Ashlee Simpson, 39, revealed she once was offered a purity ring from her father, Joe Simpson, when she was just 12 years old. The singer appeared on the February 19 episode of the “Broad Ideas” podcast and explained the memorable moment in detail. She also admitted she rejected the piece of jewelry because she didn’t want her dad to know about her sex life.
“I would see how my dad would be like, ‘You can’t talk to this guy.’ [Or like], ‘Here’s your ring to save yourself,’” Ashlee said on the episode, referring to Joe wanting her to save herself until marriage. “[He] tried to give me one at 12 and I was like, ‘Oh, no thank you. I will [not] be telling you when I am having sex.’”
“I think [when I was] younger, too, I would come off way more rebellious than I was,” she added. “Because I was like, ‘Oh no, I’m not doing that.’”
Ashlee went on to tell hosts Rachel Bilson and Olivia Allen that she didn’t want to follow in the footsteps of her older sister Jessica Simpson, who waited to have sex until she was married to her first husband, Nick Lachey, but also said that even without a purity ring, she didn’t have sex until she was 17. “I always wanted it to be open that you don’t know what I’m doing,” she shared.
The “Pieces of Me” crooner also opened up about her mother, Tina Simpson, and how she understood she needed a different set of rules growing up. “My mom really would pay attention and see me if I needed something different,” she explained before adding that she was “an independent soul” as a kid. “I wanted to do my own thing. They had to let me be free … or at least feel free,” she said.
Today, Ashlee is the mother of a son Bronx, 15, whom she shares with ex Pete Wentz, as well as daughter Jagger, 8, and son Ziggy, 3, who she shares with husband Evan Ross, whom she married in 2014. She said she wants to teach her kids how to be open just like she was.
“It’s so interesting having a 15-year-old. [To] have those open conversations, I feel like it’s so important,” she explained. “[Anything] other than that, your kids are going to be hiding things from you. Or you won’t get the story.”