entertainment

Jessica Simpson on the cover of Vanity Fair. Not fat.

I must admit to being rather surprised when I heard Jessica had landed the latest VF cover. But reading the accompanying feature, I understand it a bit better.

What a refreshing change to read a PROPER celebrity profile of the pop star (heck, of ANY celebrity) instead of the usual magazine fluff and puff – due to the fact that celebrities will not pose for photos unless they have approval of the feature that accompanies it.

Ever wondered why most women’s magazines are forced to run such bland interviews? That’s why. They need the celebs……..

…….to sell their magazines and the celebs use that power accordingly to control their image.

Anyway. Vanity Fair is different. I very much doubt they ever grant feature approval to any celebrity they interview because they are one of the few magazines important and powerful enough to be able to stand up to celebrity publicists.

This feature paints an at times poignant portrait of a talented girl who has followed the star path almost as far as it’s going to take her. It suggests Jessica Simpson’s talent has just about run its course.  Some highlights:

“….but as surprising as her appearance—how she seemed to be turning,
before our eyes, into just another performer on the never-ending Opry
circuit (she was, in fact, promoting her first country album, Do You Know, the genre being a tempting refuge for struggling Top 40 stars)—was the venue: a strawberry festival in Plant City, Florida. Plant City Florida for God’s sake!
Even if the pounds were shed quickly, even if, as Simpson’s camp
insists, they were never there in the first place, the dissemination of
the photos was a blow for Simpson, who, like all starlets, has been
careful to be pictured in just one way: as the skinny,
forever-24-year-old sex bomb. What’s more, in April she was spoofed in
an Eminem video as a gone-to-seed pop tart spilling out of her Daisy
Dukes, hiking a cheeseburger to Tony Romo, played by Eminem.

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All this came amid a cascade of career setbacks. Her record sales,
for example, which peaked in 2003, when her show was in its prime, have
fallen ever since. (The country album sold fewer than 200,000 copies.)
Her movies: Blonde Ambition, a bastard child of Working Girl and Legally Blonde, which opened in December 2007 in just eight theaters in Texas, where it grossed $1,771 on its opening weekend; followed by Major Movie Star,
which went straight to DVD last spring, where it sank without a trace,
like a wounded ocean liner that goes down quietly, sending up no more
than a storm of bubbles.

In short, it’s been a bad time for Jessica Simpson: flop, flop, country
flop, fat picture. And yet, despite it all, she does radiate a special
quality. She brings an unmistakable energy to everything she does, can
carry a song, and can even make a commercial worth TiVo-ing. (She’s
done excellent work for Pizza Hut.) She can hold your attention, in
other words, make your eyes follow her, which is a classic definition
of stardom.

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But Jessica Simpson—who just a few years ago was No. 44 on Forbes’s
list of the hundred most powerful celebrities; who has had seven
singles hit Top 10 and has gone platinum three times; whose first
movie, The Dukes of Hazzard, a tour de force of lowbrow,
car-chase shenanigans, opened at No. 1—has reached one of those
critical junctures, beyond which every possibility, both glorious and
obscure, is open.

We met in the Polo Lounge, the restaurant
off the lobby of the Beverly Hills Hotel, in Los Angeles. She was
wearing a dark, fedora-like hat pulled low. She told me it’s part of
her fashion line, which is on racks in Macy’s, Nordstrom, and
Dillard’s, and which, she said, is the most lucrative part of her
career. “The Jessica Simpson Collection is a $400 million business,”
she said. “My mom and I are creative directors. We have hundreds of
people working, but nothing gets by us. It’s adorable and it’s
affordable. What’s amazing right now, during this recession, is that,
somehow, the business keeps growing.”

…..Jessica seemed nervous. Her hands trembled. She ordered a glass of
Pinot Grigio. It seemed to calm her. She didn’t want to talk about her
weight, so, of course, that’s all I could think of—it gilded each
question in my mind: What are you working on now [that you’re fat]? Do
you see yourself as part of a class, with Christina and Britney [or are
you too fat]? Do you feel that your relationship with Tony Romo has
affected his performance as a quarterback [because you are fat]?

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…..When I asked Jessica about her father’s role in her career, she
said, “I can talk to my dad like he’s my manager, and put ‘Dad’ on the
back burner. We’ve been doing it since I was 13. So, at this point,
we’re in a good rhythm. A lot of people find it strange, but it’s the
only way I know. And I don’t care to know another way, because it suits
me. And we’ve done a pretty dang good job.”

When I asked Ashlee Simpson, who, for most of our conversation, said
the types of things pre-loaded in the memory chip of a Chatty
Cathy—“Jessica is a fighter”; “Jessica is a wonderful girl”; “We’re the
best in our pajamas together”—the same question, she came to life. “My
dad gets such a bad rap,” she said, “and it’s all bullshit.”

You can read the whole feature here….

To me, Jessica Simpson is typical of those celebrities who you can’t remember what they’re actually famous for. Was it a reality show? A song? A commercial? They’ve almost become pop cultural wall paper….on video hits and magazines and lipstick ads……

She’s still so young and clearly so entrenched in fame. What’s next for starlets like Jessica? It’s not like she can go to college and get a law degree. Or is that exactly what she should do?