Throughout her career, Jessica Simpson has been criticized by tabloid media for her fluctuating weight and since she’s had children, it’s only gotten worse. Headline after headline has been written to attack her body and on Wednesday, she went on Today to talk about it.
“[The weight comments] empowered me to rise above and stand up for all the women out there that do have trouble losing the weight,” she told Matt Lauer. (Simpson is now a spokeswoman for Weight Watchers.)
“I just kind of wanted to be a champion for other women and say, ‘We can do this,'” she later added.
To our detriment, we live in a culture where “thin” often equates to “the only beautiful body type” and, while progress is being made (I hope) to show that any type of body can be beautiful (as beauty is completely subjective), it’s not happening overnight. There are likely many woman out there who are inspired by Jessica Simpson’s struggle to lose weight and her accomplishments in ultimately doing so.
Still, though — wouldn’t it be nice if the media criticism, rather than encouraging Simpson to get thinner and help other women do the same, instead encouraged her to tell the tabloids to go fuck themselves because she didn’t need their approval? (Or, if we’re speaking in hypotheticals, wouldn’t it be nice if there was no media criticism about her body, regardless?)
To her credit, she sort of did tell them to fuck off.
“It wasn’t really my priority to please the public and make them feel like I’m supposed to be looking like I did when I was 25,” she said of the time — right after her first baby — when the criticism became most heated.
Good for her, although if you’re looking to go the Jessica Simpson weight loss route (which involves being concern trolled by national tabloids), be warned: fat shaming typically doesn’t work.
