Nothing encapsulates the rampant fatphobia of the ’90s and early ’00s quite like the vicious commentary about Jessica Simpson’s weight. Unfortunately, that’s another trend we didn’t leave behind in Y2K.
As recently as July, the 43-year-old singer and entrepreneur denied rumours that she was taking Ozempic for weight loss. Now she’s discussing how the public scrutiny is affecting her three young children. “My kids see me being still scrutinised and it’s very confusing to them because they’re like, ‘I don’t even understand this. Why don’t they just say you look pretty, Mom? You look pretty,’” Simpson recently told Access Hollywood. “I’m like, ‘Honey, I wish I could explain it.” I wish I could say for me that it’s gotten better, but it still remains the same.”
Simpson shares three children—Maxwell Drew, 11, Ace Knute, 10, and Birdie Mae, 4—with her husband, Eric Johnson, whom she wed in July 2014. During the same interview Simpson said weight “doesn’t need to be a conversation” at home and that her children don’t know the meaning of the word calories.
“I try to not complain about myself in front of them. I try to not diet,” she said. “They just see me living a healthy lifestyle. That’s why I quit drinking. I was like, Okay they’re going to pick up on everything I do. I’ve got to be a good role model. And I can do that for the world, and I gotta be it for my kids.”
Still, Simpson said there was one “beautiful thing” that has come from the tabloids’ ever-present obsession with her body, which is the empathy and understanding she brings to her fashion line. “I have been every size. I do understand everybody and every woman and their mentality and how deserving they are of fashion and style, and it’s just such a natural thing for me.”
She continued, “I tell my kids, ‘How you feel about yourself is how you should feel. It’s not about—you don’t dress for anybody else. You don’t try to look like anybody else. I mean, somebody can inspire something, but truly, you don’t have to be any other size.’”
This article originally appeared on GLAMOUR US.