I embraced my fear this time and made it less about my experience, and more about understanding what these men and women were facing. That night I slept in the barracks with my little angel figurine to watch me.
“See, Jess?” I said aloud to myself. “You’re growing up.”
IN NOVEMBER, TONY BOUGHT A HOUSE NEAR TEXAS STADIUM, SO I BEGAN to spend more time there when I wasn’t working. I would stay with him for a few days, and then go back out on the road for an event or to work on the Jessica Simpson Collection. When I started talking about Dallas as my home base, my friends didn’t understand it, but I was trying out normal life with a truly committed relationship. If John texted or emailed, I would hold up my phone and tell Tony immediately. He knew the hold John had over me, and it was like telling your sponsor when you’re triggered. He’d seen how I reacted when John randomly showed up at my parents’ Halloween party in Encino. I had no idea he was coming and was shocked. I had gone full-out, dressed as Chewbacca from Star Wars, fur all over my face. I was having a good time, safe with my family, and then there he was. My heart was in my chest, and I turned around—trying to blend into the crowd, a five-foot-three girl dressed as Chewbacca. Not how you want to run into your ex with your current boyfriend standing right there. John routinely used his friendship with Ashlee’s then husband, Pete Wentz from Fall Out Boy, as an excuse to stay in the Simpson family orbit. My parents knew what he had done to me, but John was always so charming. They also knew that I still loved John, and before I got married to Tony, I needed to either have closure or go back at it again.
Tony wouldn’t come out and admit it, but I know he worried I would leave him. One of the few parameters he put on the relationship was actually a big one: He didn’t want me to do any movies that required an on-camera kiss, which basically ruled out any romantic comedy, the type of movie for which I was most likely to be cast. I get it, some people can’t handle another person making out with their girlfriend—even for work—but there were only so many plucky fish-out-of-water stories with no male romantic leads. I think it was more about how he would be perceived, than the love scene actually happening. What would people think of him for allowing that to happen?
He was less vocal about his real fear that, given my past and my proven ability to fall in love on a film set, I would do it again. I didn’t have a good defense for that, I’ll admit. “Your honor, the prosecution would like to invite the following actors to the stand . . .” But I would never have done that to Tony.
When my friends came to Dallas to visit, I would get them rooms at the Four Seasons or Hotel ZaZa. They wondered why they couldn’t stay at Tony’s, since his home had six bedrooms. But I was basically living in a frat house. He had his high school buddies there, always on the couch eating pizza. I remember the moment I realized they were all playing the Madden NFL video game and Tony was playing himself. It was just so bizarre.
Decorating was also not his thing, and I wasn’t interested in overstepping and didn’t have time to anyway. For a long time, he had garbage bags up on the windows instead of blinds. It wasn’t that he was cheap, it never occurred to him to bother. He would have $350,000 checks as bookmarks next to the toilet, leaving them uncashed.
But I liked the easiness of Dallas, where I rarely saw paparazzi. I spent a lot of time with my old Sunday school teacher, Carol Vanderslice. She was as nonjudgmental as she was back before all the fame, and we fell back into the rhythm of me being able to confide concerns and hear back solid advice founded in a practical faith. She was one of the only people who knew how hurt I was that Tony refused to stick up for me. I’d taken to wearing a blue jersey on game days and told everyone it was that pink jersey that was cursed, not me. Things started to get better, but still when I went to the games, I would be so tense and twisted up watching from the box that the next day I would be sore.
In so many ways, we were supportive of each other, and it turned out that it was easier when you didn’t do the same thing. He loved my music, and when we’d go out on the boat I bought him, he would play my album so loud you could hear it across the lake. Then he’d sing along at the top of his lungs. If he had the guys from the team over, he would put on my music and I would jokingly hide as he rewound to certain parts. He’d say to them, “Did you hear how long she held that note?”
This was the kind of encouragement I was getting from the country community. I was really touched when Rascal Flatts asked me to take over for Taylor Swift as the opening act on the twenty-city leg of their “Bob that Head” tour starting in mid-January 2009. Joining them would be such a big deal for me. It was set to start just before I had a gig at a country radio festival on January 25 in South Florida. Alan Jackson would be there, along with Jason Aldean and Little Big Town—great exposure for me with the country audience.
It was an annual event, I was told. Something about a chili cookoff . . .
20
Death by Mom Jeans
January 2009
I swear, I thought I looked beautiful. Maybe that’s what hurts—and still hurts—the most. That I had no idea I was about to become a global joke. I was still flying from how well the tour with Rascal Flatts had started the night before. I had forgotten how much I loved to tour, to get up and sing in front of fifteen to twenty thousand people. We had sellout crowds, with our grosses competing with the only other acts that were drawing those numbers, established bands like Fleetwood Mac, Van Morrison, and Billy Joel touring with Elton John. I was so appreciative of the Flatts for the opportunity, but I was also, for the first time in, well, my life, content to be in that “now.” I had a cherry-red journal for the tour, and the first pages are filled with joy and a sense of relief that I had regained my self-confidence.
“I just feel as if I am right where I am supposed to be,” I wrote in South Carolina on my fifth night of the tour. “The best part about the certainty of this happiness is taking a bit of pride in knowing that I am starting to own my authentic self and trusting my faith to guide my travels. We beat ourselves up too much. We have nothing to prove to anyone, not even ourselves.”
Oh, sweet girl. What I would give to hug you.
It seems ridiculous now, and over the years I’ve spun the story of the incident as I retell it for maximum laughs. “Of course it was a chili cookoff,” I joke, anything to hide the humiliation I truly felt. “You can’t get a better headline.” My kids’ generation will read that once upon a time Jessica Simpson wore a sleeveless black bodysuit top, high-waisted blue jeans, and a Fendi leopard-print belt onstage at an outdoor afternoon concert in Pembroke Pines, Florida, and they will have no clue how that could have started a decade-long international discussion about my body. Or why the media ran stills and slow-mos of me smiling onstage and twirling, images examined like film footage of the Kennedy assassination. On TV and in magazines, pundits would be asked to guess my weight and size, then in the same exact segment or article talk about what a shame it was that I was being so bullied. “Can’t”—kick!—“this girl”—punch!—“catch a break?”
But let’s go back to the before and just be with that happy girl for a minute.
“Should we tack down the pocket?” This was my childhood friend Stephanie, who was helping style me for the tour. We were backstage at the concert, and I was about to go on in front of thirty thousand people. Stitching it down quickly would make sure there was no bunching.
“Nah,” I said, looking in the mirror. “I might want to work the pocket.” I was having such a good time touring that I liked the spontaneity of digging my hand in my pocket to brace myself for a high note. The choreography was looser than the second-by-second scripted movements of a pop concert. “Kick, ball change, look serious as the firework effect hits stage right, now smile for a JumboTron close-up . . .” It was so freeing to move how the music wanted me to. Stephanie had a plaid button-down ready if I wanted to do an open-shirt thing, but I said no. My hair was big and southern with dangly double-hoop gold earrings. I did one last look
in the mirror and loved what I saw.
I bounded out to the crowd, who received me with so much love that it just made me even happier. I did an hourlong set and got conversational as I introduced the songs, playing some old hits and the new country songs. Before “You’re My Sunday,” I talked about Tony, who I was getting on a plane to Dallas to see that night. “I’m so happy!” I told the audience, meaning it.
I got offstage and did a meet and greet in a tent in the back of the park. Twenty-five fans won the 99.9 Kiss Country radio contest to meet me, and I made my way over grass in my Alexander McQueen platform pumps. I posed for tons of photos, and almost every person got around to saying that they were glad I was so happy. They knew I hadn’t been, and we shared that moment of grace, being together in a good place.
The first photos were up on the internet late that afternoon and were everywhere by the time I was back in Dallas. They were mostly taken from below, and there just were so many of them. As if whoever was choosing couldn’t pick a favorite and just said to the American public: “Here! Enjoy!” The equivalent of your frenemy tagging unflattering photos of you on Facebook, only times a million. Bloggers and commenters started in with “Jess got fat!” jokes right away, then mainstream sites picked up the story with headlines about my “new body” and “showing off my curves.”
It was awful, but the worst part was this: my very first thought was not my pain at becoming a joke and everyone laughing at me. No, it was, “Oh no, I feel so bad that Tony has to be with the fat girl.” What was he going to do when he saw this? Was he going to break up with me? Did he feel that way about my body and just didn’t know how to tell me?
He didn’t. He loved me for me, and he also thought the whole thing was ludicrous. But I was devastated and confused. I had been really feeling it that day onstage, comfortable after such great gigs on the road with the Flatts, finally back in my element. I think that’s part of why people made so much of those photos. I looked like the girl invited to the dance as a joke, fooled into thinking everyone wanted her there. “Doesn’t she know? How is she the last to know?” I was Carrie at prom, right before the pig blood fell.
Magazines and websites ran side-by-sides of me in a bikini as Daisy Duke and in the jeans. It was funny—whenever I saw those bikini pictures, I saw Daisy. I didn’t see Jessica. And then there were these new pictures that didn’t have much to do with me either. Wonder Woman herself, Lynda Carter, had tried to warn me of this very thing all those years ago. I remembered her words. “People are gonna want you to be in those Daisy Duke shorts the rest of your life,” she’d said. She knew what it was like to be frozen in the amber of pop culture minds. I didn’t realize how right she would be. I had created a gold-standard Jessica, the “before” for every “Is she fat or is she thin?” story for the rest of my career.
I had always been in on the joke, and that gave me power. Now that it was everybody else making it, I didn’t think it was funny. I was insulted for myself and all women. Here’s the thing: women are beautiful at any size. I believed that, and still I had dieted for years, taken who knows how many diet pills. I did that because I thought that’s what it took to be a success in the music industry and in Hollywood, but I didn’t want anyone else to hold themselves to that impossible standard. I wish I hadn’t.
So I wouldn’t tell anyone that the jeans were a size 25 waist, which is an American 4. I wouldn’t go on to talk shows to say I was about 120 pounds when those photos were taken. The media guesstimated much higher numbers. The fact that I was that skinny and that I was deemed overweight still frightens me. No way was I going to go out there and turn on my sisters by saying, “Oh, no, you’re mistaken. It was the angle and the fit. I’m actually a size four.” What would that do to my young fans, who may have been a size bigger or twenty sizes bigger? My publicist Lauren got so many requests for photo shoots and sit-down interviews to “set the record straight.” It seemed like negotiating with a hostage taker. If I disavowed having a regular body, nobody would get hurt. Except everybody would get hurt. We refused the requests, unwilling to play into the game of shaming women.
The story just kept going. The New York Post gave me a new nickname, “Jumbo Jessica,” and the media declared that I was a cautionary tale about “mom jeans.” There were fashion pages about how to avoid looking like me. Page Six, the gossip column everybody in media read, ran a cartoon of me with my features ballooned to represent every cruel stereotype of a person of size. It showed me dumping Tony to be with my true love, Ronald McDonald.
That caricature became how I saw myself. Even as I tried to remain body positive about everybody else, a dysmorphia set in. I no longer trusted the mirror. With every reflection, every single pane of glass I passed, I took myself in quickly to try to catch myself, to see what the world apparently saw. The worst part was that I had to get up in front of thousands of people in Charlottesville four days later for another tour stop. My confidence was gone, and Stephanie and I rethought my entire wardrobe. What could invite people to make fun of me? I instinctively added a black vest, just like my days of performing at church camps as a kid, when my body was continually scrutinized for the potential incitement of sin. The rest of the tour, instead of enjoying the sold-out audiences, I was conscious of people taking pictures. Reporters eyeing me, taking notes. What were they seeing that I didn’t? It made me shrink onstage.
My mother worried about me, knowing my self-confidence had been taken away. She saw me withdrawing, not fully present. I was the same girl who had refused to go to school because the cheerleaders were cruel to her. Now, instead of graffitiing our house, it was people commenting on every image of me.
“Ninety percent of women go through this, I promise you,” she told me. “You just have it on a whole different level.”
“Why are people so cruel?” I asked. I may as well have been in my old bedroom in Richardson, refusing to get dressed for school.
She didn’t have an answer, so she went to the go-to every mom uses with her daughter at one time or another: “They’re just jealous.”
I couldn’t do anything about the media focusing on me, but I hated that I was so focused on me and my body. I had grown so much since I was that girl who’d pinched herself black and blue in 1999 because I had the smallest jiggle. I no longer needed to draw on abs with eyeliner. And here I was, still looking for the flaws. Old enough to know better, but unable to stop myself. Still, I had enough sense not to go on some crash diet, or worse, stop eating in order to fit the media’s view of what was beautiful.
In those months, I can probably count on one hand the public moments when I forgot how much everybody was looking at my body, judging me. I was in the line at TSA flying out to L.A. to do some work on the Collection. I set off something when I went through the metal detector, and I got flustered. A female agent did a pat-down of my body. When it was over, she smiled at me, so I smiled back.
“You’re really not that big,” she said.
“Thanks,” I said. Jess, I thought as I walked on, that’s not a compliment.
I turned back. “I’d be fine if I was, though.”
It took me a while to not just say those words, but to believe them. Like a lot of life lessons, I was able to incorporate some aspects of what I learned right away. Some took longer. It certainly informed how I expanded my clothing line. The Collection needed to stay inclusive as we branched into jeanswear and dresses, and our showroom always had to have fit models who reflected the full range of the customers I loved. I always wanted to dress the everyday woman, because I am an everyday woman. I want to wear the same things that everybody else wants to wear, and I wanted to be able to provide those things for people. To be the friend you go shopping with who gives you a thumbs-up when you come out of the dressing room because she genuinely wants you to look and feel good. The silver lining of the mom jeans debacle was that I felt women trusted me more, because now they saw what I was going through.
When my time on the Rascal Flatt
s tour was over in March, I found that my feelings of insecurity stayed with me, even when I wasn’t onstage. Mom and I scheduled an appearance to promote the Jessica Simpson Collection at a Dillard’s in Scottsdale, Arizona. When I arrived at my hotel room, I had some quiet time while everybody got settled in their rooms. But I resisted, because downtime at that point usually meant picking myself apart. I grabbed a remote and flipped the channel, only to see a photo of me in those high-waisted mom jeans next to a more recent picture of me onstage. They said I’d gone on a crash diet and lost twenty pounds. I switched off the TV.
“Why won’t people leave me alone?” I asked the empty room.
This little tiny whisper of intuition answered. A voice from within spoke up. “It’s okay to not be left alone,” it said. “The moment people leave you alone, it will be because you stopped standing up for yourself.”
I got chillbumps. The truest voice is always that one inside you. I wouldn’t give in.
There was a long line of people at that appearance, and I always watch my team fade ever so slightly from standing around at these types of events. I don’t help things by taking too much time chatting with each person as I sign a photo or the heel of a shoe. But I love those moments of connection. A woman who’d waited at least an hour finally got to my table and started to rush-talk at me as if she’d rehearsed what she had to say the whole time and had to get it out.
“Ijusthavetotellyouthatyoureallysavedoneofmystudents . . .”
“Who?” I asked.
She slowed down and said her name. “She’s a great girl, but she was really getting . . .” she paused. “Bullied.” She said it like it was her failure as a teacher. “It was about her weight. It’s eighth grade, so kids can be . . . you know. I could stop it in my classroom, but not outside. She was just so sad.”
Open Book Page 25