Candy from Dessert Treats by Jessica Simpson

I’m still actively processing my thoughts and feelings about this line almost two decades after it’s release. MTV viewers across the globe watched Jessica Simpson on Newlyweds throw up during the making of the campaign for her now notorious Dessert Treats line of edible beauty products. This shit was no Chicken of the Sea! Like many brands at the time, her own was built on selling a hyper sexualized version of herself to market the products. The advertisements feature her and sometimes Nick Lachey testing out the line and licking various body parts of his previously virginal branded wife. This would all be fine in theory, but the main demographic for the line was your average tween.

Cut to my 14th birthday, one of my friends got me the above perfume and some whipped cream moisturizer from the line as a joke (much in the same way we would go to Spencer’s Gifts to purchase edible underwear for the novelty). With no partner in sight until well after high school I was left to lick my own arms later that night. After the cake was consumed and friends trickled out, I put a generous helping up to my right elbow and rubbed it partially in. A nauseous cloud of vanilla and num num floated around me as P!nk’s “Just Like A Pill” softly played in the background. I ate it all while looking at myself in the mirror trying to understand how older girls make this look sexy. I was left with a horrific stomach ache and an accompanying diary entry about never becoming desirable enough to have fake food products eaten off of me. Dessert Treats was short-lived after the collective cry of yeast infections paired with an uptick in bees following wearers, but I will never forget that first taste of sexual humiliation combined with spun sugar.

Notes for Candy include amber, sugar and vanilla. In real life you will smell quite literally like Mandy Moore’s hit single “Candy.”