Jessica Simpson’s Old Journals Show Just How Damaging Weight-Related Scrutiny Is

In the new paperback edition of her memoir titled Open Book, Jessica Simpson reflects on how her negative self-image nearly “ruined everything.” Simpson included an excerpt from her 2009 diary—”a moment from the ‘mom jeans’ era”—which gives readers a look into her mental state during the time in which “the world put a hyperfocus on my weight,” Simpson wrote, per People.

“I hate that I was treated as an object to be tossed around like a rag doll, but I smile to see me talking to myself back and forth across all these years,” Simpson wrote in the Open Book caption beneath her diary entry. “It’s like I knew this was the purpose all along: you reading this right now in this very moment.”

Her 2009 journal entry begins, “Why does the cruel opinion of this world get to me? Has it become about how many people read something and are encouraged to believe it. Last week I read back to my journals from 1999 and I beat myself up about how fat I [was] before I even gave the world a chance to. Today my heart breaks because people say I’m fat.”

She then asked herself: “How much do I think about my body on a scale from 1-100% of the day? 80%—that isn’t fair to everyone I love and love me…somewhere inside of my heart and it is MY twisted head, I know I believe I am worthy to feel beautiful.”

In a side note, Simpson wrote, I could end up ruining EVERYTHING with this self-doubt.

Now, over 10 years after she wrote about her insecurities in her diary, Simpson has finally learned the value of being body positive, despite what the tabloids say.

“There is a wonderful movement for body positivity now and the response to that portion of my story has been overwhelmingly supportive,” she told People. “I don’t think people always realized that there was a human being, a beating heart and working eyes with actual feelings behind those headlines and that words can hurt and stay with you for a lifetime.”

She’s still “a work in progress,” Simpson confessed, but she said she now has the tools to “quiet those voices in my head when they speak up.” She continued, “I spent so many years beating myself up for an unrealistic body standard that made me feel like a failure all of the time…I believe in my heart that a healthy body and a sound mind-body connection are what’s truly important and help me accept imperfections as beauty.”