Jessica Simpson Opens Up About Childhood Sexual Abuse, Body Image And Addiction In New Tell-All Memoir

Jessica Simpson is best known for teen-pop, early 2000s reality TV and MTV ‘dumb blonde’ fame. She's the one who confused chicken for tuna, became synonymous for those Daisy Dukes in The Dukes of Hazzard, and who notoriously got drunk for herElleninterview. But two decades after her debut album Sweet Kisses was released, Jessica is re-writing her narrative with a new memoir, Open Book.

Released only yesterday in the US (and slated to be released February 20 in the UK), Open Book is already making headlines for her candid revelations about childhood sexual abuse by a family friends' daughter and struggles with addiction, diet pills and body image.

‘It would start with tickling my back and then go into things that were extremely uncomfortable,’ she writes, in an extract published by PeopleMagazine. ‘For six years, I was abused by this girl during our family’s visits.’

Jessica says that she eventually told her parents about the abuse, but that ‘I felt in the wrong’, despite being the victim.

‘We never stayed at my parents’ friends’ house again, but we also didn’t talk about what I had said,’ she writes.

It was this trauma, aggravated by her early years in the music industry, pressure from studio executives to look and act sexier like fellow child-stars Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, and pressure to get slimmer, that led to a life-long habit of self-medicating.

‘On my 17th birthday, I flew to New York for meetings with record labels,” she recounts. ‘I sang ‘Amazing Grace’ for Tommy Mottola at Columbia and he wanted to sign me. And then he said, “You gotta lose 15 pounds”. That’s when the crop-tops came in and the dancing and choreography, and that was all confusing for me.’

She remembers painting abs on her stomach with eye shadow to fit in.

‘I immediately went on an extremely strict diet and started taking diet pills which I would do for the next 20 years.’

Soon this diet pill habit was compounded with alcohol and drugs like Tylenol PM and Ambien, a habit Jessica described as her way to deal with the trauma and to fall asleep.

Jessica’s later position as a sex symbol – and the ‘scrutiny’ of her body thanks to her role in Dukes of Hazzard – only made the star’s body image issues worse. That Daisy Duke moment, she writes, ‘created a gold standard Jessica, the ‘before’ for every ‘is she fat or is she thin’ story for the rest of my career.’

‘It’s heartbreaking and I mean, I punished myself for it,’ she explained to People. ‘I heard it and I couldn’t not hear it in the back of my mind every time I was on stage, every time I walked out the door.’

‘I feel like we all look in the mirror and are not 100 per cent all the time,’ she explained. ‘I mean, we all see our flaws. Some, the others don’t see. And mine were just out there for the world to rip apart, when they weren’t even flaws. When they were made into flaws that I didn’t know I had.’

According to the singer, the scrutiny over her body was at its worst in 2009 when a photo of her wearing ‘mom jeans’ went viral and she was mercilessly fat-shamed by fans and the media.

‘This picture that circulated and went worldwide broke my heart,’ Jessica told the Today Show. ‘Not the picture necessarily, but the caption. Like, all the captions.’

Now, Jessica reveals that she is sober – and has been since 2017 – and refuses to read comments about her body, which she says she feels comfortable.

‘It’s one of those things that I do accept about myself,’ she told People. ‘I do want to look my best of course. And be my best and be active with my kids and run around and not feel too weighed down. It’s not that I am all about strict dieting or anything like that.'

Open Book by Jessica Simpson is available February 20 2020, Harper Collins, £20.00.

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