Jessica Simpson was recently interviewed by Lucky and will also be on the cover of the September 2010 issue of the magazine. Not surprising in the least, all Lucky had interest in talking to Jessica Simpson about was her size.Now, I don't know if you all remember this or not, but Jessica Simpson used to be much more than the focal point for a conversation about weight. She used to sing; she put some CDs out and people seemed to like them. Maybe she still sings, but you wouldn't know it by the media coverage she gets. In fact, I have no idea what Jessica Simpson has been doing lately, other than traveling around the world for her show on VH1, The Price of Beauty, and being shamed in tabloids for not looking malnourished.
I was chatting with Renee this morning and mentioned what I was writing about here today. After talking a little bit about Jessica Simpson and how the media cannot get enough of talking about her weight, she confessed that she forgot why Jessica Simpson was famous in the first place. I have a feeling that there are a lot of people out there who just nodded their heads and have also forgot what propelled this woman into the media limelight. What this proves is that the media has completely erased Jessica Simpson's accomplishments and have reduced her to nothing more than the size of her body.
You could argue that because Jessica Simpson's show is all about how different cultures define beauty and the lengths women will go in order to achieve it, that she opens herself up to only being used by the media as an opportunity for that network or publication to feature some pseudo-sincere story on beauty, but the fact that I know nothing about her show speaks volumes. For just the basic premise of the show, I had to browse through Google, the show's official website and Wikipedia. Now let's put this into perspective. The basic media-targeted population, like myself, hold the common knowledge that Jessica Simpson was seen in the tabloids wearing jeans that somehow sparked controversy about the celebrity's weight--jeans, people!--but we don't know anything about what she is doing, other than knowing the mere title of her television show.
Lucky's interview and article on Jessica Simpson is supposed to be celebratory. I think. I'm really not sure because of the amount of mixed messages I'm getting, but I think it's supposed to be upbeat and a reassurance to the women and young girls who pick up this magazine.
You could argue that because Jessica Simpson's show is all about how different cultures define beauty and the lengths women will go in order to achieve it, that she opens herself up to only being used by the media as an opportunity for that network or publication to feature some pseudo-sincere story on beauty, but the fact that I know nothing about her show speaks volumes. For just the basic premise of the show, I had to browse through Google, the show's official website and Wikipedia. Now let's put this into perspective. The basic media-targeted population, like myself, hold the common knowledge that Jessica Simpson was seen in the tabloids wearing jeans that somehow sparked controversy about the celebrity's weight--jeans, people!--but we don't know anything about what she is doing, other than knowing the mere title of her television show.
Lucky's interview and article on Jessica Simpson is supposed to be celebratory. I think. I'm really not sure because of the amount of mixed messages I'm getting, but I think it's supposed to be upbeat and a reassurance to the women and young girls who pick up this magazine.
They took note of Jessica Simpson's "hourglass silhouette", saying that she has stopped fighting her figure and quoted her saying, "we all obsess over looking like the perfect Barbie type, and that's not always what's beautiful. It's about making peace with yourself."
It is my sincerest hope that all women can make peace with their perception of their own bodies and can live their lives knowing full well that they are beautiful just as they are. Luckily for most women out there, they are not celebrities because while it's commendable for Jessica Simpson to put the message of making peace with yourself out there for everyone to see, Lucky thought it would be a fantastic idea to feature this story with a quote like this, alongside a severely Photoshopped picture of Jessica Simpson.
On the cover of the September 2010 issue of Lucky Jessica Simpson looks like she is a size 2, if that. There are many pictures out there that have been taken very recently that show this very same woman smiling from the cover of a magazine and if you just remove her head from both images, they look like completely different people! Not only should we be outraged that Lucky is backpedaling on the message of their very own cover story by whittling Jessica Simpson's body down to a barely-recognizable version of herself, but some level of blame is also owed to Jessica Simpson herself by allowing the magazine to Photoshop her body.
More celebrities should be speaking out about body acceptance, but not if it is at the expense of being made into carbon copies of what magazines and media think women should look like instead of who they really are.
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