom is how Polizzi and her team have been selling the revamped, mature Snooki over the past few years. She is the woman who has traded after-hours in a tacky rooftop jacuzzi for snuggly evenings with the kids in the Jersey suburbs; who documented the births of both her children and her wedding on Snooki & Jwoww; who shared her pregnancy fears in her first memoir, Baby Bumps; and who says the end goal of all of this is to make enough money to be at home with her kids more without the cameras.But motherhood only partly defines the woman before me today. The 27-year-old Polizzi I watch eat a low-cal spinach-and-egg-white omelet no longer wears a bump in her hair or fuzzy footwear. She's in a full shield of well-contoured makeup and an angelic white dress from her clothing line that modestly hugs her toned body. She often looks at me square in the eye, as if she's trying to get a read on me. I can count on one hand the number of times she smiles. The youthful breeziness of the Jersey Shore goofball is gone, and in its place is a woman made by the repercussions of being herself for an audience that wasn't particularly kind to her. Nicole the Mom is a tough bitch. She's also a survivor.That's a character I played, and I don't play that character anymore.
"The double standard is not fair, and I don't really get it," she tells me. "I've always been a sexual person. If I wanted to hook up with a guy in high school, I would, but other girls hated that and said I was such a whore. Probably when they went to college, they probably slept with just as many dudes. So, I mean, I've always been confident and I'm going to do what I want and I don't care what you say, but it's still not fair."Her partying also made her the target of scrutiny. Much like how people often hate Kim Kardashian for "getting famous off a sex tape," Snooki is often despised for getting famous off being drunk. "I would hate me too," she writes in Strong Is the New Sexy. "Like, Bitch, you are rich and famous because you like to drink. Why couldn't that be me? I just got lucky. I don't get why my luck takes away from a complete stranger's happiness, though."The double standard is not fair, and I don't really get it. I've always been a sexual person.
"If I didn't go through bullying in high school, I probably would've broken down," Polizzi says about all the nasty comments she's endured over the years. When she was a freshman, a group of senior girls often tormented her and her friends, spreading rumors, pranking them, and wearing tee shirts bearing messages that called them "trash" or "sluts." "But the fact that I went through that, I was like, 'Fuck you, guys, I'm great.' That definitely set me up for being famous."I would hate me too. Like, Bitch, you are rich and famous because you like to drink. Why couldn't that be me?
When I ask her about her book Strong Is the New Sexy––a girl-power manifesto for the mall crowd and a place where Nicole the Mom and Tough Survivor Snooki meet (it's also aptly subtitled "My Kickass Story on Getting My 'Formula for Fierce'")––I expect to get some stock answers emphasizing the physical aspect of strength, like exercise and diet tips. But she tells me that she wanted the book to be inspirational for women, to empower them against others who want to bring them down."For women now, it's already bad, so I'm figuring when Giovanna's an adult it's going to be worse," she says about her year-old daughter eventually having to navigate body-image and sexual pressures. "So my job, basically, is to make her a strong person, a strong hardass bitch."If I could wish one thing for my new daughter, it's that she be as tough as nails and strong as an ox. Being a woman in this world requires it.
As for Polizzi's plans to take over the world—or, at the very least, least secure her brand and family's finances into the future—she hopes to emulate the trajectory of Simpson, another former MTV reality star who was once brutalized by the media and whose retail collection now takes in about $1 billion a year. Polizzi's clothing line, Snooki Love, which is similar in and price point to Forever 21, and its full-figured offshoot, Curve, can be found online at her Snooki Shop. But she also recently launched Lovanna, her more contemporary, sophisticated line, purposely leaving her trademark character off the label because she realized big-box and department stores "don't want the Snooki name," she says.She also continues to do her podcast, "Naturally Nicole," as practice for next goal, her own talk show, and is in early talks to produce the film adaptation of Exit Zero, a novel about the apocalypse beginning in Jersey, essentially "a Sharknado-type series" about zombies, she says. In this way, you could say she does know her brand––low-brow for the masses yet genius in its sensationalism––and that beneath that soul-cutting stare, Polizzi has a great, dark sense of humor about herself. (These days on Twitter, when a troll tweets stuff like "Lord help that woman. Trying way too hard to be relevant again," she reposts their comments with a light-hearted, self-deprecating comeback: "Gurl let me live. The lord needs to help others way more than my irrelevant ass.")With women, in general, I think we're catty and we need to relax. If we band together, we can take over the world.
In the meantime, she is currently shooting two reality shows. One is with Farley for Verizon's free Awestruck channel aimed at young moms, and the other is LaValle's idea, which she can't disclose yet. For now, reality TV remains the most effective way to remind people she's Nicole the Mom, not Snooki the Screw Up. Her popular social media accounts and appearances in various media help convey the message, too.Though it takes Polizzi a while to warm up, she eventually does by the end of our hour-plus meal ("Let's see pictures of your kid," she says, gesturing for my phone). I ask if she likes this part of her job, having to bullshit with journalists and the like. When people won't go out and promote, "that's when you know people just don't care about their career," she says. "If you're out promoting and having fun, that means you don't really want to be successful. Some people just take that for granted. Like, 'Oh, I'll have sales.' No, you won't. You have to do the work."Read more: Looking Back at MTV's 'The Hills'