Britney, Britney, Britney! That’s all it is this week and there is A LOT TO SAY.
**Last week’s issue didn’t deliver to pretty much anyone so if you missed (you prob did) you can find it here: imagine being both rich and insane
Michelle Williams has never heard of Britney Spears.
Michelle Williams, five time academy award nominee has no idea who Britney Spears is. The iconic actress voiced the audio recording of Britney’s memoir. I listened to the this book because I was desperate to finish it in 1 day (I did).
Michelle Williams is reading this book for the stage. She is reading it as a thespian in the theater. She is reading it as if it was written with a quill.
Michelle Williams thinks she is reading Hamlet.
Britney would have read this differently… she would have put more emphasis on all of the curse words, and she would have sped up. I was listening to this on x1.7 speed (fast) and still iconic actress and five time academy award nominee, Michelle Williams, was taking a lot of long pauses. She was really taking the time to annunciate all of her words.
It didn’t have the same sass and energy that Britney (or, alt casting: Reese Witherspoon) would have given it, and I found her seriousness distracting. But, allora.
It’s the best book that’s ever been written.
What we still owe Britney
Britney has long been the archetype for a certain kind of pop star we’ve been groomed to believe exists: a beautiful girl plucked from obscurity and brought into stardom “overnight”. A boardroom filled with men in suits decided she was going to be the next “big star” so they essentially hired her for the part. “This is what you’ll wear, this is what you’ll sing, this is your personality.” A switch was flipped and Britney Spears became Britney Spears.
What this concept doesn’t account for is the woman in question being a real person. And I think that’s why the idea sells so well.
Britney was a real talent. She was doing stage productions before she could do long division. Her debut album came out before she could (legally) drive alone in a car.
Britney was the one who came up with the concept for the …Baby One More Time music video. Britney was in long rehearsals editing choreography and training her dancers. When we see Beyoncé doing this, we call her a visionary, a powerhouse; but when it’s Britney, we reject that she was ever in the driver's seat.
She was treated as a product that was meant to perform a specific function— not as a human, a woman, or a mother. We dehumanized her, adultified her, and used her up for parts without ever examining if the person inside was okay.
There’s something really poetic about Britney’s memoir coming out with the backdrop of Taylor Swift’s world domination.
Every time a story about how a female celebrity was treated in the early 2000’s is revisited it launches a thousand feminist think pieces about how the feminist movement failed that woman and how we should vow to do better.
There’s a parallel here, for Taylor, we watched her arch happen in real time. She was delivered to us as a small town girl writing songs about crushes in her bedroom. She was sweet, talented, digestible.
Her downfall came after years of a steady rise to stardom. Maybe her backlash was initially ignited by her controversy with Kanye West, but more likely it was brewing as soon as she got “too comfortable”. When she was an underdog, we loved rooting for her. But as soon as she got too earnest, the public needed to remind her of her place.
She was canceled for being too thin, having too many famous friends, having too many in-escapable pop songs. She was canceled for being too confident, being too comfortable with success.
At the time, she was less of an artist and more of a character of herself: a troupe used to illustrate white-girl-feminism. Her name was synonymous with a “pick me girl”.
And then the pendulum swung back. She let go of trying to be a perfect celebrity and instead just delivered her work. She did less red carpets, less interviews and magazine covers, and went back to her original business plan: putting the truth in the songs.
And with that, we course-corrected. We apologized. The feminist movement had failed her and rallied behind her vowing to not let it happen again. At only 33, Taylor has had the arch of most artist's entire career, and she’s just been reborn again as the ultimate superstar.
The contrast of her journey with Britney’s couldn’t be more night and day.
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