Bittersweet World

There’s something incredibly endearing about being the girl that people love to hate.

In some strange way waking up in the morning knowing that thousands of girls across the world hate your guts because you’re happy is oddly fulfilling. It’s quite an achievement to be hated, even if it is by hormonal, misunderstood teenage girls. On top of that comes knowing that your every move in the ‘real’ world is document through a camera lens and sold to glossy magazines. It’s oddly comforting because it means that people will see I’m not some big conked band boy stealer, they’ll see I’m not a lip synching monster.

They’ll just see Ashlee.

Ashlee getting a coffee from Starbucks with her husband, Ashlee leaving a club with her assistant Koko, Ashlee at a premiere, Ashlee going to one of Jess’ concerts in Texas, Ashlee taking Hemmingway for a walk and Ashlee leaving ‘Mommy and Me’ classes with her baby.

Ashlee, Ashlee, Ashlee, Ashlee, Ashlee, Ashlee, Ashlee, Ashlee, Ashlee.

It’s a constant background noise to my life. There’s all these people shouting my name wherever I go, telling me to smile, asking me questions and when I don’t smile the next story we hear is about how our ‘rushed’ marriage is going downhill and how it’s all on the rocks. At least according to an ‘inside source’ it is anyway. They shout my name because they want my full and undivided attention, they want to see my face look up at them and they want an expression written all over it. They want to take a picture of my face and then some professional face reader in some cheesy magazine will be able to tell her dear readers exactly what it is that I am apparently thinking. All these nameless people always shouting my name, desperate for my attention, my smile so they can earn some more bucks at the end of the day.

Isn’t it sick to make your money by talking stalker pictures of people trying to live a normal life? They wouldn’t like it either if they were the one being photographed. But apparently we ask for it living in LA. So sue me if I like the sunshine and the shops. Sorry if I had a connection with Paris Hilton. Who the hell doesn’t in LA?

You learn to play the game, the sick and tiring but at times manipulatively fun game of playing with what the lens gets to see. Do you honestly think that the real Ashlee is the Ashlee you get to see in People magazine? Do you honestly believe you can figure the real me out whilst you’re leafing through the pages of some tacky magazine shaking your head at the name of our baby? No. You don’t know me. You don’t know me at all because I’m playing the game.

It’s simple really.

You pretend.

You pretend to be exactly what they want you to be for the moment.

If they want to see you happy in pre marital bliss you damn well show them marital bliss. You play the game right once or twice and they get the picture. Literally. They get their picture and leave you alone. You show them what they want and once they have it they leave you alone and you can go on and live your real life.

Because do you seriously think that they want to see Ashlee Simpson walking around the way she does at home? With no make up on? Wearing one of Pete’s jumpers, sweat pants and flip flops? No they don’t want to see that. They might want too, they might want to see me bare faced so they can feel better about their lives and plain faces, but that’s not what being well known is about. That’s not part of the deal. Being normal is not what we’re supposed to do. We’re different. We can’t be like everyone else. So you can’t hate me for it

You can try to hate me if you want and if it makes you feel better. You can bitch about me on the internet, you can say that no amount of surgery is ever going to make me look good, that my baby has got shit genes and that I had SNL coming my way and that it was karma for being such a fake, a leech on my sister’s career and a leech on Pete Wentz’s life, the boy who you all adore so much and supposedly want all the best for.

But I don’t care. Honestly I don’t. You can hate me for stealing your ‘man’, you can hate me for being pretty, you can hate me for living a life of domestic bliss if you really want to because accepting other people’s happiness is not one of human nature’s fortes is it? Especially when it concerns a person whom you despise even though you know nothing about them and your hatred is unfounded. Sometimes it is sad to know that there are girls out there who genuinely hate me for being happy. I wouldn’t be human if I said it didn’t upset me, there are times when I wish it didn’t have to be that way.

Sometimes I have these dreams in my head where being Ashlee Simpson isn’t a big deal.

In my head Ashlee Simpson doesn’t have three albums out. She doesn’t have a famous sister or a house in LA. She’s just a normal girl with a husband and a baby living back home in Texas. But that is just the dream in my head, and in LA you have to keep your dreams locked away otherwise they are shared with the world.

It’s so bittersweet everything around me. We all have to hide who we are because the pretend is all part of the game, because nobody wants to see the real deal. Its bizarre having to play one thing and then live out another. We each have our role to play, our part to act, our masks to paint on in the morning. We are the ones you admire from a far, the shining skeletal structures dressed in jewels and fine clothes, we are the ones you love to talk about, we are the ones you love to tear down because bringing us down is better than being jealous of the lives that are glorified in magazines and online blogs.

But just remember, we are also the people who behind closed doors take our make up off, slip into ratty jeans and a worn out t-shirt and walk barefoot in the daydream gardens of our own creation. We have our hopes and dreams that we keep quite because we’re too scared of your judgmental looks and thoughts to share them, we too have fears and we also have our very own moments of utter doubt and breakdown.

Maybe that’s not what you want to here, maybe you’d rather hold us up as idolized beings who aren’t human. You keep us at a distance because maybe the idea that we too can be normal frightens you, but that’s ok too. It’s fine to be intimidated and it’s fine to be frightened, but in the end we’re just like you, we are all dreamers and we all walk around pretending we’re grown up, we think we know exactly what this world has got to offer but the truth it: we haven’t got a clue.

It’s a bittersweet world isn't it?