Jessica Simpson: How She Was Failed By (Quite Literally) Every Man In Her Life And Career – And How She Finally Got Her Sparkle Back

Jessica Simpson was a pop diva in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. Though she wasn’t the Princess of Pop like Britney was by any means, she still made a name for herself with everything she’d brought to the table during that time. This included her reality show with ember ex-husband, Nick Lachey. They starred together in their own reality hit reality series, ‘Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica’, between 2003 and 2005. The show was groundbreaking, and so was their marriage. I think every little girl who was a fan of Jessica Simpson looked up to her marriage, and looked at their marriage as something they aspired to have for themselves. Simpson was a role model. And unlike Britney Spears, she did, in fact, stay a virgin until marriage. She told People at the time, ‘My virginity is something I stand strong in. It’s not always easy. But I do respect it. Virginity can be cool and sexy.’

Their marriage, however, wasn’t cool and sexy whatsoever. It was something I realized myself only after I got married. I recently rewatched ‘Newlyweds’ to its entirety, and I’m surprised they lasted as long as they did in their marriage. Nick was downright rude, condescending, and mean to Jessica when things didn’t go his way. He made her look and feel utterly stupid. Most notably, when she asked him if it was chicken or fish she was eating when she famously confused tuna and chicken while eating Chicken of the Sea. In the scene Jessica asks Nick, ‘Is this chicken that I have, or is this fish? I know it’s tuna, but it says chicken by the sea. Is that stupid? What is it called — chicken by the sea or in the sea?’ Lachey looked at his then-bride with confusion, as well embarrassment and almost disgust. He said then, ‘Chicken of the Sea is the brand. You know, ’cause a lot of people eat tuna, just like a lot of people eat chicken. Chicken of the Sea.’

That wasn’t the only time, however, that Nick showed his nature. It was just the most memorable moment of the show that’s still remembered years later. Throughout the show, he was seen doing such things as getting mad at Jessica when she gave him her honest opinion of a song he played for her, getting furious when she was better at skiing than he was, as well as undermining her for her weight. And speaking of her weight, Jessica had struggled with an eating disorder for at least 20 years. This was evident during her time filming ‘Newlyweds’, and I can’t believe that we all missed it when the show first aired in the 2000’s. It just showcased just how delusional we all were, having concentrated on totally the wrong things. In her 2020 memoir, ‘Open Book’, Simpson discussed her struggles with eating disorders, including taking diet pills for 20 years, and the impact of public scrutiny on her body image, revealing she’d sought help and was now focused on health and body positivity. More so:

• Public Struggle and Diet Pills: In her memoir, Simpson revealed she went on ‘an extremely strict diet’ and took diet pills for 20 years after becoming famous, stating she ‘started to hear voices when I was alone at night, waiting for the sleeping pill to kick in… ‘Do more sit-ups, fat ass.’’
• Weight Fluctuations and Scrutiny: Simpson spoke about the constant media attention and criticism surrounding her weight fluctuations, stating that it ‘would bother any woman’ and that she ‘didn’t want to feed into it’.
• Finding Comfort and Body Positivity: Simpson has shared that she was now focused on her health and tries not to let the scale define her, even throwing out her scale, comparing it to a ‘Ouija board in church’. She celebrates women of all sizes and believes that body image issues come from within. 
• Seeking Help and Recovery: Simpson has acknowledged her struggles with eating disorders, drug addiction, and alcohol abuse, emphasizing that it’s never too late to seek help and regain control of one’s life. 
• Focus on Health and Role Modeling: Simpson now tries to avoid talking about weight in front of her children and focuses on living a healthy lifestyle, serving as a positive role model for her kids and the world. 

Jessica is a Christian. She was the preacher’s daughter. When asked what the best part of not being married to Jessica was, Nick answered that it was not having Joe Simpson, Jessica’s father, as his father-in-law. More precisely, he told Andy Cohen on ‘Watch What Happens Live’, ‘The best thing about not having Joe Simpson as a father in-law is I don’t have to play grab ass under the table on Easter Sunday.’ Whether or not Joe Simpson is a good person really depends on who you ask, but he was the one who jumpstarted Jessica and her sister’s, Ashlee, career. He was what I’d call the 90’s version of Kris Jenner, he even called himself the pioneer of reality TV. Ashlee also had her own reality show, which lasted 2 seasons.

When Jessica first started her career as a singer in the late 90’s, she was in competition with powerhouses like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. All three women auditioned to be featured in the Mickey Mouse Club alongside Justin Timberlake and Ryan Gosling. Spears and Aguilera nailed their auditions. Simpson didn’t. After numerous setbacks that lasted years, Simpson got her record deal with Tony Mottola. During that time, Spears and Aguilera were seen as sex symbols. They were known for their sex appeal rather than for their vocals. Simpson wanted to be different. She was often compared to Spears because they looked very similar to one another, but Spears did drastically better in her album sales.

To end the comparison, Jessica’s virginity was pushed onto the marketing campaign of her albums. Suddenly, that story became legendary. ‘Jessica Simpson: The virgin’. She even appeared on ‘That 70’s Show as Ashton Kutcher’s Christian love interest who was saving herself until marriage. Once she got together with Lachey, their relationship became a push as a marketing campaign for both her and his band, 98 Degrees. They briefly broke up at the start of the relationship because Nick was 8 years older than her, and Jessica felt she had a whole life to live before she settled down with Nick, but got back together after 9/11. She told Entertainment Weekly, ‘I knew that I never, ever wanted to be away from Nick ever for the rest of my life.’

By February 2002, the couple got engaged, and there was no other person who was in resistance of their upcoming nuptials than her label and Joe Simpson. Her label felt that Jessica’s ‘good girl’ image would be destroyed. Joe felt that Jessica was too young to get married, but he, just as he always did, saw a business opportunity in it. In the 90’s Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley were set to star in their own reality series, ‘Newlyweds’ after they’d gotten married, but the couple back out of the idea. When Nick and Jessica got married in October 2002, Joe pitched the idea to executives, and the show that we now know as ‘Newlyweds: Nick And Jessica’ was green lit. Also before they got married, Nick asked Jessica to sign a prenup as he made more money than her at the time. She refused. It ended up costing her in their divorce. More precisely, it cost her $12 million in their settlement, and in a later interview, Jessica called her first marriage as her biggest money mistake.

By 2004 Jessica’s career was at an all time high. She was getting more and more opportunities that didn’t involve Nick. That year, she was signed up to star in ‘Dukes of Hazzard’. She initially denied rumours of an affair with her co-star Johnny Knoxville, but revealed they had an emotional affair in her 2020 memoir. She wrote, ‘I could share my deepest authentic thoughts with [Knoxville], and he didn’t roll his eyes at me. He actually liked that I was smart and embraced my vulnerabilities. He believed in me and made me feel I could do anything.’ Basically, Knoxville saw in her what Nick didn’t following her becoming more successful than him because of his ego. Jessica is very smart. She’s always been smart. Her ditzy persona was just that – a persona. But Nick shamed her as being exactly that. Just in the very first episode, on top of the ‘Is it chicken or fish?’ fiasco, Nick shamed her publicly when she wasn’t even there to defend herself. It was when he spoke to a woman doing his makeup about Jessica being a messy person and not cleaning up after herself.

Following the divorce, Jessica released ‘I Belong To Me’, which is, honestly, my favourite song of hers. It’s so raw; so emotional; and has so much depth to it. More than I’ve ever seen come out in her music. I’d say her latest single, ‘Leave’ has the same rawness and depth to it, but more on that later. ‘I Belong To Me’ perfectly captured her broken relationship with Nick. The song wasn’t written by Jessica. It was written by Diane Warren. And yet, it perfectly displayed exactly what we saw on ‘Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica’ – the dissatisfaction of love. Jessica then went on to date John Mayer between 2005 and 2010. The relationship was on-and-off; though I think it was mostly off. They broke up a whopping 9 times before they finally ended their relationship got good. In a 2010 interview with Playboy, Mayer described Jessica as a ‘sexual napalm’, a comment that she found embarrassing. He’s since publicly acknowledged his wrongdoing and apologized. In her 2020 memoir, she revealed that after that interview, deleted Mayer’s phone number because she was embarrassed about what her grandmother would think. She also revealed that she felt insecure in her relationship with Mayer, and was afraid she wasn’t smart enough for him. That feeling led to her drinking. And you be shocked and blame him and only him for her drinking, but that’s just absolutely not the case. It’s every man she’d ever encountered, starting from her own father, that led to her drinking. Mayer then went on to date Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, and Jennifer Aniston in the years since. Swift wrote ‘Dear John’ about him.

During her on-and-off relationship with Mayer, Jessica was shamed for wearing mom jeans in 2009 after photos of her during a performance in Texas went viral. Photos of the performance were spread all over the media, with headlines branding Jessica as ‘Jumbo Jessica’ and ‘beefy’, suggesting she let herself go. Side by side pictures of her time on ‘Dukes Of Hazard’ went viral as a before and after comparison, with her portrayal in the movie was the ‘before’ picture. To prepare for her role in the 2005 film, Jessica starved herself and worked out non-stop. In an interview with Today years later, she opened up about that time in her life. She said, ‘This picture that circulated and went worldwide broke my heart. Well, not the picture necessarily, but the caption. Like, all the captions. It went viral. I was so confused. Tony (her boyfriend at the time) never made me feel [insecure]. I always felt confident when I was with Tony. But I was taken down by the world.’ In a different interview with Glamour, she said she felt confident on that particular day in her appearance, and that it was the abuse destroyed her passion for performing. She’s been silenced…until now. She said, ‘I felt good up there. I felt confident. And then it ruined the stage for me. And the stage was my home. It broke my home. I’d already had broken moments within a home where I had to walk out of a marriage. But my stage has been like my home since I was, like, a child. That’s where I could be honestly alone with myself. I’m so happy that times are changing now and more women are accepted for who they are. People are flaunting themselves at every size, because that’s how it absolutely should be.’

In a 2009 interview with Extra, Nick defended Jessica following the body shaming she’d endured. He said, ‘I hope she’s happy, whatever size she comes in. I wish her nothing but the best. I can’t believe it’s this big of a story and people are making such a huge deal about it. I’m never ceased to be amazed by people’s reaction to things.’ That was probably the only time Nick defended Jessica following their divorce, because even to this very day, he just can’t seem to shut up about her and reference their former marriage in a negative light any chance he gets. Most recently, it was on ‘Love Is Blind’, the Netflix reality dating show he hosts alongside his second wife, Vanessa Lachey, when he shamelessly told a contestant that a second marriage was always better than the first. It was meant to be funny, but…it wasn’t. At least to me it wasn’t. But during the time where she was shamed for wearing mom jeans, alongside Nick, women like Ashlee Simpson, Kim Kardashians and Heidi Klum defended the singer and businesswoman. It all seems so funny to me, because, in those set of photos, I actually thought she looked absolutely beautiful. She was glowing, and her confidence showed. I myself love mom jeans. I wore them before I ever became pregnant.

I must say, I was just about to say that it’s really too bad her relationship with Tony Romo didn’t work out. Then, however, I read that he broke up with her on her birthday, of all days, after two years together. Rumors spread that Romo was considering a clause that would award him $500,000 for every pound Jessica gained above 135 pounds, so maybe he wasn’t better than any other man she’d ever encountered in her life. They’re not the Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce of the 2000’s, though just like Swift in the present day, Jessica was scrutinized and blamed for her boyfriend’s and his team’s poor performance. Cowboys fans considered the relationship controversial, as some blamed her for Romo’s poor performance in games after the pair got together. They met after Romo was first introduced to her father, Joe Simpson. Of the breakup, Jessica opened up about in her 2020 memoir. She wrote, ‘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. I hadn’t cheated on Tony at all, but I could not lie and say I hadn’t even seen him. And within that second, he broke up with me right there. Two years, gone with an email.’

Ok… so maybe I misjudged a little bit. I wouldn’t want to be treated like my partner’s sponsor or psychologist either in my relationship, so I would’ve broken up with her too if I were Tony Romo. And I certainly wouldn’t want to be in a relationship with someone who was still hung up on their ex. Simpson described the breakup as ‘ugly’, but insisted that it was necessary. Following her breakup with Romo, Jessica started dating Eric Johnson, another former NFL player. They began dating while Johnson was still married to his first wife, Keri D’Angelo. After 6 months of dating, they became engaged in November 2010, which coincided with Nick and Vanessa Lachey’s engagement days earlier. So, of course, it made national news. After welcoming two children together, daughter Maxwell Drew in 2012, and son Ace in 2013, the couple got married in 2012. They had another daughter, Birdie, after they’d gotten married. And of course, Jessica was body shamed during all of her pregnancies. Joy Behar even shamelessly called her fat on ‘The View’.

Of the body shaming she experienced during her pregnancies, Jessica opened up to Redbook in 2014 interview. She said, ‘I never listen to it, no matter who the press talks about when they’re pregnant. It’s ridiculous and unfair. I think any woman who is pregnant and creating a life is pretty much entitled to eat whatever she wants as long as she’s healthy. I wasn’t going to let the media take away from what was one of the happiest times in my life.’ She also reminisced the 2009 mom jeans fiasco by saying, ‘What’s so unbelievable is that I was probably at least 15 pounds smaller than I am right now. What’s more unbelievable is that the press could create something like that out of a pair of jeans…what woman wants to be brought down for wearing a pair of jeans?’ Even that report called the mom jeans outfit an ‘unflattering pair of high-waisted blue jeans’. What a shame!

In 2021, Simpson told People magazine of her marriage to Johnson, ‘I think the takeaway is that it’s not easy and every day presents challenges and blessings. Life is a blessing to be lived, and the more we overthink things, the more we fall behind on our personal journey.’ In 2022 she opened up again to People while saying, ‘I feel like every moment with us, we’re growing as long as we’re communicating, and our love is only deepening. I feel like Eric and I learn from each other so much. I feel like we’re stronger than ever now, [more] than we were even at the beginning.’ And in 2023, Simpson opened up yet again on her marriage to Johnson, and told People, ‘A true love will never make you question yourself or what’s real. Thanks to my amazing soulmate I am able to love passionately and without fear of being hurt. I don’t find it hard to love anybody, but I have always thought that I was hard to love, that I was too much for people, or my schedule was too demanding. He knows my heart and understands my heart more than anyone I’ve ever met in my life.’

Reading Jessica gush about her second husband in interviews was refreshing at the time, especially knowing her history with men. Watching her relationship with Nick unfold on ‘Newlyweds’ gave me the ick. He constantly questioned her womanhood. He constantly put her down and made her feel less than. He treated her like a child instead of a wife; instead of a woman – the woman that she always was. He never took her seriously, and neither did any man in her life, including her father. It’s been reported that Jessica had to fire Joe as her manager 5 times for him to agree to cut professional ties with him. Joe been managing her since she was 13. She fired him in 2012 after the birth of her first daughter. Jessica shared that Joe didn’t accept the decision and thought she was following her mother’s wishes. He and Jessica’s mother, Tina, separated the same year he was fired. They’d been married 34 years by that point. Jessica wrote that Joe had made some bad deals for her, and that he believed promises made to him by others, leading to burned bridges. Following her parents’ divorce, Jessica and Joe’s relationship was fractured, but the two reconciled in 2016 after Joe’s first cancer diagnosis.

But alas, Jessica’s marriage to Eric Johnson wasn’t meant to last. After 10 years of marriage and 15 years together, the couple announced that they were separating. In January, a source told Page Six that their biggest issue in the marriage was trust. The source added that Jessica thought it would help if they spent some time apart, but then realized she actually enjoyed the time she spent on her own and her independence. Statistically, second marriages tend to fail at a higher rate than first ones, with first marriages have a 40% chance of failing, while second marriages have a 60% chance of failing. ‘Luckily’, Nick and Vanessa Lachey’s marriage isn’t part of the 60% statistic. I’m only mentioning it because Nick always seems to be in a competition with Jessica when it comes to his personal life. It’s evident in his interviews – by what he says and how he says it. And I included quotation marks by the word luckily because, well… I don’t actually care if he is or isn’t part of that statistic. In one interview, Jessica did state that she’d never talk negatively about him because he had a family of his own and she respected that. Neither Nick nor Vanessa seem to want to be doing the same for her.

Jessica Simpson overcame a lot in her life. But perhaps the most devastating thing she ever came through was alcoholism. In November 2024, she celebrated 7 years of sobriety. She quit drinking after she failed to show up for her kids on Halloween in 2017. She said in a 2020 interview on Today, ‘I honestly couldn’t even tell you who got them ready. I was just dazed and confused, and I just wanted to go to sleep. I didn’t take them trick-or-treating. I didn’t show up for my family. I took the picture and I made the world think that I showed up. I just realized that I had to surrender. I just want to continue on the path that I’m on, and at this point in my life, I’m strong enough to deal with anything that comes my way. Because I don’t have something to retreat to that will numb me from actually going through it.’

In the same interview with Today, Jessica opened up about her May 2017 interview on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in May 2017. She admitted she drank right before her appearance that day, and said she couldn’t watch the interview even if she tried. Personally I couldn’t either. Even DeGeneres herself, who could take upon any awkward situation, was taken aback by Jessica’s demeanour. Everyone in the audience was laughing at her ridiculous answers to DeGeneres’ questions, and DeGeneres herself couldn’t hide her confusion and frustrations at the unprofessional nature that was going on throughout the interview. DeGeneres was always known to be fun and quirky in her interviews, but that particular day with Jessica Simpson was….not. In her 2020 memoir, she wrote of the horror she experienced as she was sexually abused as a child by a family friend. She wrote, ‘It would start with tickling my back and then go into things that were extremely uncomfortable. I wanted to tell my parents. I was the victim but somehow I felt in the wrong.’ She told her parents six years later, never went back to sleepover there again. On Today, she said her parents never spoke of the ordeal in words, but they certainly spoke about it in action. She also revealed that the girl who abused her was also sexually abused.

Also in the same interview on Today, Jessica reminisced on her former marriage to Nick. She admitted that they were great together when they were successful together. Things were different, though, when she was successful on her own. It makes perfect sense. And his now frequent collaborations with Vanessa Lachey make perfect sense now too. He just can’t get over his ego. But we’re not here to talk about Nick, even though we spent SO much time doing so in this blog entry. We’re here to talk about Jessica. We’re here to celebrate and embrace HER success; a success that’s not based on a man. In recent weeks, she’s returned back to music with her new EP, ‘Nashville Canyon, Part 1’. The regaining passion for music came from Jessica’s daughter Maxwell, when she wished for her mother to sing on her birthday. She released her single ‘Leave’, which was about a cheating partner. This prompted rumours of infidelity on Johnson’s side to spread online. In an interview with Entertainment Tonight, the singer said the song spoke ‘her truth.’ On March 12, ahead returned to the stage for the first time in 15 years at the Recording Academy’s Austin Chapter Block Party at SXSW. The crowd went wild, and she tearfully thanked them for embracing her. We’re all embracing her, and we’re all cheering for her to succeed – in music and whatever else. Let’s not forget that she’s a successful business woman, having started The Jessica Simpson Collection, now with $1 billion and partnered with Walmart. Products sold include women’s clothing, handbags, shoes, and more.

I hope that Jessica Simpson never loses her spark again because of a man… I hope she always knows her worth. She truly does deserve the world. She’s not the baby that she said she was when she first married Nick Lachey. She never was that baby. He just made her feel she was. And I hope that women like her out there in the real world also know their worth, because women are worth so much more than ever. So to end this blog entry on a positive note, I’d like to include a few quotes from a few aspiring women(and a man!):

• ‘Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.’ – Golda Meir
• ‘A strong woman is a woman determined to do something others are determined not be done.’ – Marge Percy
• ‘Don’t be the girl who fell. Be the girl who got back up.’ – Jenette Stanley
• ‘I can’t think of any better representation of beauty than someone who is unafraid to be herself. – Emma Stone
• ‘We must carry forward the work of the women who came before us and ensure our daughters have no limits on their dreams, no obstacles to their achievements, and no remaining ceilings to shatter.’ – Barack Obama