Hollywood’s Most Dysfunctional Family

And the award for dysfunctional Hollywood family of the week goes to? The Simpsons. Not the yellow-skinned cartoons but the orange-skinned Simpson sisters, Jessica and Ashlee and their inappropriate parents, Joe and Tina.

I’ve always been a bit creeped out by parents who manage their kids’ careers. The words ‘get a life of your own why don’t you?’ spring to mind. But the Simpson family is a whole other picnic basket. Back when Jessica was still in a training bra, her father Joe was a Baptist minister and her mother Tina was a Sunday school teacher. Sniffing a whiff of talent, Joe and Tina ditched their jobs to become Jessica’s manager and stylist respectively and focussed their full family attention on making their daughter a Christian pop star.

Then they hit a roadblock. Jessica’s breasts. “In the Christian market she was considered a problem, because she was so voluptuous,” Joe explained to Blender magazine in 2004, adding that despite being a good wholesome girl, Jessica was deemed too sexy looking for the conservative religious pop world.  So the Simpsons decided to change their family fame strategy and target traditional pop where big boobs are a big asset. By the time she turned 17, she’d landed a deal with Columbia records and here’s where it starts to get yucky.

It’s a rare girl who wants to hear her father discuss her rack but when Jessica burst forth from her training bra and became famous, Joe decided his daughter’s breasts were communal property and worth discussing at length.
“Her chest is ahead of her by about two or three feet. It gets there before she does.” he enthused in one interview. In another, he bragged:  “If you put her in a T-shirt or you put her in a bustier, she’s sexy in both. She’s got double D’s! You can’t cover those suckers up!” Actually Joe, you can. With things called clothes. Heard of them?

Interestingly, with the Simpson’s conservative Southern Baptist origins, virginity was compulsory for Jessica. Her parents demanded it while simultaneously spruiking her assets in her videos, magazine cover shoots and red carpet appearances. Then she married Nick Lachey and popped her cherry. Joe naturally had some thoughts to share with the world about this happy development in his daughter’s life.  “She waited for marriage and now she’s happily married and having sex every day,” he said at the time. “Now she’s going crazy. And that’s cool.” Boundaries Joe, boundaries. Heard of them?

Chatting with the media about the sex lives and body parts of blood relatives is a family tradition chez Simpson. And Joe isn’t the only one who participates.  Jessica recently aired her thoughts on sister Ashlee (also a pop star, also managed by Joe): “My sister, her body is so sick right now! She’s like this little surf girl with the most perfect boobs and the skinniest legs. I have no idea how she looks so good. There’s no sibling rivalry. We’re different people, and our bodies are totally different.”

Thankfully, Joe has not yet publicly weighed in on the precise differences in his daughters’ bodies but there’s still time.

As for Jess not knowing how her sister looks so good, she should take a look at some family photos from last year and she’ll find out what the rest of the world has already worked out: 21 year old Ashlee has had cosmetic surgery. The most obvious areas of surgical enhancement are her nose and lips but throw in dramatic weight loss, flouro white teeth and Rapunzel hair extensions and she’s almost uncrecognisable.
“Ashlee’s always secretly felt like an ugly duckling,” a friend revealed to In Touch magazine this week. “Now she’s finally blossomed into a swan.” Except that she didn’t blossom. She got her nose cut down with a knife, her lips blown up with a syringe and the hair of some poor blonde Russian peasant glued to her head.

In the Simpson family spirit of sharing, Jessica also revealed that her sister was recently offered US$4m to pose nude for Playboy, adding proudly “She’s so beautiful – she’s come a long way.” Yes, via the plastic surgeon.
Look, I’m not trying to be a bitch when I say that. Those of us who don’t make a living from the way we look can only stand on the sidelines and imagine what it’s like for those poor buggers who do. But when nose jobs, collagen injections, hair extensions and tooth veneers become the new beauty baseline for young girls, how the does Annabel Average have a hope in hell of feeling decent about herself?

And when it’s your Dad encouraging you to put your face and body under the knife? That’s just plain twisted.