'Price of Beauty' Recap: Jessica Simpson Wears Insensible Shoes And Eats Bugs In Thailand

Jessica Simpson's new show, "The Price of Beauty", premiered last night on VH1 — bringing our favorite Texas blonde back to the small screen and taking us on a cross-global trip in search of beauty ideals. The show follows Jess, along with BFFs Ken Paves and Ken Paves, while she travels the world to learn more about different cultures' beauty ideals.

We open with a now-familiar set up: footage of Jessica posing on the red carpet while her voiceover talks about the pressure women feel to be beautiful. The reason behind this worldwide search?

Jess appears on camera and confesses, "The reason I'm going on a journey to all these different countries to find beauty, is because I want to find it for myself."

Sounds good ... and we're off to Bangkok! (No inappropriate jokes, now.)

The trio arrives in Thailand and gets busy riding through the streets and seeing the sights — there's bright sunshine and lots of colorful architecture in the form of Buddhist shrines — before finding their way to a spa for a lesson in the urban Thai's beauty rituals. Jess is tripping along in ridiculously high heels while the other two laugh at her (and it looks like we have the beginning of an ongoing trend for the show), but she looks great. And even if her shoes scream "diva", they're the only thing that does: When they bring Jessica in for a traditional, circulation-improving Thai massage, she lies down, turns to Ken, and yelps, "I hope I don't pass gas!"

Jess and Ken opt for the couples Thai massage, and we're immediately jealous — WE want a couples massage with our best gay! — until it turns out that in Thailand, "massage" is some sort of code word for "ongoing assault." The masseuses kneel down, using knees and elbows for leverage, and proceed to beat the crap out of the hapless Americans. We get shot after shot of Jess shrieking, or Ken shouting, or the ambient sound of bones cracking in ways they PROBABLY aren't supposed to, and then...

"I thought Thai massages were supposed to have a happy ending," Jessica mock-whimpers to the camera. "I didn't get mine!"

From spa to street, it's now time to meet the beauty ambassador, who is a local woman from each country who's been tapped to show Jessica and her posse the local ropes. Thailand's hostess is supermodel and host of Thailand's "Next Top Model" Sonia Couling, who greets the trio with a traditional bow and graciously says "Thanks!" when Jess gushes over how beautiful she is. The group travels to a local market, where Jessica gets her fortune read by an elderly gent who tells her she's going to fall in love with a "small guy" (uh, HOW small?), and then gamely attempt to nosh on some high-protein, metabolism-boosting fare from a street cart.

We're talking about fried bugs, y'all. Choosing between fried worms, fried crickets, and fried cockroaches, everybody picks a worm and quickly stuffs it in. Jessica's doesn't stay there.

Jessica: Oh my God, it had slime in the middle of it, and you can feel the LEGS.

Bug cart man: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

But now it's time to get down to business, and explore the real reason why we're here: beauty ideals. Sonia explains that in Thailand, pale skin is considered desirable — a foreign concept to Jess and her Texas tan — and women will go to great lengths to bleach their skin. Cue the hard reality: In a local restaurant, they meet a woman whose skin has been permanently destroyed by using bleaching creams. It's heartbreaking, and she explains that she's lost her job and her husband as a result. And Jess cries, of course, and there's a lot of hugging.

Because 95 percent of the country is Buddhist, the group diverts briefly to a temple to explore the intersection of inner peace and outer beauty, courtesy of a Buddhist monk who looks like he's SO OVER this whole thing. He leads them in meditation, but it doesn't take long for Jessica to start cracking up. Oops.

Cut to a super-serious shot of wide-eyed Jessica saying, "I giggled. During meditation. With a buddhist monk."

Leaving that particular embarrassment behind, the trio travels north to meet a Karen tribe, where woman wear a stack of elaborate and heavy gold rings to elongate their necks. The rings are never removed, have been shown to weaken muscles in the neck and can weigh as much as 20 pounds, but women in the village explain that a girl will request her first series of rings at age 5 or 6 because she wants to be beautiful when she gets older. Watching a young girl being fitted with her first rings, the group is visibly moved.

But this is a participatory exercise, y'all, and we're down to the final moments. So here we go: out come big hinged rings (easy on, easy off!) for Jess, CaCee, and... yep, Ken wants one too, which he receives while all the local women point and giggle. We're not sure this really reflects the more high-minded cultural mission of the show. But hey, he does look really pretty!

Did you watch "The Price of Beauty"? What did you think of the first episode?

Tags Cacee Cobb, Jessica Simpson, Ken Paves, The Price of Beauty, Video