Why is Jessica Simpson’s weight still fair game for ridicule and debate?

Jessica Simpson is a woman with a body, two things that should give no one else the right to comment on how she looks.

This week, the 43-year-old singer posted a throwback picture of herself on her Instagram Stories from when she made the decision to go sober. “6 years ago,” she captioned the image of her sitting on a couch in a pink tracksuit.

The original image, which was posted to her Instagram in 2021, was taken on 1 November, 2017, the day she decided to get sober. “This person in the early morning of 1 Nov, 2017 is an unrecognisable version of myself,” she wrote. “I had so much self discovery to unlock and explore. I knew in this very moment I would allow myself to take back my light, show victory over my internal battle of self respect, and brave this world with piercing clarity. Personally, to do this I needed to stop drinking alcohol because it kept my mind and heart circling in the same direction and quite honestly I was exhausted.”

Jessica Simpson / Instagram

Jessica Simpson / Instagram

At the time, Simpson was celebrating her fourth year of sobriety, and said that during the process she began to love herself more and respect her own power. “I have made nice with the fears and I have accepted the parts of my life that are just sad. I own my personal power with soulful courage. I am wildly honest and comfortably open. I am free,” she added.

It’s a touching post, made even more powerful now that the singer has celebrated her sixth year sober, however *some people* decided to focus on how Simpson looked in the image instead of her accomplishment – even going as far to comment on her weight, saying the singer has “denied” using Ozempic to aid weight loss.

It’s not the first time Simpson’s body has been the subject of public fodder this year. Over the summer an image of Simpson from 2009 went viral after many TikTok users were in disbelief that the singer had been scrutinised for “gaining weight” when she was a size four (UK size 8). Blaming the abhorrent Y2K fat-shaming culture that made us believe people like Kate Winslet, Britney Spears, and even Renee Zellwegger in Bridget Jones were “overweight”.

Simpson was taunted for this look in 2009.

Logan Fazio