Some of Jessica Simpson’s latest photos are turning heads — and not necessarily in the kind she might have wished for.
On Friday, Simpson posted a couple of photos of herself and her 11-year-old daughter, Maxwell Instagram. The “I Wanna Love You Forever” singer and her tween showed off some pretty cute outfits: Simpson wore a pink dress and sunglasses, while Maxwell wore a long denim skirt and crop top.
“Bring your barbie to work day,” Simpson captioned the photos.
Screenshot @jessicasimpson/Instagram
In the comments section, some fans praised the duo, noting the resemblance between the mother and daughter. However, others criticized Simpson’s decision to allow Maxwell to pose with his waist bare.
“Isn’t she like 11 or something??” wrote one commenter. “Stop sexualizing your little girl.”
“If you were to ask me I would have guessed her age at 13-14 based on her clothes and looks,” wrote another.
“We try to age faster than necessary. We all try to look older when we were younger,” another person wrote. “It’s up to the parents to make sure we dress age appropriately. Beautiful girl, beautiful mother.”
“After years of denouncing and facing criticism for being oversexualized as a young adult, she is now making sure her daughter has the same experience, rather than shielding her from it,” another commented. “Shameful and incredibly sad. Poor Maxwell.”
James Devaney via Getty Images
However, some of Simpsons fans came to her aid.
“It’s ironic that everyone in the comments is accusing her of ‘sexualizing’ her daughter by allowing her to wear whatever she wants, while online she’s doing the exact same thing to an 11-year-old girl who you don’t want to even know lmaooo,” said one commenter.
“So many Karens here, gosh!” another wrote. “No 11-year-old looks like an 11-year-old these days. We’re not in the Brady Bunch years anymore, she looks good. She’s with her mom!”
Lisa Damour – a clinical psychologist and author of “Negative pressure“, a book about anxiety in girls – narrated The Washington Post in 2019 that shaming young girls of their clothes is never a good idea, and that parents should avoid the impression that their daughters are “somehow responsible for regulating the male gaze.”
“In a way, this is a fairly low-stakes thing. “A crop top isn’t heroin… We’re talking about a decision that can be made and reversed in a day,” Damour told the Post. “This can work best when adults use it as a catalyst for conversations about issues of empowerment and objectification and who’s in charge.”
