- Jessica Simpson opened up about that infamous “mom jeans” photo from 2009, which led to brutal body shaming from the media.
- In her memoir Open Book, Simpson printed a journal entry from that era.
- “I don’t think people always realized ... that words can hurt and stay with you for a lifetime,” she said in a new interview.
You’ve heard that a single negative comment can have permanent impact, but Jessica Simpson knows it to be true. When the reality star and musician entered the spotlight in the ‘90s, she—particularly, her body—was immediately put under a microscope. But things really took a turn in 2009 when she performed in “mom jeans,” prompting the world to call her everything from “curvy” to “Jumbo Jessica” who was “packing on the pounds” and “letting herself go.”
In her memoir Open Book which just re-released in paperback, Simpson shares how it felt to be so vehemently body shamed. She even printed a journal entry from that era. “Today my heart breaks because people say I’m fat,” she wrote, per People. “Why does the cruel opinion of this world get to me? Last week I read back to my journals from 1999 and I beat myself up about how fat I [was] before I even gave the world a chance to…” She continued, writing that she spent “80% of the day” thinking about her body. At the time, the singer was a U.S. size four.
In the years since that viral moment, Simpson, now 40, has undergone much more scrutiny, overcome addiction, gotten remarried, and had three children. And while she certainly didn’t bounce back from the self-doubt that was planted by those egregious headlines, she’s worked hard to learn and adopt self-worth.
“I spent so many years beating myself up for an unrealistic body standard that made me feel like a failure all of the time,” she told People. “I am still a work in progress when it comes to self-criticism, but now I have the tools to quiet those voices in my head when they speak up.”
She continued: “I believe in my heart that a healthy body and a sound mind-body connection are what’s truly important and help me accept imperfections as beauty.”
She’s also happy to see the immense motion toward self-acceptance that has taken over in the last decade, and is hopeful that others like her won’t have to experience the hate that she did.
“There is a wonderful movement for body positivity now and the response to that portion of my story has been overwhelmingly supportive,” she told People. “I don’t think people always realized that there was a human being, a beating heart and working eyes with actual feelings behind those headlines, and that words can hurt and stay with you for a lifetime.”
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Kayla Blanton is a freelance writer-editor who covers health, nutrition, and lifestyle topics for various publications including Prevention, Everyday Health, SELF, People, and more. She’s always open to conversations about fueling up with flavorful dishes, busting beauty standards, and finding new, gentle ways to care for our bodies. She earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Ohio University with specializations in women, gender, and sexuality studies and public health, and is a born-and-raised midwesterner living in Cincinnati, Ohio with her husband and two spoiled kitties.
