If laughter is the best medicine, then Jessica Simpson is probably feeling pretty great right now. The star of NBC's "Fashion Star" is uber-pregnant and has been taking some flack for how much weight she's gained. After Joy Behar said on "The View" that making fun of Jessica's verbal slip-ups "... is more fun to criticize than the fact that the girl is fat," stars like Tori Spelling came to her defense.

Simpson's response though was just to joke about it in her Twitter feed with her fans. Said Jessica, "Last chance to see me 'fat' aka PREGNANT on the cover of Elle." So it looks like the 31-year-old who is expecting her first child later this year is choosing to take the high road with her critics and laugh it off, which is the completely opposite approach than what actress Ashley Judd is taking.

The "Crossing Over" star has recently appeared in public and drawn some commentary from the press and on the Internet over the puffiness of her face. The commentary that enraged Judd was that either she had just had plastic surgery performed or that she'd "let herself go" and was just getting fat. Judd shot back angrily calling those comments "pointedly nasty, gendered, and misogynistic."

Judd wrote her response in an op-ed piece published on The Daily Beast, further deriding society's "abnormal obsession with women's faces and bodies" that she feels "has become so normal that we (I include myself at times - I absolutely fall for it still) have internalized patriarchy almost seamlessly." For the official record, Judd has explained the puffiness as being a side-effect of being on a month-long steroid treatment for a vicious cold.

So which star handled their critics the best? Is it best for a star to simply laugh off the commentary on their looks, or is it best to confront them head-on? It's a matter of personal choice, made by the celebrity and their publicity team, of course, but would the way that either woman responded help to quiet their detractors?

Both stars played to their strong suits. Simpson, certainly not considered an "intellectual" when it comes to debate, chose to let her effervescent and lighthearted nature temper her tweet. Judd, who is politically active and is even going to the Democratic National Convention later this year as a delegate, used her well-publicized intellect to craft a response.

In the end, there may be a more fundamental question that Judd mentioned in her op-ed piece. As a society are we too hyper-focused on the looks of our celebrities, and specifically our female celebs? Is the criticism both ladies received ultimately two examples of the same problem?