Jessica Simpson is done talking about weight— hers, or anyone else’s.
The singer, author and fashion entrepreneur, 43, spoke candidly about changing the dialogue around our bodies, and what she’s teaching her three children on the matter.
“I think that more than weight that people have focused on, we need to focus on our mentality about even talking about weight,” Simpson told Access Hollywood during an interview Friday. “I just think it doesn’t need to be a conversation.”
Simpson shared that she’s very cautious about what she’ll say about food and weight around her children.
“Everyone talks about ‘oooh, I shouldn’t eat this many calories. My kids are like, ‘What are calories?’ I try to not complain about myself in front of them, I try to not diet, I try to not do any of that stuff,” said Simpson. “They just see me living a healthy lifestyle.”
However, she noted that her children recognized the constant scrutiny their mother is under.
“My kids see me still being scrutinized, and it’s very confusing to them,” Simpson shared.
Ultimately, she tells her kids that it’s not about how anyone else feels about them. Instead, it’s about how they feel about themselves. That particularly goes for her 11-year-old daughter Maxwell, who recognizes a difference in herself and her classmates.
“You don’t dress for anybody else, you don’t try to look like anybody else. Maxwell’s the tallest in her grade, and she’s like ‘Should I be insecure?’ I said, ‘the fact that you’re asking me if you should be insecure means absolutely not,” added Simpson. “You’re comfortable. Stay comfortable. You be you.”
Earlier this summer, Simpson spoke to Bustle about the constant scrutiny over her weight, including the incessant questions about whether she uses medication to aid in weight loss. Simpson, who has been sober since 2017, explained that she weighed significantly more when she was drinking alcohol. “Oh Lord. I mean, it is not [Ozempic]. It’s willpower,” she shared with the outlet. “I’m like, do people want me to be drinking again? Because that’s when I was heavier. Or they want me to be having another baby? My body can’t do it.”
Back in 2021, Simpson revealed in a personal essay on Amazon Original Stories that she threw out her scale after giving birth to her youngest daughter, Birdie. That came after years of having her weight closely monitored as a pop star, a period in which her “weight was measured like the value of stock.”
“I was consistently assigned a number to lose by the same men who would determine the budget for the time I had in a recording studio, how much of an ad buy I deserved for a single or album, and what ‘direction’ I was going in as an artist,” she explained. “I would hit the number because I wanted my music to be heard. I’d drop from 118 to 103, train myself to sing on a treadmill, so I could have the stamina to what I loved — performing — at what was an unnatural weight for me as a teenager.”
Simpson previously said she’s found a way to be comfortable with herself— inside and out.
“I’ve been criticized and it hurts but I’ve been every weight and I’ve been proud of it,” she told Extra last year. “I decided, OK, everybody’s gonna talk about my weight all the time, I might as well make money off of it and turn it into a business of selling clothes and acceptance.”
