Jessica Simpson Reveals ‘The Price of Beauty,’ Eats Bugs While Doing So

Becky Bain | March 16, 2010 3:22 pm

Is Jessica Simpson the ideal person to be starting the discussion of the pitfalls of attaining beauty? Momjeans and Mayer comments aside, Jess has her own expensive line of various beauty products and shoes that could easily be construed as products to reinforce a certain “look” all females should have. And the woman’s best friend is a hairdresser, for crying out loud.

Regardless of any hypocrisy on Jess’ part, the reality show The Price of Beauty debuted on VH1 last night, and it gave us an interesting peek into what other cultures consider beautiful. Watch the series premiere below, featuring Jessica and her BFFs Ken Paves and CaCee Cobb’s bug-eating, pig-slaughtering visit to Thailand.

The Price of Beauty (Ep. 1)

As many touching moments as the show has—Jessica speaks to a woman whose skin has been scarred by bleaching it in order to appear more “beautiful”—The Price of Beauty has its fair share of silliness: Jess, Kacee and Ken devour bugs, giggle during a meditation hour, and choose what pig to eat for dinner. New York mag’s Vulture blog outlined the episode’s “Ugly Moments” (“Everything she wore was from her ‘designer’ collection, at which point this show devolved into one big clothing infomercial”) and and “Pretty Little Things” (“Jessica giggled during a meditation session with a Buddhist monk after she’d been sitting Indian-style for 40 minutes. That took patience”).

We felt the show didn’t break much new territory that Oprah hadn’t previously covered on her daytime talk show (and we don’t just mean the episode where Jessica was the guest), but the Newlyweds star’s optimistic, perky personality and willingness to try anything make this show not a guilty pleasure, but simply a pleasure to watch.