The former Editor in Chief of US magazine Lucky has admitted she photoshopped Jessica Simpson to look “skinnier” for a 2010 cover photo.
Writing for Cup of Jo, Kim France recalls the story as one she’s “not especially proud of”, but suggests she was conforming to the widely-accepted norms of magazine publishing at the time.
“In 2010, when I was the editor in chief of Lucky, we scored Jessica Simpson for our September cover,” France begins in the post, which was published on 15 August.
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“This was exciting, as Lucky was pretty far down in the celebrity-cover hierarchy, and she was a big deal.”
But Simpson was a size 14 at the time – an estimation, France later admitted to Yahoo – which was unheard of for cover girls of the late-noughties.
She writes the size is “considered normal by many rational standards, but not by glossy magazine standards, not in 2010.”
Instead of embracing Simpson’s perfectly normal size and displaying her on the cover as is, France says she went down the “perilously slippery slope” of tweaking her image.
“We made her skinnier – much skinnier than she actually was,” she writes. “And when the cover hit the stands people noticed.”
The story written about Simpson, after all, was centred on how the singer was finally starting to love and accept her body as it is.
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“Jessica Simpson has undergone a noteworthy personal style evolution,” the story read. “Inspired, she says, by coming to terms with some serious body issues over the course of the last year.”
They quote Simpson saying she doesn’t want to obsess over “looking like the perfect Barbie type”.
France is upfront about how these words look, juxtaposed with a digitally altered version of the star.
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“Though I wish I could offer a really good reason why I allowed those hilariously stupid words to run, I have none,” France writes.
While the blog post acknowledges her past transgressions, France says she probably wouldn’t have been able to do anything drastically different if given her time again in that environment.
The one thing she might have done? “I hate to say it, to not book somebody that size in the first place” as it wouldn’t have “made it past the bosses”.
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Jessica Simpson herself allegedly “hated the cover”.
Throughout her career, the singer and fashion entrepreneur has been a frequent target of speculation and criticism about her weight. As recently as July this year, she hit back at comments she was using Type 2 diabetics drug Ozempic to slim down.
The 43-year-old said while the comments “hurt”, she wouldn’t let the negativity get to her.
“I am fortunate to have been every size,” she said. “For [my] brand, understanding the women [who buy our products], and for my psyche.”