The “mom jeans” jokes are still weighing heavily on Jessica Simpson.
“The fact I was famous last year for gaining 10 pounds is ridiculous and really sad,” the curvy, healthy-looking singer told Oprah Winfrey in an interview telecast yesterday.
Simpson, 29, said nothing has hurt her more than the fat jokes she’s had to endure since she performed at a chili cook-off in Florida on Jan. 25, 2009, wearing the now-infamous jeans and a chunky leopard-print belt.
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“It would bother any woman, I would think,” she said.
It wasn’t bad enough that she became the butt of tasteless jokes — her extra pounds packed on feelings of guilt.
“I didn’t want to sit down and talk with anybody about it, because I felt guilty,” she said. “I felt like, you know, if people look at me and maybe they’re a size bigger, they look at themselves and they think they’re fat.
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“I don’t want other people to feel fat if they’re a size 6 or whatever size they are.”
The 5-foot-3 Simpson claims that those “mom jeans” were only a size 4 and that she fluctuates between size 4 and 6 — although OK! magazine reported last year that she told a friend she had ballooned to an 8.
“It’s a really hard thing for me to talk about,” she said. “Because I celebrate women of all sizes, and I think we’re all beautiful.”
Jessica appeared on “Oprah” to hype her upcoming VH1 reality show, “The Price of Beauty,” where she and her friends globe-trot to examine various local standards of beauty.
Simpson fought back tears on Oprah, recounting meeting an anorexic French model who had withered to 62 pounds.
“I cry . . . it makes me very emotional,” Simpson told her host.
“Just the pressure that women feel to be thin . . . The pressure that the media puts on women is so unfair, and so disgusting . . . and if I can do something to make it better, that’s the reason why I did the [VH1] show.”