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Babes in Bookland
A podcast celebrating women's memoirs, one story at a time!
Babes in Bookland
Blonde Bombshell // Jessica Simpsons "Open Book"
Can you shine light on the dark parts of your life?
Jessica Simpson's memoir, Open Book, is a raw, unfiltered truth from a woman who spent years living her life in the public eye while hiding her deepest struggles. In this heartfelt conversation, my friend, Lizzie, and I unpack Jessica's journey from a pastor's daughter with childhood trauma to pop princess to billion-dollar business mogul. Plus, we explore the profound impact these experiences (plus childhood trauma) had on her identity and relationships.
Jessica's memoir reveals devastating childhood experiences including sexual abuse that went unaddressed by her parents, creating patterns that would follow her throughout life. We examine how the entertainment industry shaped her from age 17, when Columbia Records executive, Tommy Mottola, demanded she lose fifteen pounds – beginning a twenty-year battle with diet pills and body image. The discussion turns to her relationships, particularly her marriage to Nick Lachey and the reality show "Newlyweds" that transformed them into "actors in their own lives," and her emotionally manipulative relationship with John Mayer.
What makes Jessica's story so compelling isn't just her celebrity status, but her remarkable self-awareness about her struggles with addiction, body image, and seeking validation. Her journey toward sobriety and self-acceptance resonates whether you've followed her career or not. We chat about the incredible fashion empire Jessica built that focused on her commitment to serving women of all body types... even as the media scrutinized her own physical appearance.
This episode celebrates Jessica's resilience and hard-won wisdom. Her powerful realization that "we need to own our weakness, our hurt, our pain and say it out loud" serves as inspiration for anyone working to overcome their past.
Have you read Open Book? Share your thoughts with us! We'd love to hear which parts of Jessica's journey resonated most with you. Connect with us @babesinbooklandpod or email babesinbooklandpodcast@gmail.com.
If you leave a kind review, I might read it at top of show!
Buy Open Book by Jessica Simpson
Transcripts are available through Apple’s podcast app—they may not be perfect, but relying on them allows me to dedicate more time to the show! If you’re interested in being a transcript angel, let me know.
This episode is produced, recorded, and its content edited by me.
Theme song by Devin Kennedy.
Special thanks to my dear friend, Lizzie. You always provide a safe space for me to bare all.
Xx, Alex
Hi, welcome to Babes in Bookland. I'm your host, alex Franca, and today my friend Lizzie is back to chat about Jessica Simpson's open book. Before we get to the episode, here's a review from Apple Podcasts by Emma slash. Jamie, as someone who doesn't have many reader friends, this is my go-to podcast for book discussions. So glad you're here, Emma, jamie, and here we go. Hi, lizzie, I'm so happy to be here. You know I love me some Jessica Simpson.
Speaker 1:You and I read this book. We were starting a book club with our friends and then COVID happened and the book club went away, but this was actually one of the first women's memoirs that I had read in a really, really long time and I feel like, in a very small way, jessica Simpson started that journey for me. Yeah, what did you think of Jessica Simpson's book? I remember the first time reading it, I thought she was very brave to be sharing all of these things, which I think most people might take away as somewhat salacious, but really it's her truth, and so I thought that was very brave.
Speaker 1:The second time around revisiting it, I told you that I listened to the audio book. So I listened to her speaking her actual words and it was very, very emotional. I applaud her because I got completely lost in it. Well, and your life has changed too. The first time you read it, you didn't have a daughter, and now you do. And I feel like anytime I reread a story after having kids, I just view everything now through the lens of motherhood and I feel I'm just a lot more like affected by things, totally yeah. And then the pressure that she feels to continue being the same, jessica Simpson, when after you have your first child, you are the same but you're completely changed.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:For the better for the most part, but it's there's just so much, so much that you learn about yourself, so much work that you have to get through and process, and it's all for the best. But when you're a public figure like Jessica Simpson, like I can imagine it's it's very difficult to have that pressure of you know needing to come across as the same or be seen as the same when you're, you're just not. It's weird how we want people to evolve and change, yet when it comes to like celebrity, we almost punish people for doing so it's like no stay in your lane, be who you've always been and how can you when?
Speaker 1:you're two years, five years, ten years older. You have different life experiences. It's also been interesting for me to revisit this book in light of what's happening now in jessica simpson's private life and the public information that that they're giving us. It was interesting because this book has always been on my list and I wanted to chat about it with you and it felt kind of like the right time. But it also feels really weird. But that's also, I think, the risk you run when you write a memoir and when you are so open and vulnerable about this particular moment in your life and the things that you've learned and the lessons you have worked through and things that you hopefully continue to move forward through, and then your life turns out maybe a little bit differently.
Speaker 1:But I think it's still really important to honor the work that she did in order to write this book. And I don't think that the disintegration of her marriage negates the love that she wrote about and the journey that they had together. And I don't know, I don't think I don't think she cares what anybody thinks, but I would feel that way if I wrote about something so personal and it felt so precious and so right and real at that time, only later for things to change like they always do in life. Yeah, it's just. It's interesting to revisit her memoir right now with what's happening.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, those were all of the truths during that time for her, and things change, people evolve, and what was true in 2020 may not be true now, but it was true then and I just I love her so much. I think that she's a genuinely good person and, anyway, we'll talk more about my Jessica Simpson crush as we go forward but I think that what really makes her stand out is that she's a good person at heart. I think she always wants to be a good role model for people, and that is a really hard thing to do in Hollywood.
Speaker 1:And also, at the time that she rose to fame, there was such a standard for her and we will get into that very soon. So, like you said, this book came out in 2020. This is her dedication to sweet Sarah, my angel, and to those who are lost and hope to be found. I pray my truth will help and we will learn who Sarah is shortly. But first some quick topics.
Speaker 1:I thought this was really cool because Jessica names her co-writer for her memoir Kevin Caro Leary. I love that. I have an inkling that most of these celebrities have ghostwriters or co-writers. Totally. I don't know why they pretend that, we don't know, but I love that Jessica acknowledged him. Step one good person acknowledging who helps you. Okay, what's your favorite Jessica Simpson song? Okay, I have three favorite songs. The first one With you, the second one is I Think I'm In Love With you, and the third is Public Affair. Oh, okay. Yeah, I Think I'm In Love is such a bop, it's so good, that's such a good song. It's so interesting to grow up in what I call the blonde pop icon trifecta era, because we had Britney, we had Christina and then we had Jessica Simpson who, as we'll get into it, was the third one added to the group and then even later.
Speaker 2:I mean I would add Mandy Moore to that. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:It was just so interesting having this very particular type of pop star kind of as the only standard at the time. How do you stand out, how do you remain true to yourself when you're being told to fit this mold? Yet that's what the other girls look like and, as we'll get into it, there were there were a lot of people pulling her in a lot of different directions and I think she tried to stay as true to herself as she could. But there were a lot of pressures on her to make money, to perform well, to to be who they wanted her to be. But there are great examples of her later in her career putting her foot down and saying, no, this is what I want, and aligning herself with people who supported that vision. She's clearly done a lot of work to understand herself and her life thus far and I think that's why she was able to write such a reflective memoir at this point in her life and overcome the painful parts and maybe she's working through some stuff right now.
Speaker 1:as life continues just to kind of hand you things. We are always works in progress. The work is never done, no matter how much we would really like it to be. Yeah, so before we get into Jessica's memoir, I just want to talk to you a little bit about our obsession with celebrity as a culture. There's a lot of, especially with Instagram and social media, and you can now connect with your favorite celebrity in a way that you haven't been able to connect before.
Speaker 1:When we were growing up, we would just put their posters on our walls and read about them in magazines, and now they post pictures every day and you can get cameos from people and all sorts of stuff. Do you think that this is a healthy situation that we are finding ourselves in? No, I don't. I think that having more accessibility to our idols is dangerous, not only for us as the fan or consumer, but for the celebrity themselves. I think there's too much pressure to share way too much information. You see a lot of people feeling entitled to information because they are a public figure. Personally, being a very private person myself, I don't like that and I don't think it's healthy and I feel like parasocial relationships just get really bizarre. You know when Justin Bieber started dating Hailey, what was her original last name? It's famous.
Speaker 2:Baldwin.
Speaker 1:Baldwin Baldwin. How could you forget? I knew it was. I could see the dad in my head, but I just forgot for a second. And then all of these, like Selena stans, were just coming out and being so aggressive towards this girl for dating someone and it's kind of like all right. We need to check ourselves. If you are spending more time than not thinking about a celebrity who literally has no idea who you are, connect with some people in your real life.
Speaker 1:I think that speaks to where technology has brought us and it's a generational thing. There's no incentive to make real friends. If you think that these people, as you said with the parasocial relationships, if you think that these people are your friends and you're supporting them, yeah, I mean, we've seen that played out on like literally the biggest stage that America has with the current administration.
Speaker 1:I think, there's a major unhealthy parasocial relationship going on there. We are dollar signs to them mostly, and the people in your life, in your circle, are the ones who can really care for you and support you and be there for you and uplift you.
Speaker 1:I don't know if there's going to be like a breaking point or what. Okay, let's dive deeper into Jessica Simpson's open book. We're going to start our discussion a little differently than her memoir, because she kind of comes to this realization in her memoir and then she takes us back through the steps of how she thinks she got there. Let's talk about her childhood. So we learn that Jessica Simpson's childhood includes some major traumas. First she was in a really bad car accident just before she turned two, cracking her skull. She was in critical condition. And after this she develops a stutter that disappears only when she sings. So she starts singing as her main form of communication, and Lizzie and my good friend Kate did a really cool job explaining this in the sister act bonus episode, so I'm going to pop it in right here. Thank you you. Oh, kate. Always such a smart cookie? Yeah, she is.
Speaker 1:Jessica writes that around four her parents take her to a therapist and he determines that Jessica has a fear of abandonment. She writes Looking back, I know my parents never left me alone and maybe I was even around them too much, but somehow I still had a fear that they would leave me and I thought it was really great that her parents took her to a therapist at such a young age, but it felt like they didn't stick with it. You know, it was kind of like they identified a problem but then it wasn't like anybody worked with her. She doesn't write about that at least. Yeah, I find this interesting because we'll start talking about it a little bit further into the episode.
Speaker 1:Just her saying that they never left her alone is curious, considering some of the things that happen, like later in her life. That's true, we'll get more to that, I guess. Yeah, she writes that her stutter resolves, but she is a shy child due to the fact that her family moves around a lot. They moved 18 times before she hits fifth grade. That's so crazy. I had to change schools. I know you changed schools too. I changed schools from third to fourth grade and luckily I had a neighborhood friend. But to have to be the new kid that many times.
Speaker 1:So hard. No wonder she just stuck to herself. And also, why are you even motivated to connect to people? Because it's just going to hurt to say goodbye. They move around a lot because her father is a pastor, so they go from church to church, community to community. She writes that her parents fight a lot about money or the lack thereof, and this makes Jessica think about money from a really young age In order to make ends meet.
Speaker 2:Her mom starts teaching aerobics at church and she writes early on that she actually had a pretty bad stutter growing up, which is genius, and the class that she could sing was called Jump for Jesus, and that's actually very common to hear for people and give out, but in many cases, for whatever reason, again, singing is preserved Like singing it doesn't impact you when you sing.
Speaker 1:It only impacts you when you speak.
Speaker 2:It's not always. Some people, I think, will stutter when they sing. But it's very very common that you'll hear people say well, I can sing just fine. But again, like your right side of the brain is where you process more music and the left side is where you process more language, by singing you kind of are capturing the intact part of the right brain to kind of pull over and make connections to the left brain so that the language can flow out.
Speaker 1:That's huge for a little kid to start worrying about money at a young age and later we'll realize that she took on the burden of making the money and supporting her family and doing what it took to keep the money coming in, even if she felt she was sacrificing some of her values because money was important. These things like now as a mom.
Speaker 2:I am being hyper aware of the things that I say and what I do, Because it's so important.
Speaker 1:If you're going to acknowledge a problem that her therapist said that she has a fear of being left alone, it's your responsibility to give your child the tools to overcome that. That's a huge thing to have to work through the rest of your life Absolutely, and we see how it plays out. She writes this about her parents. They were in the business of changing lives. Mom and dad were always taking people in. When parents threw their pregnant daughter out, she needed a place to sleep until they came to their senses. When a kid was trying not to do drugs, he needed to get away from parents who had their own issues with addiction. In the South there are so many secrets and my parents were there to give people a safe place. They collected people to look after.
Speaker 1:I mean that is really lovely to see the generosity of spirit in that way and I do feel like Jessica's upbringing was a very nonjudgmental, true Christian way to live, which I appreciated. I feel like that's getting very skewed these days. Absolutely, they literally practiced what they preached. Yes, we also learned that Jessica is sexually abused by the daughter of a family friend for six years. She writes about purposely putting herself in between the girl and her sister to protect her little sister, ashley.
Speaker 1:She writes I was confused, wondering if it was something that I wanted to keep going. Why am I not telling anybody, I would ask myself. Is it because it feels good? The irony is that I was protecting my abuser. I thought that if I named what she was doing she would feel the shame I felt and I wouldn't have wished that on anybody.
Speaker 1:This is so sad. I mean it speaks again to how empathetic and sweet Jessica is like at her core to not want her abuser to feel bad and also just being so confused at that age about right and wrong and why you're feeling a certain way and the difference between something like physically feeling good but like emotionally not feeling good and like not knowing what that is. And yeah, and I feel like it's just such a reminder of, like the nuances that go into sexual abuse, especially with children, because I think a lot of people have that question why don't they say it? Why don't they tell someone? Why don't they tell someone? And it's like because it is the most confusing fucking thing that they've ever dealt with.
Speaker 1:And you can't. I mean it makes me realize, okay, I need to have talks with my daughter, maybe at an age that unfortunately feels really young If we are inviting other people into the home to sleep with her. This was another little girl. So like it doesn't cross your mind to think that way, but like Jessica realizes later that this little girl was being molested by an older boy. Like you have no idea what the ripple effect is and how that is going to affect your child and you have to give them the vocabulary that empowers them to be able to articulate what's happening to them and what their experiences are, even if it makes you uncomfortable. Does it suck that maybe we need to talk to our six and seven-year-old daughters or sons about this? Hey, you are not wrong, you are not in trouble, but just tell us. It's making me emotional, thinking that I have to have that conversation. Yeah, if it's the difference between a child being abused and not, it has to happen. Yeah, jessica writes.
Speaker 1:I was so young that I didn't know anything about sex or my private parts. My parents never talked to me about this. I mean, they taught Jessica writes or, in this case, lack of power. I was just going to let her do whatever it was she wanted to do, because I didn't want to hurt her feelings. That's kind of how I was in many of my adult relationships too. At first I held myself back, refusing to have sex until I was married. I was afraid sex and the need I had to give pleasure, no matter what, would destroy me as I let men walk all over me. I was right.
Speaker 1:She does finally tell her parents about what is happening to her. This part pissed me off so much. Her mother tells her father I knew something was happening. How, how, as a mother, can you have an inkling? Fuck courtesy. I can imagine it would be a very difficult situation. You have family friends come over and like how do you even broach that? But like, talk to Jessica, then Ask her a question. Trust your daughter. You've raised her to be a good person and if she tells you something's happening, then believe her.
Speaker 1:But her mother never even gave her that opportunity. Jessica writes I already understood denial and how much it fueled the actions of families, especially Southern families. People want to paint the picture pretty, especially a minister's family. They were probably also shocked. These good people who did everything to help others hadn't been able to help their own daughter, and the thing that kills me is that she had the instinct.
Speaker 2:She had the thought.
Speaker 1:It's almost like better if she was like oh my God, I had no idea. But, just the fact that she sort of thought maybe it was like how could you turn a blind eye to that? How could you do that? I mean, I think she just completely, she failed her daughter for sure she completely failed her.
Speaker 1:and literally right after jessica tells her parents this, they're like in the car she wins 1500 on a lotto ticket the subject is changed and they never bring it up again. Later, when she's a cheerleader at school, she will confide in a friend about being molested by this girl and her friend confides back in her about also being molested. And then this little brat goes and tells everyone that Jessica tried to have sex with her and that she's a quote lessee. Jessica's house gets egged. Someone writes die bitch. With black shoe, polish on her home. People stuff anti-gay pamphlets in her locker. Her mother makes her go back to school and face her tormentors and they her fellow cheerleaders start chanting lesbian. And Jessica is so heartbroken and confused she writes she doesn't even know what being gay meant. The school gets involved. The cheerleaders apologize, but she still quits the squad.
Speaker 1:That whole thing felt like out of a fucking Lifetime movie to me, girl. It's straight out of Mean Girls with Regina George and Janis Ian. I mean, that's so true. Yes, it's so true. She writes the scar remained. I had opened up to someone and look what it got me. She's sharing her traumas with us and also how she now knows they've affected her even deeper than just like at face value. These traumas are horrifying.
Speaker 1:Did you ever have to deal with a bullying situation growing up? I did, particularly in eighth grade. The quote unquote friend group that I was in, you know, there's always a ringleader. She was definitely an unnecessary level of mean where Clearly they both confided these secrets in each other. And then what? Something happened and this girl thought I no longer want to be close to Jessica, I want to turn her into the enemy. I think that bullying says far more about the person who is doing the bullying and whatever they're going through than the person that they're projecting it on. A thousand percent. I mean the phrase hurt people, hurt people, but still you're just like, then fuck it. Like go to therapy, figure yourself out. Like I'm tired of your shit. You know like I can sit here and try to be compassionate and understand, like, oh, you're an angry person because this happened to you and that happened to you, but at the same time, like I don't want to deal with it, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Another traumatic experience for Jessica is losing her beloved cousin, sarah, in a car accident when Jessica is in high school. This is who her book is dedicated to, and Sarah was her person, she writes. Now there were two worlds one where Sarah was alive and a completely insane one where God had taken her, and the only person I could think of who would help me understand that was Sarah. She's gifted Sarah's journal and she sees that every single day her cousin would pray for her. Jessica writes even now I burst into tears.
Speaker 1:I had grown up so lonely not always alone, but lonely and that whole time Sarah thought of me with love, every day, possibly at the very moments when I felt the most lost. That realization that I was never truly alone. All that time changed how I thought about heaven. It wasn't someplace in the sky, it was with Sarah and Sarah was with me. Jessica continues I started journaling when I saw how Sarah could express herself so beautifully on the page and as I wrote I started to get to know myself better, readying myself for what was before me.
Speaker 1:So I know we've talked about this and you've kept diaries or journals. Okay, here's the thing, and I'll make it really quick. I only have one real remaining journal from when I was in middle school and it's literally all about boys. That's what my journals were all about too, which is why I threw them all away. I have one remaining. I looked back and I cringed and I said I have got to shed this layer of whoever this girl was. No, I think it's really sweet. I think it's such a great thing to do as a young person to get your thoughts out of your mind, even if it is about boys, which feels so silly now to us. But it wasn't then right. I mean my feelings for boys. That was a big way of how I valued myself. I didn't realize that at the time, but like that was something that I was really going through and I needed to express it and put it on the paper and like figure it out. But I also needed to get rid of them when I grew up.
Speaker 1:So you know, to each their own. And Jessica is actually. It's really cool. On the inside of her hardcover the art is various pages from different journals that she kept. So this is obviously a resource that she would go back to to help write the memoir and then I think even like in her songwriting and stuff you know, what she would journal.
Speaker 1:So I think that's really cool. Speaking of singing, jessica loves to sing Remember, it helped her get over her stutter earlier and she's also really talented. We know this. She's like buku talented. She writes about singing with her church and at one point thinks that music ministry is her calling and a family friend then tells them about the new Mickey Mouse Club auditions. She makes it to the final callbacks in Disneyland but the producers tell her that she needs to work on her acting before this final callback.
Speaker 1:So she starts taking acting lessons at what she calls the Chuck Norris School of Acting. It's literally Chuck Norris teaching her how to act and he tells her that she is much too expressive. He goes do you know who the most powerful actor in the world is? Denzel Washington. Do you know why? Because he doesn't move his eyebrows and honestly, that's always really stuck with me and that feels like such a simple way to like deduce down like good acting.
Speaker 1:But what did you think about that? Like we went to a very prestigious acting school, we've continued acting classes outside of class. What a funny piece of advice, but kind of a great piece of advice. This is so true, I will tell you, because our senior year, when we were taking acting for film, the one thing I noticed we would watch our tapes back were that my eyebrows were like jumping jelly beans. So I laughed when you sent me the notes for this, because I had the same. It's the smallest thing, but in stillness there's a lot of power. Yes, you don't realize this when you're on camera, but even the slightest movement is a huge deal. And look, there are actors who I think, like, moving eyebrows is their thing. But do you want to be known for your eyebrow movements as an actor? I don't know. I personally don't and honestly, that's another reason why I get Botox, anti-wrinkles and also to calm my eyebrows down, because there have been times where directors have been like okay, do that again, try not to move your eyebrows because you like.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you just don't even think about it. Okay, so it's time for disneyland and her final callback. We read some familiar names on her book ryan gosling, justin timberlake sorry, realized I didn't include it in the outline, but we'll flash forward a little bit. And at one point jessica and justinberlake will kiss and he immediately pulls away and is like I have to call Gosling because we had a bet, and that just reminds us of who Justin Timberlake is. Justin Timberlake has always been the problematic person and you know what he was my favorite NSYNCR, and that is something I'll have to live with for the rest of my life. See, this has been another thing about social media, right, like all this stuff comes out because people have their phones out and they're able to snap a picture of someone cheating on someone and post it onto the TikTok or the Instagram. Yeah, can't escape it. So in that way, I applaud social media and parasocial relationships. Let's help out these problematic men. Okay, so back to where we are.
Speaker 1:In the memoir now. There are 11 of these kids and they need a top eight. Jessica is told that she is pretty much a shoo-in, so she's feeling pretty confident, until a beautiful blonde girl by the name of Brittany comes strutting in and she and Jessica basically have the same look and they're both Southern and Brittany can sing and Brittany can dance and Jessica freezes. She absolutely mucks up her audition and she knows her dream of being a Mouseketeer is over. My heart just broke for her. We've all had those auditions where, like, maybe the stakes weren't this high, right, but you just walked out being like, oh my God, who was that demon that took over my body and either paralyzed me or made me say that weird thing or do that weird thing. Body, and either paralyzed me or made me say that weird thing or do that weird thing. It's also funny because I guess maybe as younger kids they were the same quote unquote type. It's interesting as a performer when you're going for something and you see the competition that's in front of you and it doesn't really make sense in your head why you're the same. Because Jessica Simpson and Britney Spears are very, very different me, I guess at that time. Right, they were both blonde, they were both had the southern accent. That's as like that's the box that they needed to check and, honestly, is there a world where Jessica and Britney probably could have both been on the Mouseketeers? Yeah, a thousand percent. But this is the thought that Jessica put into her and this is this is why you can just be your own worst enemy for these things that nobody else is even saying. Yeah, it clearly wasn't meant to be and obviously Jessica found her way to fame another route.
Speaker 1:But Jessica writes I cried for days. I cried eating cereal, I cried peeing. I cried praying at church. The sense of loss and missed opportunity was suffocating. I really resonated with that. I love that. She wrote. She cried peeing. It's like man, when you're just that heartbroken, you just can't stop crying. You know it's bad when you're crying, that's right. When it's coming out your eyes and your urethra. Okay, like I said, the dream isn't over. Her father meets a man who has a gospel label and she starts working with a vocal coach and getting gigs on the gospel circuit and this makes her really happy. She loves this. She loves standing in front of a church and singing and it's amazing. Until her body starts developing and, god forbid, you can see she has breasts. A pastor tells her mom quote she will make men lust. I am so tired of this argument. Just look away, don't be a creepy dude. Why?
Speaker 1:is it our responsibility. So Jessica has to start covering herself up. She starts wearing vests and blazers. She writes. It wasn't just my pastor. When I performed at abstinent rallies, people were especially hard on me. I would be wearing the exact same shorts and t-shirts other girls my age wore and get yelled at for dressing sexy Again. I think that that is on the eye of the beholder. It's also disgusting. Someone even calls her an abomination to the Lord when she is wearing leggings and an oversized t-shirt and a vest. She's a teenager. It's so infuriating.
Speaker 1:Do you remember when people started reacting to your body and how that made you feel? I think my body started to develop the curves and all that freshman year in high school, like the curves and all that freshman year in high school. And I remember having a crush on this boy who at one point, the way that he hugged me, made me feel like a certain way and made me feel very self-conscious. I had always done ballet growing up, so I mean I was aware of my body, but you know, being in tights and leotards and whatever it's not, I didn't feel like sexualized in that way. But yeah, there was some switch once I got to high school where, when curves started coming in mostly curves in the lower region, not so much in my chest I would get this kind of icky feeling Towards your own body, yeah, like, and want to kind of, you know, pull things down or cover things up. It was kind of icky feeling towards your own body, yeah, like, and uh, want to kind of, you know, pull things down or cover things up. I. It was kind of hard to explain, but I would usually kind of scale toward the more modest. And then when I kind of started embracing things, like for school dances and whatever, it was like oh, I have a body.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's kind of a hard thing to navigate, to navigate at that age, I think it is because you want to, you want to embrace it and you want to embrace yourself. You know I think Jessica mentioned this at like, there is a certain kind of power that you have in your sexuality and like in your body and you know, god forbid you give somebody the wrong idea. Yeah, I had a hard time kind of scaling. That I did too.
Speaker 1:So I started developing kind of more towards my senior year of high school that's kind of when my booty popped, I guess is one way to put it, and it was interesting because for the first time I was sort of getting attention from boys in a way that I hadn't before, and I know exactly what you're talking about. Navigating that fine line. For me it was between like feeling comfortable with what they were saying about my body, sort of liking it in that like broad way of like oh, like they do think I'm sort of attractive. But then also, like I remember, one boy told me that they said I had DSLs, dick sucking lips. I guess my lips popped at some point in high school. You've always had very big, nice, natural lips. Yeah, I remember thinking like oh, but also I don't, I'm not ready, right, you know, like I don't want them to think that about me, but I do want them to notice me.
Speaker 1:Like it was really confusing. And it's also this weird thing where we're putting what the male gaze value is on our body. And again it's this thing too where, like at least in my high school, like the girls were always told skirts too short, oh, you're supposed to be covering your shoulders, and then of course, guys didn't wear clothing like that, but it did feel like there was this weird double standard where it's like I mean, we were in Texas like it gets freaking hot. You're wearing a tank top, is my shoulder really that distracting to who Right? Pre-pre-bes and boys who are also dealing with hormones coming in, that they're confused about. Like I understand why it is this very complicated situation, but I think that the adults in her situation were absolutely disgusting, because it's one thing coming from a 14, 15, 16-year-old boy.
Speaker 1:But to have a full-grown man come and tell you that this 14, this 14 year old girl, is going to make people lust because she's developing into the body that God gave her Right Like if we're being in a religious sense.
Speaker 2:Right Fuck off.
Speaker 1:And it's also so ill advised from a fashion standpoint because by putting a blazer or a vest over that area, it's actually enhancing it, it's drawing more attention to it. Yeah, to whatever it is to, whatever. The thing is that they can't handle.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's gross.
Speaker 1:It's gross, and we will talk again about how Jessica's body becomes major player in the game later. So on her 17th birthday, she flies to New York to meet with many heads of record labels. She meets with Jive, who tells her that they just signed someone like her Britney Spears. Here comes Britney again.
Speaker 2:At.
Speaker 1:RCA. She gets told a similar line. This time it's Christina Aguilera. Then she meets with Tommy Mottola, head of Sony of Columbia Records. He asks her what she wants to do with her life and Jessica doesn't say just sing. She says she wants to be a role model for girls all over the world. She writes I said that you don't have to compromise your values to be successful. So this impresses him and her singing impresses him even more. They want to sign her, but they're not the only label that does. She asks God for a sign and she talks about how she's driving and this bird like smashes into her window and she's confused because she's like what? None of these labels are called bird label. But then she looks out the window and she sees a sign for columbia hospital. So she's like okay, god, I get it columbia. Do you believe in signs from god in the universe? Uh, I think to a certain degree. I think a lot of things are coincidental. I think that you can.
Speaker 1:You can find the meaning in in almost everything you can find what you're looking for I think so but I mean I like this, I like this example. I think it's. It's funny. It's so. She signs with Columbia. Tommy tells her she needs to lose 15 pounds right away.
Speaker 1:It's so disappointing Him being impressed by her and then being like okay, so we got you and this is what I need you to do. Remember when you told me you want to teach girls not to compromise their values. To be successful, I'm going to need you to compromise your body weight. She's 17. This is her dream. This is what he says. That's what it'll take to be Jessica Simpson. She dream this is what he says, that's what it'll take to be Jessica Simpson.
Speaker 2:And she writes I looked at my parents.
Speaker 1:They said nothing. Neither did I. I thought I had the job and now I had to change myself to be Jessica Simpson. Nobody's advocating for this sweet child. Jessica goes immediately on a very strict diet and she starts taking diet pills, and she would continue to do so for the next 20 years, 20 years, and I think that it's something that, once it starts like, I know, for me personally, just even being in LA, it's a daily struggle for me still.
Speaker 1:But just being in this town, wanting to be in this industry, hollywood, it does something to you. I think, absolutely. I think, that your physical image, at least in Los Angeles, is like a direct correlation to your value or like your success. What I will say is that, after having a child living in Los Angeles, I definitely felt immense pressure to quote, unquote, snap back as soon as possible. Yeah, but like I only have to deal with the voice inside my head, jessica Simpson has to deal with the social media comments, I mean, I just feel I feel for these women, for these people whose bodies are continually subjected to other people's opinions, and and also just when I felt like we were all taking such strides forward as a society with, like accepting people's bodies it honestly it feels like we're going back to like a Kate Moss era, right now it does feel like that.
Speaker 2:It's weird.
Speaker 1:It's like the early 2000s are back again. It's important for me to figure out how to navigate it, because I have a daughter and I know you do too and it's like I don't want her to associate her value with a number on a scale or a size on a gene but I do still so like fuck, yeah, yeah, oh man, it's hard, it is really hard.
Speaker 1:Back to jessica she works really hard on her album but it keeps being delayed. They're competing with britney and christina and there's this sense that she'll be quote lost among invasion of the teen blondes, and you know what she was like. Let's be real, she was the third one that we all got introduced to. Britney came out with a bang and she was the wholesome, sweet one. Christina came out and she was kind of the like more rough around the edges, a little bit like sexier in a less wholesome way.
Speaker 1:I guess, you could say and then there was Jessica Simpson and you sort of felt like, well, we have these two. Just it kind of felt like where does this girl fit?
Speaker 1:Her and Mandy Moore, which I both loved. Yeah, jessica, there was definitely a religious aspect to her. They try to change her style after one more time, just so well. Jessica writes I had been signed for my voice but now I had to contort myself into this mold of a dancer. But she's basically like whatever you guys want me to do, I just want my song on the radio. And they do their damnedest to turn her into this virginal sex symbol. She has to show off her body for music videos. It was more skin, sexual dancing, all this stuff. And she's still dieting like crazy to look a certain way. Her career is not quite taking off the way that she had hoped, but she's singing at the Hollywood Christmas Parade and she meets Nick Lachey. It's actually really sweet what she writes. When she sees him, he introduces himself and is all hello, I'm Nick. And she writes hello my life. I thought which.
Speaker 1:I thought was just very sweet. That's very cute. So Backstreet Boys, nsync or 98 Degrees Backstreet Boys, all the way. I loved Backstreet Boys when NSYNC came onto the scene I'm not going to lie I would play 20s, maybe like friends, and I would be dating either Brian from the Backstreet Boys or Justin Timberlake from NSYNC. I think the most bizarre aspect of this was that you were doing it when you were in high school, alex. No, no, no. I think I was in junior high when I was doing this. Yeah, like seventh or eighth grade, right when NSYNC and Backstreet Boys were like super hot on the scene.
Speaker 1:I was never really a 98 Degrees. You know what it was about them. They felt older.
Speaker 2:And they were, and they were.
Speaker 1:I went to a 98 Degrees concert. I did like 98 Degrees. I liked Backstreet Boys and 98 Degrees.
Speaker 2:I liked Backstreet Boys and 98.
Speaker 1:Degrees, you liked your boys with an edge, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I know, with your husband, you guys started out as friends that grew to more. But do you remember that first moment where you like looked at him and you were like maybe like hello, my life, maybe around when we graduated, honestly? But I also knew, I was aware of the fact that we were still very young and had a lot more growing to do, but I had a hard time picturing my life without him. It's always an indicator for sure. What about you? I would say early on, like I felt like there was just something about this boy at the time, let's be real. And he proved to be very hard to quit and I proved to be very hard to quit for him. So now we're here, I think you hit the nail on the head. It's like I don't know if I'm quite ready to live with you.
Speaker 2:I don't really want to be without you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I couldn't. I just couldn't picture my life without him in it. He was such a spark of joy. Yeah, there's always laughter, and I think also it's really important to have a friendship as the basis of any relationship.
Speaker 1:It just makes it that much more strong. Yeah, I think that's where Nick and Jessica had a really difficult time, which because we all know now that the marriage didn't work out, but let's get there First they start dating. She tells him that she's a virgin and is waiting to have sex until marriage and he respects it, which is very cool. But this will become a thing for the media. Honestly, the way that all of these young girls were asked about their virginity status and their breast implant status I mean, there's that very infamous interview with Britney Status Status. You know what?
Speaker 1:I've been listening to a lot of British audio books. I love that. I do British. Listening to British narrators helps me go to sleep. Oh, I love that. It's just they're really good audio narrators, all of them, pretty much. That's really funny. Oh my god, oh no, people are gonna be like who does she think she is? This transatlantic accent. She writes that this is what the media is asking him how have you not had sex yet? The interviewer would always start with me and then turn to nick, who was 26 and a man. Okay, and let's like jessica's like 18, 19-ish at this point.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's significantly older Almost a decade.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she continues. This situation did not compute for them and you're okay with this, nick. They'd ask it gave America a storyline to follow the sexy virgin and the long-suffering but still understanding hot prince Gross. It is so gross and I like vaguely remember this happening, like I wasn't that invested. Of course, later, after their marriage, she also writes about how then they would ask her what she thought of sex and she felt obligated to give them an answer because, after all, it had been a huge part of her brand. So at first Nick is the more successful one.
Speaker 1:Jessica writes that she enters the relationship as his plus one, but then you know that changes. Her first single Irresistible comes out, which is also such a banger. She and Nick are living in the same building at this point so that they're not living together, but like they're living together, but they're so busy with their careers that they barely see each other. It's a phone relationship and she's not even 21 yet, like I said, and she still feels like a child. She writes I told him we needed to take a break from each other just to see what would happen if we both focused solely on work. It wasn't much of a break because we still talked constantly, which I know frustrated him. Jessica's father also isn't too keen on Nick, and this whole part made me smile, because you and I both know the take a break game.
Speaker 1:We both started dating our husbands when we were young, like we just said. And since we were young, like we just said, and how do you feel like those breaks ultimately strengthened your relationship? I think that in order to really understand yourself as a person, you've got to go through experiences and lessons yourself so that you have your own identity, that you have a strong identity independent of your partner, so that when you guys do come together it just makes it easier to navigate problems, lessons, whatever it may be. It's like that cliche you do have to learn to love yourself before you can wholly meet somebody in a partnership. Yeah, you know, because I had major codependency issues that I had to work through and luckily my husband had the foresight to kind of understand that. I mean, he broke up with me because he was like this is not the healthy type of relationship that would last if we were to start moving forward and making you know wedding plans or anything like that at that point in our lives. We're going to get to a breaking point where, like, we're broken, but right now it feels like, if we take steps away from each other, try to figure out life, who we are as individuals, there's still the potential for us to come back together. I also wholeheartedly believe that absence makes the heart grow fonder.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so Jessica and Nick end up getting married. As we all know, her dad on their wedding day is like you don't have to do this, and not in the kind of way where it's like honey, just so you know. You don't. It was, she was. He was basically like you don't have to do this, and she had to basically beg him, drag him down the aisle.
Speaker 1:I thought this was so strange. I can't imagine what Jessica was going through about to go down the aisle and being told you don't have to do this. Yeah, especially because she will have not the best relationship with her father a little bit later in life, but like, up until this point, he is kind of her rock. It seems like she I mean, she has a good relationship with both of them and so that was just really weird. Let your daughter make her own life decisions. Don't always have to agree with it, but, like, support her, and especially if it's something like this. She was really young, she was really, really young. And this, see, this is the downside of that of the religious part of like waiting until marriage to lose your virginity, because then maybe some people decide to get married in order to have sex. Right, you know, she doesn't say that that's what it is here, but like that was the obvious next step for her.
Speaker 2:Clearly, her and Nick don't have their strongest relationship they're missing a foundation on which to stand, and we all see the cracks about to happen.
Speaker 1:There's a really interesting section where Nick suggests a prenup, his advisor suggests it. He says and Jessica's like WTF, you're already thinking about how you're going to leave me. They end up not getting one and, ironically, when the marriage ends she will have a lot more earnings than him. So Nick and Jessica's relationship isn't what you'd call healthy. She writes Nick and I developed a reliable cycle where he would criticize me for something small and I would blow it up to make it about something larger in our relationship or the pressure I was under in my career. He would feel attacked and raise his voice. Then I would say screw you and pout like a child. Nick would then resolve the issue by being the grown-up in the room rinse and repeat.
Speaker 1:I know now that I have an addictive personality, so I'm especially prone to falling into patterns. Thank you, therapy. How do you fight? I'm a lover. I'm a lover, not a fighter. I don't like fighting. I don't like the sound of voices getting louder. That's probably like a childhood thing. I tend to be more passive and get kind of more in my thoughts about what I am feeling and what I want to say. That's very exhausting. And then when it comes to having to really address the things, I really, really try to keep like a level head. Doing it any other way didn't really get me anywhere. I mean really trying to come at things in a cool, calm and collected way, in a thoughtful way. I never, ever want to hurt anybody or say things that I don't mean because it can be hard to take out of like an emotional place yeah.
Speaker 1:And like that happens when we get emotional. You know there's validity in that. Being Rob, I am really aware of not wanting to say things that are hurtful. That I don't mean. I tend to kind of stew on things, maybe a little bit too much to my own detriment. Yeah, finding that like fine line between not sweating the small stuff but then also not letting it turn into a volcano to erupt. Sure, kind of like you, I don't want to say something I don't mean, I don't want to say something the wrong way. I also tend to like clam up and I need to sort of process my feelings because I know this about myself Like I can get very emotional because I don't like being wrong also, and so in any time something kind of gets brought up, I get defensive very quickly and I have to walk myself off that ledge because I know that that's not what the situation is or is calling for.
Speaker 1:You really hit the nail on the head, trying to be as thoughtful about your response and realizing like this person's on the same team as you. You're doing your best to walk through life together, facing things together, as opposed to like a me versus you situation. But it can feel like that sometimes, absolutely Like I said, I just don't like to be wrong. So, like when somebody calls me out on behavior, even if I can admit and realize, yeah, that wasn't cool on my end, my first instinct is always no, you're wrong. Yeah, you know. Yeah, so still figuring that stuff out.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about newlyweds. Her dad pitches the idea of a docu style reality show to MTV. She writes about the show, one that would chronicle our marriage and me working on my third album. If MTV was going to pay me to live my life and be on their channel, it didn't occur to me to say no. This is not a good idea for them. Marriage wise, great decision for her. Business wise though I mean, she is on the map. This continues to put her on the map. This plus the Osbournes are really like. These are the first two big reality shows sneaking a peek into the lives of celebrities. We get in there with her. She talks about how she was like I was going to be in my pajamas, no bra on, no makeup, like I was going to be real. But they do try to set boundaries. Production pushes back. She writes about the burn marks that they would have on their backs from the mic packs, from wearing the mic for so long. Oh, my.
Speaker 1:God I know, and they would put Jessica and Nick into situations for a story. It's just honestly the worst possible thing that they could have done for their first years of marriage, especially because they didn't have the best foundation. They hadn't even lived together. Living together with a partner is its own thing. You're figuring out so much about them that you didn't know. I actually never really watched Newlyweds. I did when I could. Yeah, I thought she was fascinating and adorable and funny and silly and I really liked the way that she dressed, her style and fashion, which obviously she goes to make a lot of money from with the Jessica Simpson collection. I feel like she always had a really good sense of just what to wear, what was comfortable, what looked cute, which is interesting. Reading her memoir and knowing now how much she had to like cover herself up and then uncover herself.
Speaker 1:It's kind of like good for you for finding your own balance, I guess Totally. They're constantly being watched and even though Jessica says growing up as a pastor's daughter and then being Tommy's pet project at the label made her feel like she was already used to being constantly watched, this is a whole new level and Jessica really wants her marriage to look perfect. She writes I wanted the world to see my husband in the best light because I was hopelessly in love with him. But this was a reality show. The camera caught me hanging on his every word and him doting on me. But it also caught our struggles, how I would whine and how he would get mad at me over stuff that didn't matter. And of course, we all remember those airhead moments, many of which were legitimate ditzy moments. She says I don't remember watching the tuna thing, but I remember that was every. I mean you couldn't walk 50 feet without reading a magazine or somebody bringing up. How could this girl think tuna was chicken?
Speaker 1:and all this stuff and I was just like, honestly, at that point, even young, I was just like who cares, who cares, she writes, I didn't care if people made fun of me because we were pulling in nearly three million views a week. That's huge. It makes me think that at that point where the tuna thing happened, our understanding of reality TV back then was that it was real. Yes, right, yes. It makes me wonder if, by that time, when she's having these quote, unquote ditzy moments, is that when she realized, oh, that plays, that plays. Yeah, people are literally going to take what they see as scripture or whatever the term is. So is that when she kind of started to play into it? Because I do remember some of the whining and whatever. But then I remember the show kind of getting funny and it was almost like they became aware of Well, it's almost like they became Lucy and Desi, right.
Speaker 1:Interesting, which she doesn't bring up, but like that's very much what it reminds me of. Yeah, they play into the characters. It's very Black Mirror, if you think about it. And yeah, I mean she writes a lot about how she was in on the joke with a lot of this stuff and it didn't bother her. And so, yeah, I wonder, if she did, I mean I would have done the same damn thing. We all lean into aspects of our personalities when people respond well to them. Totally.
Speaker 1:It's interesting, though Nick's solo album bombs. They're supposed to do a duo for a duo for the Rolling Stone cover, and then they just want Jessica because she is becoming the hot ticket item. She writes that Tommy at Columbia had originally not liked the idea of newlyweds but is convinced by his marketing people that it's a good idea. And he had said to her I just want everybody to know that there's going to be a winner and a loser in this situation. Let's just hope our girl is the winner. Problem, jessica writes, was if Nick lost, so did I. That is why I made a rule early on about not dating anybody in the same industry, because I'm a very competitive person and I just knew that about myself.
Speaker 1:I think this is also a tale as old as time. The man is doing better and then all of a sudden, the woman starts doing better in these high power couple celebrity relationships and the man can't handle it. Ego, whatever it is, but just another crack in their foundation. She writes we had become actors in our own lives, playing ourselves Worse. We slowly started acting out our parts even when the cameras weren't rolling. Nowadays I see many people performing their identities on social media, but I feel like I was a guinea pig for that. How was I supposed to live a real, healthy life, filtered through the lens of a reality show, if my personal life was my work and my work required me to play a certain role? Who even was I anymore? I had no idea who I really was. But fame and money are great distractions. She's just so real in this book, so honest. I really appreciated it. I bet it was awesome to hear her say this stuff. There's so much power in hearing somebody tell their own story. Yeah, I got to figure out if I can do both somehow Read and mark up and listen, because I feel like I'm missing out.
Speaker 1:So their relationship continues to crumble under the constant gaze, the pressure to be happy, her soaring career and his floundering one. She writes we were in a place where we loved each other. Fine, but we just didn't like each other. Then she gets the role of Daisy on Dukes of Hazzard and she meets Johnny Knoxville. She writes about the relief she feels working on this movie Quote it's nice to be someone else for a while, to not have to play me. She meets Willie Nelson, calls him her guardian angel. Back to Johnny, she writes after I had sex, I understood that the emotional part was what mattered.
Speaker 1:And Johnny and I had that which seemed far more of a betrayal to my marriage than sex. Oh yeah, and I think I personally feel like an emotional affair would hurt me more than a physical one. I mean, they're both horrible. I think it's all, yeah, it's all bad, but she's, like we've said, she's being very, very honest and vulnerable in this memoir and she's not getting what she needs. And but she doesn't say I'm a good person for doing this. By the way. She's kind of like this is why I did this. But that's not an excuse. I'm just telling you my experience. It's up to us to decide how we feel about it. And she doesn't say that she had a physical affair with him, right, but she does realize I had an emotional affair.
Speaker 2:And you know what.
Speaker 1:That wasn't very fair to my husband, true, but also I didn't think my husband liked me very much and I needed-. Yeah, husband, but also I didn't think my husband liked me very much and like I needed. Yeah, what you said earlier about them loving each other but not liking each other, that's horrible. That's you don't want that, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah no she writes this about johnny. He made me feel that spirit of adventure as he asked me about my life, not just my present, but about who I wanted to be. I could share the deepest authentic thoughts with him, and he didn't roll his eyes at me. He actually liked that I was smart and embraced my vulnerabilities. He didn't make fun of me, he laughed with me, he believed in me and made me feel like I could do anything. And the only person who ever made me feel that way was my dad, certainly not my husband.
Speaker 1:As we all know, Jessica and Nick's marriage doesn't last. It was a difficult and painful decision for her in so many ways, but she decides to leave him and even though she had shared so much about her marriage, literally letting the entire world into watch, she refuses to comment on it or disparage Nick after she decides to leave him. But she struggles with her value. Does the world want a Jessica Simpson without a Nick Lachey? And Nick wants her back. He begs her not to leave him because he loves her, but she knows that love is not enough. She tells him quote if love was enough I would stay forever. But it isn't enough. We have to like each other, we have to be friends. And then let's wrap it up with the prenup she writes they said Nick wanted a certain number and honestly I don't remember what it was. If it sounds crazy, I can't remember.
Speaker 1:It was crazy to me that we had that kind of money to fight over just after three seasons of a show. We were both blessed by God. But Nick had a better lawyer. Just give it to him. I said you all gotta stop. Just give him the money. He deserves the money. No way, no, how, said my father, Dad. I said this is for my freedom and you can't put a price on that. Do it. He relented and agreed to pay him the money, just to be done. I'll make it back. I said I promise I'll make it back. And then I did give or take a billion, oh my gosh. And now we talk about the Jessica Simpson collection, which I was actually very into her shoes when her collection was shot.
Speaker 1:It's still really cute. So she writes about the fact that Vince Camuto was her fairy godfather in the business and his shoes are amazing as well. She was adamant that she wants to make quote clothes that could appeal to all women. Not everybody has the same body of someone who lives in New York and Los Angeles. I said, and Vince smiled, I want to sell to the average girl because I love that girl and I wanted to give them the feeling of luxury without having to spend a lot of money. So her collection really, really succeeds and not everybody's celebrity collection does. So her business is going well, but her dating life.
Speaker 1:Jessica Simpson dated John Mayer on and off. Oh my gosh, I already went into this not liking him. I mean, taylor Swift really really turned his image around with her Dear John song, I think. But God, he just seems so manipulative and honestly like such a douche. Yeah, she writes he'd dump me, then come back saying he had discovered that he loved me after all.
Speaker 1:I always saw him as him taking me in from the cold Every time John returned. I thought it was a continuation of a love story, while my friend saw a guy coming back for sex with some foolish girl. It's pretty toxic. She has her friends who say that like she can't really blame him because she was handing him her power, but again, she had never. She's not really taking that time to figure out who she is on her own and she writes about kind of like putting this pause on her career and sort of just following him around on tour and, like she said earlier, she has an addictive personality, so she's addicted to him and their love and this kind of give and take thing that he does. It's like he knew exactly how to keep her coming back for more or like manipulate her to feel like he preyed on her insecurities and weaknesses. And with someone like Jessica Simpson who is an empath and who is like sweet at her core and an earnest person, yeah, yeah, she's going to take it for face value as being real, not as anything else, probably, yeah. And she writes this is where we get our first little hint of the fact that, like she starts drinking quite a bit during the relationship, he actually gives her a Xanax at one point, like she's having a lot of anxiety and he's doing nothing to curtail that anxiety. I mean he's inducing it.
Speaker 1:She eventually realizes that her relationship with John for what it is not a good thing. And she realizes quote you're the only one who has the power to be the best you. Nobody else can do that for you. So it's time for Jessica Simpson to step into herself and her own power. She writes I wanted to get back to singing from the heart, not to sing to sell records, but to make people feel.
Speaker 1:And she writes that she's able to do this because the Jessica Simpson collection is doing so well that she's not having to, like, rely on record sales. To, you know, keep the lights on, so to speak. She meets with Dolly Parton, who welcomes her in with open arms. She records a country album in Nashville, she starts dating Tony Romo and the Jessica Simpson curse thing happens, and I remember this also being a big deal. I have to say this woman has had a lot of pop culture moments in the zeitgeist, totally For sure. That whole thing, just it hit me the wrong way too. Like again, it's just an example of men blaming women for things that are just not their responsibility at all.
Speaker 1:Like maybe the Cowboys just fucking sucked. Being from Texas, I hate the Cowboys. So there you go, because I'm not from Dallas. And then Tony tells her that she can't do rom-coms because he doesn't want her kissing other men, which is like what she's doing a lot of at the time. So also this really weird power dynamic thing that's happening. She's so sweet. She's like I understood where he was coming from. He knew about the emotional relationship I had had with Johnny on set. I did this in the past. I can understand why he would have that fear.
Speaker 1:She writes about the chili cook-off pictures. This I also really remember. She titles this chapter Death by Mom Jeans, which I thought was really funny, and she writes I swear I thought I looked beautiful. Maybe that's what hurts and still hurts the most. I have to say I thought she looked beautiful too. This was one of those instances where the majority of public opinion did not align with what I was seeing. People were just so hard on her you know Jessica Simpson and I remember seeing the pictures and thinking, oh, these, these can't be the same. I'm not seeing this, I'm not seeing the right event, because I thought that she looked really good. I felt the same way. I remember looking at the pictures and just being like I don't see the issue here. It's almost like she was wearing high-waisted jeans before the rest of the world was wearing high-waisted jeans Is that what it was.
Speaker 1:I don't know, because she tells us the weight and the jean number. I'm not going to repeat it because it feels like a regardless situation. Yeah, and I love that she was like I refuse to play the game. They wanted quotes and I was not going to defend myself because that was going to send the wrong symbol to these women that I've been trying to prop up and make feel beautiful through my collection. For the way that she is made to compromise maybe some of her values, like putting her entire life on reality TV, losing weight. When it comes to how what she stands for affects other women, she really does put her foot down and she's like I'm not going to do anything that will make any woman, regardless of their size, feel terrible about their body. I'll take all of this on myself, but shame on us, honestly, as a society.
Speaker 1:Then who comes back into her life, motherfucking? John Mayer and her parents are kind of in on it. She writes about how they invite her over and John's in the backyard, and then he wants to play a song for her. She gets it. She realizes I was material. She writes, slowly, insidiously, a realization creeped into me, a monster with claws clutching my brain with one hand, then making a fist around my heart with the other. All this time, all those years, he was breaking up with me to torture himself enough to get good material and girl. I feel really mixed about this because I really did love John Mayer's songs, like I really do love his stuff. I have to say this is one of those instances where, with his songs and with who he is as a person, it's hard to separate them because we know that he is garbage.
Speaker 1:He's a parasite but damn, some of his songs are so good. I remember listening to his first album, room for Squares, on my boombox in my bedroom, my boombox that I got from Costco for my birthday, putting my CD in there. Fathers, be good to your daughters and you weren't good to the women in your life. Also, is your Body is a Wonderland about Jessica Simpson. That's a great question, because that's a really really good song. That's like a really really good song. We need like a Reddit sleuth to go through and like pair up all of the releases and who he was dating at the time, because you know he was doing this to a lot of women in his life Also slow dancing in a burning room.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, that's got to be about Jessica Simpson. I wonder. Yeah, we need a timeline of when these songs came out, because I can't quite place them. Oh my gosh, she and john are done for good and she realizes she needs to do some work on herself and really make room for the next true love of her life to come in. And then he does. She writes this light walked into my life and I remember the moment I realized I didn't have to give him my light. We could share it and make things brighter for everybody. That's beautiful.
Speaker 1:Her marriage to Eric doesn't last, but like this is what it was for her for so long, and that's beautiful and it doesn't take away from that, all right. So this is the part of her memoir. She writes about falling in love with Eric and getting married and having a family and raising her children. She writes about being pregnant with her daughter. She says when I was pregnant with Maxwell, every sad thing in my life was forgotten or put into a healthy perspective. That was so much of me to put on her, but I couldn't help it. She saved me from all the worries, all the overthinking, all the dwelling on the past. That's why I absolutely had no problem stopping drinking during my pregnancy. I was able to turn inward instead of doing my usual escaping. I didn't want to look outward because I was just so astonished by what my body was capable of creating. Life allowed me to awaken my spirit.
Speaker 1:After Maxwell is born, jessica's parents split up. Their marriage had been strained, but Jessica and her mother both thought it was getting stronger again. And then Joe betrays their marriage, and this is extremely difficult for Jessica. Her father comes to her and tries to deny everything, and her mother doesn't want her or Ashley to even see their father, so she doesn't. She ends up firing him. And she writes about this wedge, basically that her mother pushes between her and her father. And how kind of later Jessica realized how unfair that was. The darkness just keeps coming back. She writes. The anxiety that had so long colored the edges of my life began to take hold of me. There had been so much happening to crowd out those feelings. She's pregnant, and then she has the babies, and then they move and, like all this stuff, she finds herself constantly drinking out of one of her gold glitter tumblers with a straw. She writes this wasn't to hide it I never did, but maybe to mask for myself how much I was actually drinking. Then I started drinking in advance, of these dark feelings like taking a seasickness. She writes braiding hair, making lunches, fighting to be present. So again, it's just all this unprocessed stuff that she's dealing with. She's numbing. She's not dealing with. She's numbing and she's able to kind of put it on the back burner during pregnancies until she gets to a point where she no longer can.
Speaker 1:She writes about turning 35 and feeling ashamed of her body. She's had multiple pregnancies. She goes to a doctor to help her lose weight and then to kind of get the like tummy tuck situation. She writes I thought if I was skinny I was powerful. Again, this is what she had been conditioned to believe for so long. So as a 35th birthday present to herself, she schedules a tummy tuck. But her doctor won't do it because her liver levels are so off. The plastic surgeon tells her won't do it because her liver levels are so off. The plastic surgeon tells her, if you go under you could die. So she's told to stop everything the drinking, the pills for three months. And this shakes her and Eric.
Speaker 1:She writes about how they were both in denial about how much they'd been drinking. And this is where she kind of opens her book with this more detailed explanation of what she was going through. It all comes back to her 37th birthday. Her friends have an intervention with her. Jessica writes I knew I needed to stop drinking and I couldn't. I prayed, which I realized I hadn't done in a long time. I had stopped taking these moments of stillness for myself. She makes a birthday wish, asking God for help and the mercy that she couldn't give herself. And then she does the work. She goes back to therapy. She writes I started in with a complete play by play of all my life's traumas, the sexual abuse I suffered in childhood and the abusive, obsessive relationships I clung to in adulthood. I reeled everything off in a matter of fact manner, connecting dots about why each event had contributed to my anxiety, finally ending with so this is why I need help and why I can't do this on my own. So at the end of this point in her life, at the end of when she's writing her memoir, she reflects back and shares some of her found wisdom.
Speaker 1:She writes so often we turn away from ourselves and just numb our feelings to get through the day. You can do that with anything, not just with alcohol. It's so easy to overwhelm yourself with too much to do in a day where you never have enough time for yourself. We need to own our weakness, our hurt, our pain and say it out loud so that we name what is coming up and why. You deserve it. You deserve to feel the heartbreak and the pain so that, once and for all, you stop holding yourself back from feeling whatever it is you've tried to mask. No, it's not easy, but you are worth the work and if you do not have a stable presence in your life, take the time you need to become that stable presence for yourself, to find that stillness within you, no matter what storm you are in. I hope, wherever Jessica is, she can return to these words, because it is just a beautiful reminder and we all need these reminders.
Speaker 1:Sometimes Life is not easy. Just when you think you've won the war, there's another battle around the corner. Life is constantly changing and you don't know what it's like to be a parent until you're a parent and you don't know what situations your kids are going to get into. Give yourself grace, cut yourself some slack, but keep checking in with yourself and keep doing the work, because it's so important and you deserve it. I just feel really grateful that she shared her story, even if maybe her stories continued in a way that she didn't necessarily think it would At the end of writing this book. She was so open with us Me too and I think that this might be the first of maybe more. She's always understood that her voice could mean something to people.
Speaker 1:And sharing the things that she shared in this book could not have been easy, but she felt that if telling her story and sharing her journey could help one person, it would be worth it. By being so open about her struggles and the trauma she continues to work through, she encourages her readers to examine the darker parts of their lives too. Her memoir is about hope. However, you become a celebrity. If this is how you use your celebrity, I'm all for it yeah she's lived. She's lived lived quite a life so far, but I think-.
Speaker 2:Even in the past five years there's definitely more for her to figure out.
Speaker 1:I would welcome an open book part two. Me too, and I'll talk to you about it. Lizzie, thank you so much for chatting about Jessica Simpson's open book with me. Let's go put on Irresistible and dance it out. Let's do it.
Speaker 2:I love you.
Speaker 1:Thank you, bye, bye. Thanks for listening to Babes in Brooklyn. To access the full version of this episode, you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts or support us on Patreon. Visit babesinbooklandcom for more information. Bye.
