The hullabaloo about Jessica Simpson's curvier figure has outraged some national body-image experts and nutritionists.

Celebrity magazines, TV shows and bloggers have been abuzz about the 28-year-old singer's weight gain, and some have called her "fat."

Tabloid talk of her weight has ranked No. 1 for the past two weeks in USA Today's Celebrity Heat Index, which measures exposure in print and online entertainment news outlets (usato day.com/life/people/celebrity -heat-index.htm).

Celebrity magazines and blogs are putting Simpson through "a public shaming for putting on a little weight," and that takes a toll on women everywhere, says Sharon Lamb, a psychology professor at Saint Michael's College in Vermont and co-author of "Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters From Marketers' Schemes."

"The magazines criticize stars who have anorexia, which is a disorder, and then in the same issue they shame a star who puts on a little weight. I mean a little weight," she says.

"You are either too fat or too thin, but never just right."

This kind of treatment of celebrities puts all women on guard, Lamb says. The average woman may not be "being policed on the pages of magazines" but after reading them, she will feel as if people around her are criticizing her weight, too.

Lamb says Simpson is "a cultural icon like Marilyn Monroe, only Jessica Simpson is the girl next door. She actually in many ways fits the narrow beauty ideal that is so popular today. In some sense, people want her to screw up and not be."

Although Simpson declined to comment for this story, celebrity magazines reported that she weighed 130 to 135 pounds at 5-foot-3. If true, that puts her smack in the middle of the healthy weight range for her height, nutritionists say.

THE 'WHACK THEM DOWN' FACTOR

"It is ironic that this celeb is being called fat, since the average weight for an American woman who is 5-foot-4 is 164 pounds," says Dawn Jackson Blatner, a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association.

"In our society, most female celebrities are under pressure to be on the low end of healthy — even bordering on dangerously underweight. We need to give these people a break and not hold them to ultra-skinny standards that encourage unhealthy and dangerous dieting methods."

Other stars, including Jennifer Love Hewitt, Tyra Banks and Eva Longoria Parker, have been picked on for putting on a few pounds. Former Jenny Craig spokeswoman Kirstie Alley is dogged constantly about her weight.

There may be a psychological explanation for all this attention to celebrities' bodies, and it's called "the tall-poppy effect," says Frank Farley, a psychologist at Temple University in Philadelphia and former president of the American Psychological Association.

In a field of poppies, the flowers tend to reach about the same height, but one or two may stand out above the rest, and "we want to whack them down," Farley says. "That's often done to these people who stand out in our society.

"Celebrities stand out in a crowd, so they attract criticism."

People often critique their behavior or their looks. "The physical side gets a lot of scrutiny because these people live by their looks," Farley says.

Simpson has said she likes a curvy figure rather than a super-skinny body. In an interview with Harper's Bazaar magazine in 2007, she said: "Curves are better. Honestly, movie stars should be voluptuous and beautiful, and models should be voluptuous and beautiful. I don't get the whole rail thing. It's not good for your heart, it's not good for your mind, it's emotionally destructive, it really is."

Farley hopes Simpson doesn't take all the talk about her weight to heart "and try to overcompensate and become too thin."

Keith Ayoob, a registered dietitian at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, says that if he were advising Simpson, he would tell her to find and stick to a weight that "she can easily maintain, plus or minus 5 pounds. That way she can stay at a healthy weight without losing her mind."