Jessica Simpson: It's Time to Say Goodbye
With her latest stab at relevancy—a new single and a VH1 show—Jessica Simpson is yet again being shoved down our collective gullet. It's time for this uninteresting, talentless person to take a hike. Forever!
I usually scoff at people who criticize celebrities by saying, "They're just famous for being famous." But Jessica Simpson is something worse—she's famous for trying to be famous. She isn't defined by any quantifiable event, talent, or success, but by a constant striving, one that often leads to disastrous failure. The same came be said for "Who We Are" her new single (below), which is a indistinguishable amalgam of pleasant electronic bleeps that will float across your brain as amiably and forgettably as a cloud in a bright sky. It's the theme song for her new show, The Price of Beauty, that starts next month on VH1 and which features her traveling around the world trying out beauty regimens from different cultures. Not a bad concept if we weren't so sick of seeing her face—plastered over with cosmetics—glaring back at us in the televised version of hell.
When she started, she was just another big-breasted, blonde Britney Spears impersonator with a good voice and very determined father. She had some moderate success thanks to corporate marketing and a naive female fan base, but none of her early hits are that memorable.
We probably would have been rid of her by now if it weren't for a little thing called reality television. In 2002, MTV debuted Newlyweds, an "inside look" at her recent marriage to boybander Nick Lachey. Her ditsy persona (or was it her real personality?) took off immediately and America tuned in to see her latest bout with sitcom stupidity and her grappling with various food-related mysteries, like what kind of animal a Chicken of the Sea is and where Buffalo wings come from.
Simpson quickly morphed into a marketing robot, hawking pizza and dubious skin care regimens. With the sound of cash registers echoing in her voluminous hair, Americans soon forgot who she was. You never said, "She sings that song," or "She's the star of that movie." You said, "Oh, she's the stupid girl from MTV." For a while, Simpson was everywhere and we had no real idea why that was, other than we were told to like her and she was busy pawning stuff off on us.
She tried to be more than that, sure. She wanted to be a real star who could do things other than pitch unnecessary corporate goods. But her albums soon stopped selling and she skipped from dud to dud, trying to act in Dukes of Hazzard and something ineffable with Dane Cook. Then, like Jean-Claude Van Damme before her, her flicks went direct to DVD. She tried to make the switch from pop to country, but even stupid Christians in the Bible Belt didn't want her at that point. Like a rotten tomato stuck behind the crisper, she was starting to stink up the joint, but no one could clean her out.
Why? Blame the Celebrity Industrial Complex! Even though we were no longer interested in her entertainment products, she'd started a career as a professional girlfriend, going out very publicly with musician John Mayer and then Dallas Cowboy Tony Romo. The rumors are still swirling that she's inexplicably dating Smashing Pumpkins singer Billy Corgan, which would be the most interesting thing she's done in five years. And when she needs a little career bump she hits the cover of Vanity Fair or Oprah—not to talk about a project, but her personal life. We find it hard to care about either.
Now she's back for another round through the publicity cycle, as if she might have something new or interesting to share with us. Sorry, Jessica, you don't. You're like that sweater we once bought on sale hoping that we would one day fit into it, but we suddenly realized that we will never wear, no matter how hard we try. You won't ever fit us and it's better that we donate you to charity and clear you out of the closet. Because we only have room for so much, and newer, prettier things have come along that we like. Yes, Jessica we're getting rid of you. And since we barely even wanted you in the first place, please do us the courtesy of staying away.