If one were to list the most cringe-inducing moments in body shaming history, it’d have to land pretty darn close to the top. Because it’s hard to imagine in our year 2019 that a woman would receive so much flack for wearing a pair of high-waisted jeans. And yet, way back in 2009, when Jessica Simpson took to the stage at a chili cook off in Pembroke Pines, Fla., her choice of denim was headline news—and it wasn’t good. “Jessica Simpson: This Is How She Rolls,” proclaimed TMZ while Fox News chimed in with, “Jessica Simpson Shocks Fans With Noticeably Fuller Figure”. Never mind that, as the 5-foot-3 multi-hyphenate later pointed out, she was a size-four at the time. Or, you know, that her waistline isn’t really anyone’s damn business. The “Mom Jeans” incident as it would be known became a full-on scandal. And for the woman at the center of it, an actual real human being with feelings, it was super hurtful. “People [were] talking about my weight for an entire year,” she noted in a 2010 interview with Oprah Winfrey, no stranger to being the subject of fan’s body obsessions. “It’s like people just couldn’t stop talking about my weight fluctuating.””It wasn’t really my priority to please the public and make them feel like I’m supposed to be looking like I did when I was 25,” she would reflect on Today years later.And yet, having what felt like everyone on the Internet blast her for gaining a few points was tough. Asked to name her lowest point in the previous couple years (a time that also saw ex John Mayer detailing their sex life to Playboy) she didn’t hesitate to call out the body shamers. “It would bother any woman, I would think. I had to get to a place where I had to guard myself,” she told Winfrey.
