My very first blog post this semester tackled the New York Post’s unjust portrayal of Jessica Simpson and her supposed weight gain. As I had stated then, she wasn’t by any means overweight, but she also wasn’t a stick figure. The abnormally skinny version of Jessica Simpson had been emblazoned in our memories, when she famously donned a pair of skin-tight Daisy Dukes that showed off her months of hard work and sacrifice in the gym.
We can’t fault her for wanting to take a break from such a demanding regimen, but nevertheless the New York Post did, and to the extreme. Negative criticism of one’s weight suggests to anyone who reads and looks at those imagines depicted in the New York Post that gaining a couple of pounds is not okay -in fact, it is the worst thing in the world.
Anyway, it has been a few months and a few pounds lost since this scandal broke out. And now Jessica Simpson is speaking out on how she deals with the intense scrutiny from the media all the time. In a recent interview with Vanity Fair Magazine, Jessica said:
It comes with what I do, and I know that every day the media’s going to challenge me, is going to want to bring me down. But I feel like I’m at such a place that I own myself, and it’s authentic. I own that authentic part of myself, and none of those words are harsh enough to make me believe them. I can’t imagine saying some of the things people have said about me about anybody else. Jessica Simpson
I think that everyone should take a page out of Simpson’s play book. Yes, she did kind of cave when the negative comments originally circulated by hitting the gym and losing 10 lbs. in two weeks -that’s just not normal. However, she hasn’t taken her weight lost to the extreme, like so many other celebrities have done. Simpson is happy, content and proud of her body,and should be upheld as a role model for young girls on how to admire and care for your body.
