|
Not That Innocent
From April 2000
UPDATE 2005: This appears to be another of my old essays that a lot of people are visiting. You will immediately note that it is outrageously old, in Brit-Brit years. As I write this, I literally just read a rumor of her impending birth (Note the irony of the last line of this essay). Some of these links are now dead, so I've removed them. The whole issue of teenage girls marking their transition into womanhood by stripping publicly now seems old news, though the phenomenon is still as disturbing to me as ever.
You want photographic proof? Here are some updated links. Compare this to this. Or this to this. Or (God forbid) this to this. Just looking at this stuff is depressing the hell out of me. There are times that the saga of Britney Spears seems less like an amusing joke and more like a tragic descent into skankdom.
There's a rising tide of thought that Britney Spears seems like the product of Vladimir Nabakov. This may seem excessive to you. It may startle you; after all, she's just one of a dozen "soda pop" performers burning up the charts right now. But she's a pop star with an unusual appeal.
Jim DeRogatis over at Ironminds notes [link removed], in rather graphics terms, Britney's appeal to the "raincoat brigade" and points out that her childhood photos smack a little bit of JonBenet Ramsey. Strawberry Saroyan over at Salon refers to her as a "Mouseketeer turned near-kiddie porn star."
Let's keep one thing in mind: Britney just turned eighteen in December. She was still 17 when she shot the video for "...Baby One More Time," featuring Catholic schoolgirl imagery. You think I'm exaggerating? Take a look at these shots [link removed] from her first Rolling Stone profile or these images [link removed] from her live performance at the Nickelodeon Kid's Choice Awards. If you're copping stylistic moves from Madonna, and most people your age are still in high school, that's a little twisted.
And Britney Spears is not unaware of what's going on. From her second Rolling Stone interview: "I don't want to be part of someone's Lolita thing. It kind of freaks me out." So why does she do it?
It makes sense, if you look at the bigger picture. Women in pop culture have traditionally been forced into roles: mother figure, slut, girl-next-door, cold-hearted bitch, etc. Women, especially young women, who want to come off as mature and powerful often do so by taking off their clothes.
For example, Melissa Joan Hart was 15 years old when she started the series Clarissa Explains It All. She was 20 when she started Sabrina, the Teenage Witch. And last year, at the age of 23, she started taking off her clothes for the so-called "lad" magazines, such as Maxim (She was featured in that magazine with the cover line: "Hollywood's 10 Sexiest Nymphets"). Let's compare this shot [link removed], from the cover of Nickelodeon magazine, with this picture [link removed] from Maxim. Look, Sabrina is all grown up, right? Right?
A recent New York Times profile of Britney Spears referred to our image of teenaged girls "drifting between girlish innocence and adult desires." It's too bad that those are the two choices. Once, you've moved from sweet innocence to slut, what's left for your entertainment career? Mother, grandmother, retired?
[Editorial Note: In a later post, I wrote an update.]
DENIAL AIN'T JUST A RIVER IN EGYPT: Britney Spears is clearly in a fix. On the one hand, female pop artists have always ridden the Sex Kitten train to success. When it comes time to shoot your album cover, you gotta wear the low-cut dress, lick your lips and stare longingly into the camera lens if you want to sell records. But Britney Spears was born in 1982. She recorded her first album when she was 16. When she does the Sex Kitten Pop Star thing, it has connotations that can be uncomfortable. In a Rolling Stone interview, she said, "I don't want to be part of someone's Lolita thing. It kind of freaks me out."
A new interview shows she's found a new way to deal with this conflict: deny it exists. "I only wear these crop tops because other clothes would make me sweat when I dance," she said. "I never wanted this sexy image." There you go. It's all been a terrible misunderstanding.
|
