Singer and sometimes actress Jessica Simpson has paid the price of beauty, and now she’s examining people’s obsession with looking good.
She made headlines last year when photos of her performing suggested she might have gained a few pounds. That sparked a national debate on TV news channels, talk shows and in print asking if Simpson was, indeed, fat.
The 29-year-old has decided to turn the tables on questions about how she looked. The result is a new show called, “Jessica Simpson’s The Price of Beauty.” The show premiered Monday and will air weekly on VH1.
Simpson travels the globe with two friends, hair stylist Ken Paves and former assistant Cacee Cobb, to examine people’s efforts to measure up to their society’s standard of beauty.
The goal is to empower women to accept themselves and ultimately understand that no one, not even celebrities, are perfect.
Paves points out that despite the scrutiny on her weight, Simpson continued performing and doing her job.
“Imagine if the whole world is talking about you,” Paves said. “She still followed through, never stopped and nobody ever said, ‘That’s a strong girl, that’s a brave girl.’ I was disappointed.”
It wasn’t always easy, Simpson said.
“You can’t walk anywhere without thinking, ‘I wonder if they think I’m fat …. I wonder if they’ve read that story,” Simpson said. “I couldn’t help it. And I think that once I realized it wasn’t going to stop, I had to find a way to accept it, and I had to find a way to use it.”
On “Price of Beauty,” Simpson and her friends meet a woman in Thailand who burned herself permanently from bleaching her skin lighter. They talk with a former Paris model who starved herself to under 100 pounds to be thin.
Viewers witness a deeper side to Simpson than they saw on her former MTV reality show “Newlyweds” with then-husband Nick Lachey.
“I’m very vulnerable on the show. I’m very open. I don’t have anything to hide,” Simpson said. “I want people to know I am just a normal girl that faces normal issues just like everyone else.”
But the show is not all life lessons and sadness. There are lighter moments, too, when Simpson and her pals try to immerse themselves in local culture.
“In Mumbai, we drank cow urine because it detoxes you and it’s good for your skin,” Simpson said. “I puked that up like all over the place.”
Paves got a Brazilian wax when the three visited Brazil.
“I was screaming, cussing, kicking,” he said. “I was in tears, red and raw, I couldn’t walk.”
Simpson said she’s taking a break from music now to focus on the show, which she hopes will get picked up for another season. Next, she plans to start a foundation for girls to help with self-esteem.
She wants to empower young women to accept themselves and ultimately understand that no one, not even celebrities, are perfect.
“I don’t look like the girl on the cover of the magazine,” Simpson said. “I do not look like my covers. My covers! They airbrush me.”
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“The fact I was famous last year for gaining 10 pounds is ridiculous and really sad,” the curvy, healthy-looking singer told Oprah Winfrey in an interview telecast yesterday.
Simpson, 29, said nothing has hurt her more than the fat jokes she’s had to endure since she performed at a chili cook-off in Florida on Jan. 25, 2009, wearing the now-infamous jeans and a chunky leopard-print belt.
“It would bother any woman, I would think,” she said.
It wasn’t bad enough that she became the butt of tasteless jokes — her extra pounds packed on feelings of guilt.
“I didn’t want to sit down and talk with anybody about it, because I felt guilty,” she said. “I felt like, you know, if people look at me and maybe they’re a size bigger, they look at themselves and they think they’re fat.
“I don’t want other people to feel fat if they’re a size 6 or whatever size they are.”
The 5-foot-3 Simpson claims that those “mom jeans” were only a size 4 and that she fluctuates between size 4 and 6 — although OK! magazine reported last year that she told a friend she had ballooned to an 8.
“It’s a really hard thing for me to talk about,” she said. “Because I celebrate women of all sizes, and I think we’re all beautiful.”
Jessica appeared on “Oprah” to hype her upcoming VH1 reality show, “The Price of Beauty,” where she and her friends globe-trot to examine various local standards of beauty.
Simpson fought back tears on Oprah, recounting meeting an anorexic French model who had withered to 62 pounds.
“I cry . . . it makes me very emotional,” Simpson told her host.
“Just the pressure that women feel to be thin . . . The pressure that the media puts on women is so unfair, and so disgusting . . . and if I can do something to make it better, that’s the reason why I did the [VH1] show.”
Jessica Simpson hates people knowing what she is like in bed.
The singer-and-actress was extremely unhappy with ex-boyfriend John Mayer’s recent interview in which he described her as “sexual napalm” because she prefers to keep her private life under wraps.
She said: “I don’t want people to know how I am in bed.”
The 29-year-old star also spoke about the criticism she has received regarding her fluctuating weight, and almost broke down in tears as she described how much the comments hurt her.
Speaking to talk show host Oprah Winfrey for a programme due to air in the tomorrow, she said: “It’s a really hard thing for me to talk about.”
Last month, John caused controversy when he gave an interview to Playboy magazine describing Jessica – who he dated for nine months until May 2007 – as like “a drug”.
He added: “And drugs aren’t good for you, if you do lots of them. Yeah, that girl is like crack cocaine to me.
“Sexually it was crazy. That’s all I’ll say. It was like napalm, sexual napalm. ”
The 32-year-old musician later apologised for the interview, in which he also used the word n****r and admitted to still loving his most recent ex-girlfriend Jennifer Aniston.
No matter where you are in the world, chances are, you know Jessica Simpson is no stranger to the spotlight.
Her music, movies, television shows and eponymous collection of shoes, clothes, bags etc. has kept her in America’s eye, all while being followed and scrutinized since she released her first hit single at the age of 19.
In her new VH1 docu-series, “Jessica Simpson’s The Price of Beauty,” premiering on Monday, March 15th at 10PM ET/PT, Jessica and her closest friends embark on a worldwide tour, traveling to Thailand, France, Mumbai, Uganda, Morocco, Japan, Brazil, and then back home to the United States on a journey of enlightenment to discover to what constitutes beauty around the globe.
*Photo credit: Joe Simpson
The singer-and-actress’ raunchy dancing at Hollywood nightspot Jane’s House reportedly caught the eye of a group of male revellers, but when one got too close to her, a man she was sitting with – who she was supposedly “on a date” with – intervened, causing a furious argument.
An onlooker told website Radar Online: “She was really sexy, she’s a great dancer, she really knows how to move her body. A passing group of fraternity-type guys strolled by and started ogling the show.
“One of them seemed pretty wasted, and he put his hands on her waist and tried to pull her into him. Jessica looked uncomfortable until the guy friend she had been flirting from her entourage with stepped in and said, ‘Hey, I don’t think she wants anyone touching her.’ ”
According to the eyewitness, things then escalated and Jessica was forced to seek out security to help diffuse the situation.
The source added: “The guy was clearly offended and told Jessica’s friend to ‘mind his own business’. Jessica looked kind of panicked and she didn’t know what to say, so she just sort of wriggled her way back to her seat.
“But now the guys were screaming at each other. There were a lot of expletives flying back and forth. Jessica stood up and peeked her head outside the VIP section. It looked like she was looking for a security guard.”
After a security guard arrived on the scene, the row settled down.
Billy Corgan is finally explaining the nature of his relationship with Jessica Simpson – sort of.
“She asked me to help her out on the theme song for her new TV show,” the Smashing Pumpkins frontman told the Chicago Tribune of Simpson’s new VH1 show, “The Price of Beauty.” “[The show] has an interesting concept. She goes around the world to show how different people perceive beauty. In some cultures, bigger is better. In some, smaller is better. It’s interesting.”
Corgan, 42, said he ending up writing part of the show’s tune, which he described as “an alternative rock edge, but it’s still very pop-y.”
The unlikely duo has had people buzzing since December after they were first spotted out together in New York. Despite an E! News source claiming the two were “officially dating,” Corgan shies away from the romance rumors.
“The stuff that I’ve seen doesn’t have any bearing to the reality that I’m in,” he told the Tribune. “It’s like being in a cartoon. It has nothing to do with what’s really going on or how I feel.”
On the other hand, Simpson didn’t hold back her feelings towards love during her interview in the March issue of Allure magazine.
“I definitely will marry an artistic man,” the singer, 29, told the mag. “I don’t have a physical type. I have an emotional type. When you have yourself together, I don’t care what you look like at all”
The singer and actress who counts NFL player Tony Romo and womanizing singer John Mayer among her ex boyfriends, and used to be married to singer Nick Lachey – said she wants her next husband to be fit into her “emotional type”.
She said: “My next husband will be an artistic man. It will show you the colors of my character, the person that I fall in love with next.
“I don’t even have a type! I don’t have a physical type. I have an emotional type.”
Jessica – who was most recently romantically linked to Billy Corgan – also said she would never appear naked in any role, and is saving herself for her next love.
She added: “I will never do nudity. I don’t care how dark and intellectual the role could be, you know. I don’t care if I could get an Oscar for it, I’m not going to do it.
“Those accolades mean nothing to me. I don’t think people deserve to see what’s under my clothing. That’s only for my next husband ha ha ha!”
The ‘Come On Over’ singer – who gave up country music in April 2009 after a widely criticized move from her pop roots to the genre in 2007 – also reflected on her upcoming 30th birthday, admitting her life has turned out differently to how she thought when she was young.
She told Allure magazine: “I never really thought, growing up, ‘What am I gonna be like when I’m 30?’
“I just kind of thought I had it figured out; I’m going to be this great pop star, have my songs on the radio, be married, and have babies.
“But things can be taken away from you. A song can not be played on the radio. An album can not work.”
