Jezebel
This month's Esquire cover profile of Jessica Simpson is so awesome I had to excerpt it for you. Writer Lisa Taddeo, who was also notably responsible for last month's Heath Ledger fan fiction, is clearly determined to outdo all other pants-creamingly overwrought Esquire celebrity profiles and the result is a single page so hyperbolically, preposterously Esquire it pulls off in a single page what Tom Junod would need 10,000 words to achieve, starting with a preamble about her "hair like Clorox sunshine" and "breasts like plucked guinea hens, undercooked and overstuffed." Click the pic for more brilliant celebrity vaguiography. (Also, how Tyra is the way Esquire constantly remakes its "iconic" photos of years past?)
It kind of contradicts itself in a few places, so we've bolded that.
IT'S WHAT YOU MIGHT PICTURE. Sitting on the couch in her parents' home in Encino, California, she's clutching a pillow to her stomach like a kid at a sleepover. A lot of what she says echoes what you've heard. You ask her which star of the silver screen she most identifies with, and she says Dolly Parton. Tee hee. She's got the oh-my-gosh nuh-uh of the small-town Texan.
Sure, Jessica Simpson is a lot like you would expect.
But look close.
Blow her off if you want. Say, She's not even that hot. Yesterday's news. Last year's pinup.
Now look even closer: She may have come from the same Mickey Mouse oven as her pantyless comrades, but unlike them, she is not melting. She is not checking in and out of rehab. She is not squeezing out babies like wet gremlins. She is not selling night-vision sex tapes on the Internet.
Now look north, into her eyes: Jessica Simpson is the future face of the new American job of celebrity, the first of the self-made, small-talent applicants who'll last a Liz Taylor lifetime.
She conjures the sensation of palming the cheerleader's ass behind the bleachers on unwilted September afternoons...You can see it in her girlfriend face. A face that lets men know she will one day be a good mother, with the promise of postpartum sex in her eyes. She says her lips are chapped from kissing. Maybe if you got close enough to kiss them you would see the reflection in her eyes — a football flying past the iris, a cheerleader pom-pomming in the back of the retina.
Simpson kept the cheerleader skirt on. She didn't give in whole naked hog to our imaginations.
"I've come to realize that the more I censor myself, the lest people relate to me," she says. "I went through a period in my life where I kept to myself, this last year and a half. And this is the first time, as I'm making my country album right now, I've had to just lay it all out there and go to that place where I'm comfortable saying, 'Here's my world, come back in.'And this, the MONEY ANECDOTE:
She's talking about her favorite bra. She's saying that she's wearing it. "What is the damn name?" she asks the ceiling. She rustles around in her sweatshirt. "iI can't ever...watch me, I'm gonna take it off..."
She starts removing the bra under her sweatshirt. "This is so something I would do...Um." The bra is off and in her hands. "It's this. I LOVE this." Love is always in italics, capitalized. Bold-faced, underlined, drop-shadowed...."This store is unbelievable. Kiki de Montparnasse. I'm definitely black lace. Red lace is cheesy but black lace, hmm..."
This is Jessica Simpson.
Just a normal girl, a twenty-seven year-old preacher's daughter with a good-sized heart....at least here we've turned a real-live girl into something more: the lost American metaphor. A blond from Nowhere, Texas, holding a $200 bra in her hands. She knows she doesn't deserve it because of who she is.
You believe her. She's in for the long haul. So he'll continue playing the part, working her way up. She'll be Daisy Duke, she'll wear sort shorts, she'll be a blonde and act like a ditz on camera. She won't bitch about not being in a Woody Allen film or try to write a postmodern novel about canned tuna. Nothing will be handed to Jessica Simpson.
Comments
I just vomited in my mouth multiple times. This woman knows she was writing about Jessica Freaking Simpson, right?
"She may have come from the same Mickey Mouse oven as her pantyless comrades"
Wow that's funny, considering she wasn't even on Mickey Mouse club. And yes I know she auditioned! Fact check anybody?
This:
"the promise of postpartum sex in her eyes"
has got to be one of the creepiest things I've ever read. Promise of postpartum sex? Surely there are other ways to say "Jess loves sex no matter where or when" that don't involve evoking placenta.
That is tooooooo funny!!!!!!
I am speechless. Everything bad I have felt about esquire and Jessica Simpson appears to be true.
What was that bizarre cheerleader fantasy behind-the-bleachers glint-of-a-football-in-her-eyes crap? Huh? What?
"Clorox sunshine" would make a wonderfully emo screen name.
@AnderBobo: Ha ha no, she wasn't. She was REJECTED. Britney, Christina, and Justin were all more talented as children. And still are, IMO.
In the article about recreating the past covers is this gem: After her makeup artist accidentally drank turpentine, her shoot almost didn't happen.
Accidentally? Really, if that's not a cry for help, I don't know what is. "Please, please don't make me do this! Don't you realize this is Jessica Simpson?"
These are some of the most nauseating metaphors I can recall reading.
Never thought I'd feel sorry for Jessica Simpson, but this is fucked. Lisa Taddeo should be fired and also not allowed within 50 feet of a keyboard.
Well, nothing more will be handed to Jessica Simpson than is already handed to mildly famous, pretty blonde American girls.
The cover isn't even well done. She shouldn't have any shaving cream on top of her lip. It would've looked better.
@AnderBobo: Yeah really. She auditioned but blew it after being freaked out by Christina Aguilera going on before her.
@BlondeGrlz: That's like the time I accidentally staple gunned my labia before having a meet and greet with Dane Cook.
"The lost American metaphor"?!?? How many junior copy editors did it take to restrain him from waxing poetic about her Grand Canyon, with its amber waves of grain, and those purple mountain majesties from C to shining C?
Incidentally, I'm the recovered Teutonic simile. PUT ME ON A MAGAZINE, BITCHES!
@AnderBobo: Yeah and what about christina aguilera? Who was actually on MMC and has a "liz taylor lifetime" career more so than Jessica IMO. I never even hear about Jessica anymore.
Not that I like any of these people. I think she sniffed some clorox.
Who IS this brilliant wordsmith? I'm sorry, but anyone who would call Jessica Simpson "the lost American metaphor" needs to get their head examined.
I was sort of hoping this chick was going to disappear into obscurity after that AWFUL Heath Ledger tribute.
@AnderBobo: She was never on MMC. Xtina's pipes gave her the jitters and she bombed her audition.
@BeckyIva: I liked that one, because it made it sound like you'd look into her eyes, and see the reflection of a football flying towards her face.
Pow!
My boyfriend read that Ledger piece (unfortunately he subscribes to Esquire) and was like, WTF? We have this issue on our coffee table and were discussing with friends the other night how much sexier the original cover with Virna Lisi was. I don't really see how Jessica Simpson is still relevant. I was more interested in her when she was on Newlyweds.
honestly, this reads like it was written by a starstruck (or boobstruck) high school kid. if this is all it takes to get paid to write for a huge magazine, then i'm gonna get typing!
@beatrice3000: I love how you knew that and how I knew that without you having to tell me, lol. If my brain could store ACTUAL information, I would be unstoppable I tell you.
@and Begorrah: Except that, as her father has confirmed, she's got D's.
I'm amazed that the writer wasn't able to use more Texas mythology. There needed to be a Phyliis George/Farah Fawcett/Morgan Fairchild reference in there.
The article mentioned on the cover of that issue, "The Things That Carried Him", is one of the best peices of magazine writing I've ever read:
[www.esquire.com]
This is so transparently trying to turn Jessica into an Anna Nicole or a Marilyn that it hurts to read it.
I bet her creepy dad liked the sections about the bra, though. Just sayin.
@KittenFluff: Yeah...seeing the two covers side-by-side...
It's like, Esquire is just a half-assed copy of itself, nowadays.
:@BeAgrestic: @hortense: Just to defend my useless knowledge capacity, I knew she wasn't on MMC I just found it odd that the lady writer with all the wierd phrases didnt. Trust me I've watched all the behind the musics too! :)
This isn't satire? Seriously?
@ineffable.me: The cover shot is absolutely hideous, from the bad eye makeup to the sloppily applied shaving cream, to the bouffant "clorox sunshine" hair, to the blop of shaving cream on her boob (is that a thinly veiled reference to Papa Joe's enthusiastic admiration of his daughter's breasts?)
Give her a break, clearly, Lisa is just excited that she finally got the "Magnetic Poetry: Over-Wrought Metaphor Version" that she ordered from Amazon.
my friend just saw her in person, while on a business trip in Nashville, and said that she had a casual shirt and jeans look, no make-up, and was the prettiest girl he'd ever seen in real life.
what is it about her lately that inspires such sympathy from me?
@AnderBobo: I absorb useless information like a sponge. It's a blessing and a curse.
@AnderBobo: I don't think she mentioned that Simpson was on "The Mickey Mouse Club," only that she was part of that same squeaky-clean Orlando brand of 90's pop.
@KittenFluff: It's just completely irrelevant. You're looking for a female celebrity who is paving the way in a male-dominated world, and you pick Jessica-fucking- Simpson? Really?
@KatyLou: i'm trying to figure out what the opposite of post pardum sex is, because obviously the author of the article is experiencing it.
@petuniacat: It's so poorly executed. It's a disgrace to the original.
@BeAgrestic: I'm so bad. Tell me Angelina Jolie's weight, I will remember it forever yet I cannot for the life of me remember the name of any street/road/highway on which I do not live.
@KittenFluff: Heh. I subscribe to Esquire. But only because I pretty much get all the free mags I can with "My Coke Rewards."
@ineffable.me: It's an exact replica of a 1960s cover with some famous Italian star.
@Motown: Damn. The lyrics just don't quite work without it, you know?
Now look north, into her eyes
I like how it's just blantantly saying that you were obviously looking deep into her chest before.
@funnyface: Too Late.
Well, I s'pose we have to give her props for her creative writing skills. Anyone who could consider Jessica Simpson and come up with anything other than 'meh' is definitely inventive!
Am I the only one who isn't all that impressed by the original?
@funnyface: they didnt do it right.
@KatyLou: at the time it was a big deal and it was a statement on womens rights and what not. granted, poking fun at the womynz, but still.
The cover is horrible, the original was done better and all I can think about is that KD Lang Cindy Crawford Vanity Fair cover that was in the same vein 10+ years ago. This entire profile reeks of desperation and irrelevance. The woman isn't even really famous anymore, and when she was famous she was famous for being a stupid pretty girl with a big rack and a questionable father. Nothing was handed to her except for everything.
Sorry, I laughed. It reminds me of all my female friends over the years who have worked for men's publications. If only the average red-blooded Uh-miiir-uh-can male realized that many of the geeky girls he openly and blatantly mocked in high school have now turned the tables by orchestrating the jokes.
@Bellzaboo: my friend also saw her in real life and was kind of turned off. Regardless, if the rest of us had a team of advisors who told us what to wear, eat, how to workout, etc. 24/7 we'd all be ridiculously smokin'.
@KatyLou: no. you're not. Does Photoshop have "iconic" filters that replicate film stocks of different eras?
I think this line annoys me most:
"She is not squeezing out babies like wet gremlins. "
First of all, it doesn't make sense. Does she mean that the babies are like wet gremlins or that by squeezing out a baby you are like a wet gremlin?
Also, is that a dig at Christina and Nicole, since they both had children? Because honestly why is that even a dig?
She's saying: Jessica Simpson may seem like a mindless has-been but at least she hasn't squeezed out a kid or flashed her cooter.
@ineffable.me: The model in the original also looked like she had something going on in her brain. JSim looks completely bored and dull in the photo.
@petuniacat: yeah she cant even pretend to shave properly.
This reads like the backcover of the WORST trashy romance novel ever printed...should I laugh, vomit or just be embarrased for the author.
This reads like Norman Mailer's book on Marilyn Monroe.
Have I been doing so much copy editing that I'm hallucinating, or is the Esquire excerpt full of spelling mistakes?
@EdnasEdibles: I found the line about squeezing out wet gremlins offensive. It seems to be a reference to Britney and is tacky, considering that Britney is suffering from mental illness. Also - making rude comments about little kids is always tasteless, IMO.
I'm sort of terrified of doing the "pretend" shave. I don't have much facial hair, and what I do have is really blonde and fine and whispery, but I'd be afraid it'd grow back all stubbly.
I think the author had to be on mescaline or shrooms while writing this piece.
I think Jessica's career is in the toilet, judging by her last couple of (disaster) movies so she'll try any kind of photo shoot at this point.