We All Owe Britney Spears An Apology:
"2007 belonged to Britney Spears. The year that saw the world's most famous singer get pushed from her pedestal with a throng of thirsty paparazzi waiting below. That year, against Britney's will, her personal life became public property. We were welcomed into the life of an icon on a downwards spiral without her permission; asked to comment on it, make up our mind on whether the world's most beloved pop star was worth saving... If we were to take everything fed to us by tabloid media at the time at face value, we would be led to believe that she was a victim of her own making - brought down by her actions rather than the ones of those who stalked her every move."
"Spears has come to represent something - something important enough that it keeps rearing its head. As has been pointed out, she emobides the disdain in which this culture holds its young women; the desire to sexualize and spoil them while young, and to degrade and punish them as they get older... What happened to Spears this weekend (VMA 2007) was actually pretty hard to watch - a gross example of exactly how much malicious satisfaction we get out of the embarrassing weakness of an addictive, postpartum, out-of-control mess of a human being... She was hired by MTV to attract viewers eager to see her make an ass of herself... Sarah silverman took the stage after the performance, she sated the public's appetite for girl on girl evisceration, unfunnily identifying Spears as a 25 year old who's "already accomplished everything she's going to accomplish in her life," calling her sons "the most adorable mistakes you ever will see,"... It was spectacularly painful, mostly because it violated one of the rules of dirty mean comedy: don't shared your talons on the weak. Imagine Spears' having come off a stage where she had been invited to humiliate herself only to hear a crowd roar in whooping, derisive appreciation for the woman narrating her breakdown... Spears, it seems, two children and five years of self abuse later, no longer pleases the public with her house glass shape... Sure, she looked better in a bikini than probably 98 percent of the Americans sitting on their couches and howling at her, but she was no longer porn star perfect"
"Pushed into show business by a striving mom, molded into a confusing vamp-virgin and told to sing songs about being hit while wearing a schoolgirl outfit... Offered no moral structure or opportunity to build a personality of her own... A victim of grotesque class expectations that chucked her back into the cheetos-and-trucker-hats ghetto as swiftly as erotic expectations plucked her from it"
"Just what this world needs is another trailer trash baby from a trailer trash mama"
"Oops, did she do it again? Reproduce that is"
"Sympathy is lacking from most conversations about Britney's body, babies, and mothering. Also missing is responsible discussion of possible mental illness, emotional distress, medication side-effects, or that Britney might have needed help."
"I noticed her hair was gone. I remember asking here, 'why do you shave your head?'" She replied "It was, you know, 'I just don't want anybody, anybody touching my head. I don't want anyone touching my hair. I'm sick of people touching my hair.'"
"Britney Spears was a symbol for her entire public life. And, even in her seclusion, we can’t stop seeing her as something more, and less, than simply a person... life, as teen-pop blank slate or isolated object of devotion, would be a lot for any person to have endured. Both in one lifetime makes Spears both a fascinating living document of how our culture treats those we purport to love, and a deeply sad case."
"She managed, for just about one second, to embody every contradictory message about female worth out there - wholesome, but sexy, but pure, but dirty, but "girl next door," but glamorous - and we venerated her for it. Then she slipped up, and we took great joy in tearing her to pieces. See? She's actually having sex now! See? Her innocence was an act! Look! The girl we encouraged to be an unthinking, largely unspeaking body didn't turn out to be a nuclear scientist! My God! Her body is capable of gaining weight! SHAME, SHAME. At a certain point, Britney Spears lost her worth, in the public eye. When she had children, gained weight, lost the fascination of the new. When she became a grown-up; when she became publicly known as a flawed, suffering person instead of a cartoon; when she stopped pretending to be a fantasy."
