Like everyone else in my middle school, and in all middle schools since the dawn of time, I was, during that period of my life, really, really awkward. I really liked Pokemon and an older boy named Jesse who undoubtedly had no idea who I was. I would ponder the full names of my future children with Jesse in my spare time. I had braces with blue colored bands and really, really curly hair. Adding to this awkwardness was the awkwardness that I felt around pop culture. When everyone was mired in the heated debate over Britney versus Christina and ’N Sync versus the Backstreet Boys, I never really cared much.
Although now I’ve had my braces off for years and only crazily plan future families with boys who know I exist, I’ve never really outgrown my awkwardness around pop culture. I have never seen Heroes, High School Musical, or Grey’s Anatomy. Most people wouldn’t guess it by looking at me, but I love the obscure, the esoteric, the secret little subjects hidden in dusty corners of library stacks. But, surprisingly, in my older, hopefully more intellectual age, I have become obsessed with Britney Spears.
Britney (art by Matt Kudry)On each current newsstand, Britney’s picture graces the cover of numerous magazines—Britney on a stretcher, Britney in a mental hospital, Britney crying as her sons are carried off by a court clerk, Britney on drugs, Britney shopping naked, Britney is crazy—everyone knows the sad saga of Ms. Spears. But the reason why I find Britney so fascinating is because unlike squeaky-clean celebrities like, say, Hayden Panettierre, who are bland and routine parts of pop culture, with their cute clothes and perfect skin, Britney is instead both a part of pop culture and a critique of pop culture itself.
As a celebrity, Britney has taken on an identity that has very little to do with any personal self—what’s important about celebrities is their hair and the romances they are rumored to have, things that are very different from the qualities that are important for us to know about the real people in our lives. Celebrity lives function as quintessential pop culture—they give an otherwise disconnected group of people common knowledge. Our relationships to celebrities are facsimiles of personal relationships—they allow us to experience death without much pain (R.I.P. Heath), pregnancy without the ramifications of at any point having to deal with an actual baby (congrats Halle!), and hard partying without the hangover (don’t drive, Lindsay). We all know celebrities in passing; they say the same standard things in interviews and usually follow the same predictable life courses: they date, they succeed, they have children, they party too much, they cheat, they divorce. We know them haphazardly through magazines we read on the elliptical machine; they are people without actual personal quirks or idiosyncrasies, they are crafted by publicists, trainers, surgeons and magazines.
“I was Miss American dream when I was seventeen,” sings Britney on her lovely new album. She was by all means perfect—an amazing dancer with a sick body, catchy songs, and a beautiful boy band significant other. But looking at Britney now, it’s clear what harm is done by the celebrity mold of perfection. Being a celebrity is a lot like hooking up with a guy in a fraternity. You know that the next day, everyone else in the fraternity will know what happened, most likely with some graphic and distorted details added in. You feel like people shouldn’t know such things about you, and, if they must know, these fratty strangers should at least now know only that about you. As a celebrity, instead of a hookup, it’s all of your life’s drama that people know, and, instead of 40 members of a Greek organization knowing about what happened, it’s millions of strangers around the world.
If I had been a celebrity at the age of 17, so many things that, since then, have been formative experiences in my late adolescence would have been scrutinized and mocked by celebrity magazines and websites who kept such a close eye on Britney during that time—like the phase in which I wore a lot of Ecko Red or the times that I cried to my mom on the phone in the staircase of my freshman dorm, to name a few. Unable to freely be a person and in an environment where money and drugs are unlimited, is it really unsurprising that Britney has wound up the way she is, leaving Jaden and Sean Preston without a mother.
Now, every time I’m dancing at a party, I always make it a point to request Britney—whether it is the genius “Radar” or the bumpin’ “Gimme More.” When it comes on, I am always a little happier that I can continue on, discreetly making the questionable decisions that make people people and celebrities tragic.
