Perhaps only the hardened millennial girl willing to admit her age to herself will concede to acknowledging that Jessica Simpson was a pretty big fucking deal in the early 00s. From the release of 1999’s ultra schmaltzy “I Wanna Love You Forever” (played at the end of junior high and high school dances alike) to the debut of a show that would become part of MTV’s golden era of reality TV, Nick and Jessica: Newlyweds, Simpson held her own among the more popular Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. Yet, ultimately, isn’t it a tell-all from the former that we’d all be more interested in reading? Something that could inform us of just how much Britney was laughing her ass off when the media was reporting on her staunch virginity despite the fact that a dude like Justin Timberlake wasn’t going to stand for that (and, to be honest, Brit lost her V-card long before Justin came along). Or what substances she was really on during that whole hanging out with Paris Hilton/head-shaving era.
Alas, because Britney has never been one to desire being overly in touch with her emotions lest she take the risk of being near an umbrella that might prompt her to go too far in expressing her true feelings, it’s likely we’ll never get a “real” story straight from the horse’s mouth. Mainly because that horse left her body long ago in order to cope with her reality. Simpson, arguably, did the same for a while by way of keeping herself pumped with a steady flow of diet pills (at the suggestion of the then Dr. Luke-esque Tommy Mottola, head of Simpson’s label, Columbia) and alcohol (an addiction that grew after enough time spent with the freek-a-leek that is John Mayer). With trauma at every phase of her life, including preadolescence when she was sexually abused by a female friend she would have sleepovers with (and, let’s be honest, the added trauma of not making the cut on the Mickey Mouse Club while Brit and Xtina did), Simpson’s need to retreat into the haze that only near blackout drunkenness could facilitate escalated to a point where, as she rehashes, she couldn’t even dress her children in their costumes for Halloween of 2017, the year members of “the help” affixed her Willie Nelson’s beard to her face as she “zoned out” after taking her first drink at 7:30 a.m.
It was the same year that she, despite initially thinking that perhaps she was too young to write a memoir already, decided that considering all she had been through, she had enough to say to do it, thus, “…when I started to go through all the depth of the pain that I was experiencing, I realized I was pretty rock bottom.” And there’s nothing Jessica Simpson’s particular brand of American audience loves more than a tale of redemption–of overcoming personal struggle quietly while in the spotlight and then talking about it in an even bigger spotlight later. Which Simpson is all too ready to do as she touches on such subjects as her premature marriage to Nick Lachey, strained when they became better at performing as a married couple than actually being one when the cameras weren’t on. And then there is the cad-like behavior of notorious fuckboy John Mayer to address, who grossly referred to her bedroom skills as being tantamount to “sexual napalm.” Mayer’s tendency to make her feel like she was either 1) not smart enough for him (as though Mayer is some kind of known intellectual) or 2) needed to bend over backwards in order to please him (something that likely extended into the boudoir) is what led to her knocking back the drinks in order to curb her anxiety and take some of the edge off. The two began dating in ‘06, so that should give you a timeline of how her eventual alcoholism escalated.
Speaking to the strides the music industry has made since the days of churning out cookie cutter pop princesses on the regular, Simpson addresses a conversation she had with Mottola when she was seventeen and trying to get signed. When he told her she still needed to lose fifteen more pounds in order to be considered, she tried to rebuff him, only to be told, “That’s what it takes to be Jessica Simpson.” So it is that the manifestation of bifurcating one’s personality and corporeal self into “the pop star” and some semblance of the original being behind closed doors is concretely evidenced with particular regard to this epoch. Maybe this is part of the reason she stepped back from music in favor of an “easier” route: fast fashion in the form of the Jessica Simpson Collection, ultimately purchased and licensed by Vince Camuto, allowing for even less involvement on Simpson’s part, which is, let’s be honest, part of the reason it’s been so successful as it’s been licensed out to other entities across the globe all while “adhering to the Jessica Simpson lifestyle and aesthetic.” Ironically, the head of content, Ruth Chapple, at Stylus Fashion would remark of people’s gravitation toward this particular “celebrity brand,” “She’s wholesome and has Middle America-ness. She doesn’t drink to excess, gamble, devil worship, or snort cocaine off of Terry Richardson.” Chapple had yet to read the tell-all.
That the fashion industry, too, puts a premium on thinness would also fit in with Simpson’s mania over her weight throughout the 00s. So plagued was she by the obsession to be the level of thin required by the pop music juggernaut, she started intermixing sleeping pills into her diet pill regimen (how very Marilyn), recalling, “I started hearing voices when I was alone at night, waiting for the sleeping pill to kick in ‘Do more sit-ups, fat ass… By the time we got to the release of my second album single ‘Irresistible,’ I was down to 103 pounds. Everyone went on about how great I looked, but I couldn’t enjoy it because I was so hungry.”
So were Britney and Christina, but it seemed they had no trouble being photographed and videoed stuffing their faces with various fast food emblems (Britney herself having several famous “sessions,” including separate ones involving a taco and fries). That both of these pop stars would also go on to have their own weight gain problems just as Simpson (ballooning to 240 pounds at one point) is telling of the respective mind fucks each “product” endured. Except, perhaps in Simpson’s case, it was even more contradictory as Mottola instructed her to be the “anti-sex appeal” versions of Britney and Christina–one of the chief reasons she declared her intentions to remain abstinent until marriage (also possibly part of the reason why she married Nick Lachey so early), and unlike Britney, actually made good on her word. And, again, this is another reason why Britney’s tell-all would be, let’s be honest, much more explosive. Come on, a neener-neener rehashing from her perspective about how she was banging on the reg while insisting to the media she was pop’s virgin princess? So much more scintillating.
Even so, we oughtn’t turn our noses up at what Jessica Simpson has to offer, despite the fact that it’s called something as absurd-in-its-mundane-faux-cleverness as Open Book (what would Britney’s be, Dear Diary?). Because, for the foreseeable future, it seems like she’s going to be the only one from the era of bubblegum pop (before the bubble burst around the mid-/late 00s along with the housing market) willing to talk about the then unspeakable fuckery she endured. Plus, she’s clearly still trying to pay back the many lawsuits incurred during the Dessert Beauty era with the money from this book. For those who don’t know, Dessert was a line of “edible beauty products” with such Madonna/whore warring names as Whipped Body Cream, Juicy and Creamy fragrance scents and Deliciously Kissable Belly Button Love Potion. And one can only dream she might address the short-lived existence of this “company” in the book, but probably won’t because it’s one of those “what happens in the 00s stays in the 00s” phenomena. Incidentally, this is precisely why Britney will never talk.
In this sense, a tell-all from Jessica is partial vindication for always being “filler,” since her first record came after hit albums by Spears and Aguilera, which meant, from a press point of view, Simpson was a footnote, another version of the same thing. For, as a 2009 Vanity Fair article phrased the analogy of Simpson’s pop career competition, “You have McDonald’s, you have Burger King, then you have Hardee’s.” On this note, Simpson commented, “My album was different [from the others]. I released a ballad first. I wasn’t dancing and doing that whole thing. I wanted to set myself apart. But I was always third runner-up.” Not this time though–unless Spears releases her own damn well-lidded story.
