Ashlee Simpson refused to wear purity ring when she was 12 years old: ‘I won’t be telling you when I have sex’
Ashlee Simpson is reflecting on her rebellious past.
The "Pieces of Me" singer discussed growing up as an "independent soul" who wanted freedom from her parents, even at a young age, while on the "Broad Ideas with Rachel Bilson & Olivia Allen" podcast.
"I would come off way more rebellious than I even was, because I was like, ‘Oh no, I’m not doing that,’" she said. "I would see how my dad would be like, ‘Oh, you can’t talk to this guy. Here’s your ring to save yourself.’ He tried to give me one at 12, and I was like, ‘Oh, no, thank you. I won’t be telling you when I have sex.’"
She went on to clarify that, even though she rejected the purity ring, she did not have sex "until [she] was 17." She just did not want people to know what she was up to and when.
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Many celebrities wore purity rings in the early 2000s, including Demi Lovato, Selena Gomez, the Jonas Brothers and Ashlee's older sister, singer Jessica Simpson, who Simpson admits is very different from her.
She noted that her mom parented her and Jessica differently. "My mom really would pay attention and see me if I needed something different, and she would make that time. And now that we’re all parents, we finally get the other side," Simpson said. "Growing up, I was really an independent soul and I wanted to like, do my own effing thing. They had to let me kind of be free and have that moment, or at least feel free. And sometimes too free."
Later in the podcast, Simpson discussed her infamous performance on a 2004 episode of "Saturday Night Live," where she was caught lip-syncing.
Simpson had already performed her hit song, "Pieces of Me," and when she returned to the stage to sing "Autobiography," audiences were left shocked when the wrong song began playing from the speakers, revealing she was not singing live. A nervous Ashlee danced for a few seconds, before walking off the stage.
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"I wrote all these songs and I did all this and almost to have your credit completely taken from you, and you’re like, ‘No,’" she said on the podcast. "It taught me humility, it taught me so much about myself and my own personal strength… [and] how to get back up and go again."
At the time, Simpson said she was forced to lip-sync because she had lost her voice after an acid reflux flare-up. She returned to the "SNL" stage a year later, to perform songs off her second album, "I Am Me." "That was f---ing scary to do," she admitted.
She added that it was hard to "find – at such a young age – the strength" to get back on the stage and convince herself, "I’m good at this. I will keep going. I will keep fighting."
"For me it was like a week of sulking ‘til I had to be like, ‘OK, I need to get all these steroids and be able to have my voice and get back on stage and figure this out.’ And I feel like I owed that to my fans and myself and that's what I did," she said. "The harder part of it for me was everyone bringing it up. I had let it go."
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She released another album, "Bittersweet World," in 2011. Simpson now has three children; Bronx, who she shares with ex Pete Wentz, and Ziggy and Jagger, who she shares with her husband, Evan Ross.