This morning on The View, Jessica Simpson was set upon by the hosts to respond to John Mayer’s recent spate of stream-of-mouthiness interviews, including a comment about Simpson being “sexual napalm.” Simpson said, “Well, he’ll never have this napalm again.”
With this snappy retort, Simpson may have ushered a new term for a sexual part into popular usage. (Wait for it to pop up next season as a Christa Miller punchline on Cougar Town: “If he thinks he’s getting this napalm, he’ll be waiting to explode for a long time!”) What she’s definitely done is effectively promote tonight’s premiere of Jessica Simpson: The Price of Beauty, her new VH1 show.
Price of Beauty is an odd hybrid: part travel show (tonight: Thailand; next week: Paris), part Amazing Race-like gross-out reality show (Jessica and her friends eat fried cockroaches and gag obligingly), part Jessica Simpson comedy show (watch Jessica giggle during a gravely serious meditation session with a Buddhist monk).
Two things about this interest me. One, it’s clear from her View remarks and comments during Beauty that this entire globe-trotting series was inspired by that year-old hubbub about her jeans, which really goes to show how much that ridiculous publicity affected her. And two, I think a lot of people may actually check this show out.
And you know what? Tonight’s first episode, for all its ugly-American boorishness, is pretty fascinating, as a look at different cultural standards of beauty.
If this show is half as entertaining as her first effort, I’m definitely in!
I think her show looks good. People are so unnecessarily harsh on her. I hate when i read people calling her a trainwreck. What makes her a trainwreck? She’s 29, single, and has fluctuating weight. Thats half the femlae population. There’s nothing wrong with them and theres nothing wrong with her.
There’s plenty wrong with her. Mainly, she’s as dim as a sack of dirt. I’d resent her pointlessness a lot less if she was at least functionally retarded. Blades of grass are sharper than she is.
She’s not getting paid to be intelligent. So, “useless” is probably too harsh a criticism of Simpson. She gets paid to sing and to entertain people. The singing she does right…half the time at least and the entertaining part…well, to each their own, but she certainly entertains a large portion of the population. I wouldn’t call her “useless” and I wouldn’t be so harsh on her intelligence even though I’m not a fan of her work either.
*Sorry the quoted word was “pointlessness” not “useless.” But I’m still sticking with my comment.
I think she looks amazing and glowing. Good for her for not kowtowing to the anorexic look.
She never ceases to amaze me….did you know she’s worth $50Mil a year from her product lines? She’s smarter than I thought. She doesn’t need to sing for a living.
Who’s over this story already, raise your hand…
Good luck to Jessica on the new show, but all of these talk show host who keep dredging this story up are kind of undermining what she’s trying to accomplish here. Isn’t the focus of the show beauty as seen throughout the world and not some d-bag comments by John Mayer.
Come on. I mean REALLY…
Sorry… underminding… just so ticked off, couldn’t spell there
Actually, you were right the first time. It’s undermining.
Kudos to Jessica. She seems like a nice girl under all the media hoopla.
Agreed!
I find it ironic that she complains about John Mayer’s lack of class for his comment but than says publicly that she misses Tony Romo’s cute butt. How is that different?
Saying someone has a cute butt is actually quite different than giving away intimate details about how they are in bed.
Perhaps, but both are tacky.
I would be thrilled if the “worst” my ex would say about me is that I had a cute butt. You’re just grudgy, learn to deal.
I’m grudgy? Explain. I don’t have to deal with their business. Nor should I have to. Both should keep their opinions about their exes to themselves.
Since you dont have to deal with their business, what do you care???
Um…you spelled it right in your original post.
jessica is so much classier than half of the “celebrities” out there…hope this is a huge hit!
wait…classy??? No one who can be accused of “american boorishness” as Ken describes in his above review can be called classy. Someone who has become famous because of her reputation of being an airhead cannot ever be called classy.
Truthfully, I think Jessica is a good example of the maturation someone goes through in their 20s. She seems much more put together and thoughtful now that she’s older (and doesn’t have her scary dad handling things anymore).
I agree. She’s pulled it together better than many of her contemporaries.
Totally agree. She’s rich – B**tch!
I don’t quite think you can say the old press “affected” her so much as gave her an in to feel relevant again and “respond” with a reality show. Much like John Mayer’s comments allowed her to have something to comment on during talk show appearances, the “jeans controversy” made enough of a blip to feign relevance. Simpson’s a fame-monger opportunist of the worst kind.
Maybe. Or maybe she’s just trying to defend herself. If somebody publicly talked like that about me, I’d want to be able to air my side of the story just as publicly. And the show is actually an interesting idea that could possibly be very meaningful to her personally. Or you could be totally right, and she’s taking advantage of the situation to get herself back in the spotlight for good reasons. You never know. But I think it’s always worth giving someone the benefit of the doubt. And “fame-monger opportunist of the worst kind” for me is defined by Michael Jackson’s father advertising some tv show or album or something in all those press interviews in the wake of MJ’s death. I can’t find any possible way to excuse that and explain it as anything other than the most atrocious opportunism.
It’s wondrfeul to have you on our side, haha!
she’s not giving disgusting TMI about what she *has done* with that butt…huge difference
Can we talk about how the term Mayer originally used (“sexual napalm”) didn’t make sense in the first place?
Second that. John Mayer needs to go back to 11th grade English and learn how to form a simile or metaphor.
THANK YOU!
@mscisluv – thank you for pointing that out. Since napalm pretty much kills everything, sexual napalm would mean it should kill sex, right?
Maybe I’m wrong here, but it doesn’t make sense. And yes, I understood his point, and I don’t expect him to understand his analogies.
But it still doesn’t make sense in the meaning of the word he chose.
Oh, and this show actually is interesting. Beauty is a social construct, and this show may help to enlighten us to that fact.
Beauty is the luck of the roll of the dna dice….nothing more…nothing less.
umm, not really. look at white american women and how hung up they are about their backsides, while a shapely back is sought after in latin america. butt implants are the #1 plastic surgery in brazil. yet breast implants (big in the US, pun intended) are considered un-necessary in europe. just a small example.
Right, Jessica Simpleton is going to enlighten the world. Give me a fucking break. She’s the very REASON so many people are hung up on looks. She has all the intelligence of a garden snail, but because straight men all wanna bang her, she is somehow on TV 24/7.
Yeah, it’s a pretty interesting concept and one that most Americans don’t have a lot of access to. I’m glad she’s out there traveling the world. I’ll definitely check it out.
I think it maakes reasonable sense. Napalm is a substance that burns you. Sexual napalm=someone who if you get sexual with them they burn you. It’s not poetry but it makes a certain sense.
Napalm is a mixture of two materials that forms ‘jellied gasoline’, which burns more slowly. (According to the article I read.) In the way he used the word, he made no sense.
And Jess should have said “He’ll never have MY napalm again!” It doesn’t really make sense either, but I’m thinking… You can HAVE gas. You can’t BE gas.
I’m guessing Tony Romo won’t be watching this show.
I saw a commercial for the show. They had this chick wearing an outfit that seemed to be meant to look like traditional Maasai garb. But the chick was wearing western, hi-fashion makeup and posing with her hand on her hip like she was on the red carpet! Ugh ugh ugh!!! Ugh-ly American is right. Will no way watch no how. Mortifying is how it sounds. Mortifying.
get over yourself. you are judging the entire series based on a commercial clip. great, please refrain from giving us book or movie reviews based on the same logic.
i like the concept of the show and i think she has the personality (fun, silly, self depricating) to pull off the hosting gig.
I personally don’t think she’s as dumb as people think. In fact, I think she realized early on how to play up that image for laughs. I think this show is a great idea – it’s certainly more “relevant” and has way more substance than most reality fare on TV. In terms of success, she’s had plenty of successful ventures. Give the girl a break. At least she’s out there trying.
I’m sorry but didn’t Oprah do an episode on the different views on beauty. The journalist who went around the world to talk to different women was Lisa Ling.