How Jessica Simpson made $1 billion out of being bullied by the tabloids.

Jessica Simpson is a serious businesswoman.

Yes, you read that correctly.

The woman who made her fame singing bubble-gum pop, washing cars in soap-ed up bikinis and bringing Daisy Dukes back into fashion is an entrepreneur. Sure, it’s likely that she’s hired a crack team of fashion, bizness and marketing prodigies to support her. But either way, Jess is making some serious cash and she hasn’t laid down a single in years.

This may be alarming news to you — we’re talking about a woman who famously thought chicken was a type of fish — but J-Simp is a billionaire. And a pretty damn savvy one, at that.

The Jessica Simpson Collection — which sells clothes, shoes, make-up and for a time in 2004, a line of edible cosmetics — makes $1 billion profit every year.

UPDATE: Jessica Simpson shares photos of her “posing proudly” in a swimsuit i.e. controlling her own image.

First let me say this: Any tabloid in the world currently not running this story under the headline “Jessica Slimpson” is missing the perfect pun opportunity.

By posting the confident photos on her own Instagram, she’s starving magazines of the right to shame her or obsess over her body without her permission. This is just another clever move in her campaign to take her narrative back and control how the world sees her.

Here’s the best part about J-Simp’s huge success.

Jessica Simpson has used all the cruel headlines that’ve been written about her to sell her clothes. It’s one of the greatest tabloid revenge stories ever.

Let me explain.

Jessica Simpson has been a target of some of the most vile tabloid headlines ever. She’s had some dramatic fluctuations in her weight, mostly coinciding with one of the two times she’s produced a baby human. For someone who started their career banking on ripped abs, short-shorts and the envy of teenage girls, the girl’s inability to “bounce back” after birth to her “pre-baby body” has made her a moral failure, according gossip media. She’s made the news every time she shifts 10kg either way.

In fact, Jessica’s entire identity has been reduced to her body – more so even than other female celebrities. We’ve barely heard a whisper about her talents above the roar of all the fat talk. Surely this has taken an emotional toll on Jess, she’s human.

But Jessica found a very clever way to avenge all those mean headlines and the world’s fixation on her weight.

She’s basically using the publicity about her ever-changing body shape as a marketing strategy for her clothes and shoes and cosmetics.

Here she is, spinning years of tabloid bullying into a reason to buy her stuff:

“I have been every size on the planet and I understand women. And I just know how to dress them. I know there’s all different kinds. There’s life in the whole world beyond LA and New York. I understand Middle America and their mindset.”

She understands Middle America – AKA the normal people – because she’s been overweight, underweight, toned, wobbly, and everything in between. She understands women because she’s felt their judgment and embodied their imperfections.

Jessica Simpson is literally capitalizing on the world’s cruel obsession with her weight here, implying that she “gets” her consumers because she knows what it’s like to feel vilified, judged and taunted for being imperfect. It’s genius.

Exquisitely well played, J-Simpson. You just made a billion bucks a year by turning a vapid bullying campaign on itself.

APPLAUSE, RAPTUROUS APPLAUSE.

Follow @kateileaver
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Here’s the evolution of Jess Simpson, because we know you wanted it: