RELATED STORY: Those earning celebrity from their bodies deserve weight scruitiny

Being a girl, there are some preconceived assumptions that I’m going to automatically run to the aid of Jessica Simpson, shake my Ben-&-Jerry’s-covered spoon at all of the critics of her weight and tell her how beautiful and thin she is as we drown our insecurities in a bowl of ice cream. It’s not exactly as easy as that.

At first instinct, I find it hard to defend Jessica because she stands for everything any independent, successful and smart woman is against: She’s based her entire career on a mediocre voice, less than intelligent remarks about tuna fish, big boobs and blonde hair (and, yes, I know my hair is blonde, but don’t even pretend you don’t crack those blonde jokes just because you secretly wish you were more fair-haired).

But despite not being president of Jessica’s fan club, I can’t just sit back and let people think it’s OK to make fun of someone for gaining a few pounds — even if that someone did build a career around a itsy bitsy, teeny weeny, pink bikini.

Being that girl, I remember what high school was like. I remember standing in the bathroom in front of the mirrors while my friends talked about how fat they were and how they hated their broad shoulders, their flat hair or their freckles. I listened as they wished they had better bone structure, a flatter stomach, smaller feet, fuller lips. I could go on.

Being that girl, I remember the day I first stepped on a scale, first started drinking Diet Coke, started looking at the nutrition facts on everything, and asked for a gym membership for Christmas instead of new clothes.

Now don’t get the wrong impression, I could care less about how much I weigh, the number of calories from fat in the peanut butter M&M’s I’m currently enjoying, and I can’t remember the last good workout I had. But that’s me today.

Five years ago, I let society tell me my 5’8’’ frame had to be a size two and let them convince me I should look like the perfect faces in the pages of my teen magazines. How else do you get the perfect friends, hottest boyfriend and all of the popularity you want?

Certainly not from having a great personality.

And I wasn’t the only girl who thought like this. My school wasn’t the only high school that had girls in the bathroom between classes touching up their makeup or dissecting their beauty in the mirror. It was an overwhelming trend that, at 22, I’m just starting to break free of.

I still read beauty magazines, still lust after pretty dresses in window displays and every once in a while, after I’ve eaten a half of a pizza or I’m laying on my back on my bed desperately trying to get my jeans to button, I let the thought of weight creep into my head.

Part of me thinks no girl will ever be completely cured of the insecurities imbedded in her mind by the television shows, movies and magazines that told her she had to be thin and pretty to be happy — or, in the case of Jessica Simpson, to be successful.

Because the moment we let the physical imperfections creep in, the moment we find ourselves on the covers of every magazine with our cellulite on display for everyone standing in line to buy a pint of Ben & Jerry’s to see.

For Jessica’s sake, hopefully her mother is as brilliant as mine and when she finds Jessica crying in front of the bathroom mirror, she’ll tell her daughter what my mother told me.

“Let them be critical, everyone gets fat one day.”