Before the direct link between Britney Spears and Lorde could be made via Lorde doing a rather unexpected cover of “Break the Ice,” an article released by Salon called “From Britney to Lorde: Young women shift from embracing body positivity to body neutrality as teens” established a connection by way of disconnecting the two pop stars’ approach to fame and their specific musical genre. Along with Billie Eilish, Lorde represents the twenty-first century version of what it means to be female musician in pop (that is to say, sexless/“body neutral”). No longer is the term “pop star” even deemed desirable, so much as something to be shunned and shirked in every way possible—usually by way of self-effacing commentary paired with the denigration of the very system within which these women must still operate. And, try as they might to tell us and themselves they’re helping to dismantle that system, it nonetheless remains.
Spears never much bothered to fight against the machine, readily becoming a part of it as a means to enjoy the gift she felt was bestowed upon her by God (you know, being a Bible Belt resident and all): her ability to sing and dance. Too young to understand that maybe her parents might not have the most altruistic intentions in “letting” her pursue her passion, Spears gave everything in service of her talent, not quite yet realizing that being sexualized was part of the “deal” (Faustian in nature, obviously) if she wanted to become a boner (uh, bona) fide star.
An entire generation of women slightly younger than her, including Lorde, therefore grew up watching Spears in sheer jeweled numbers (yes, that refers to the 2000 VMAs) and barely-there bra and underwear getups that, in the end, seem to have turned them the other way. Being able to see what befell Spears over the many years of harsh media scrutiny and mockery, someone like Lorde has actually learned a valuable lesson from Spears (even if it was at the expense of Spears enduring endless vitriol in order to blaze the trail): reveal nothing. While Spears was always deft at that personality-wise, she seemed to overcompensate by revealing her body instead. Musicians like Lorde and Eilish now want to do the precise opposite by showcasing their interior mind rather than their exterior body. And this, to be sure, is all part of a “body neutrality” movement in twenty-first century pop stardom (though Ariana Grande still hasn’t heard about it, as far as anyone can tell).
As Lorde told The Irish Times on managing to keep her body out of the spotlight when she first rose to worldwide fame at age sixteen thanks to her debut single, “Royals,” “I sort of kicked that out the conversation. I was pretty intent about that. I didn’t want people to be talking about what my body looked like. I was a kid. And I really wasn’t ‘in’ my body. As a teenager, you kind of wear your body like an outfit that doesn’t fit yet.” Britney, as well-documented, never suffered from that issue, telling interviewers (including Diane Sawyer in their now infamous 2003 “tête-à-tête”) that she was (and is) simply comfortable in her own skin. That she had the confidence as a performer to carry off these various states of undress that, for whatever reason, still managed to shock America after everything they had seen already in media. Which evidently just goes to show that puritanism dies hard.
The aforementioned Salon article adds that Lorde has been able to come into her own skin on her own timeline, telling “the Times [that] album art like [Solar Power‘s] understandably wouldn’t have been comfortable for her before when she was a teenager.” Yet “art” like it was comfortable enough for Britney by 1999, posing in booty shorts with the word “Baby” on both ass cheeks before she turned eighteen. Spears’ adroit ability to easily interweave between the virgin/whore tropes served her well up to a point. Until the lynch mob decided to brand her a full-on whore after Justin Timberlake egged them on to do so in the wake of their very public breakup. In this sense as well, pop stars of Lorde’s generation (including, by the hair of her chinny chin chin, Taylor Swift) have learned from Spears’ “mistake” of being too public about her relationships. These days, it takes a lot more sleuthing to figure out who someone such as Lorde (or even Olivia Rodrigo, who doesn’t register as much on the “sexual radar”) is dating. Again, Spears was nailed to the cross of pop culture for everyone else’s sins.
In the present, thanks to Spears’ many lashings served apparently to teach the public what not to do, almost undue reverence is given to pop stars as opposed to non sequitur degradation. This much is made clear when Salon gives praise like, “Lorde and Eilish’s early approaches, and their decisions to center their comfort in how they dress, comprise a rebellious response to hyper-sexualization of teens and especially teen pop stars. They also seem to endorse the concept of body neutrality and its de-emphasis on publicly celebrating bodies and appearances.”
So basically, what’s being said now, even still, is Spears was a tart and a bad influence for having the gall to acknowledge that sexuality exists. That women are sexual creatures who do enjoy flaunting it if they’ve got it. Spears was always adamant about being comfortable in her own body, and how it was the public’s obsession with what she wore (or didn’t) that was their problem, not hers. She was also frequently documented “explaining” that her stage persona is much different from her everyday persona. That when she takes the stage, she’s adopting the confidence of her performer self, which is only right when someone is in such a position. Even Madonna, for whatever reason, didn’t seem to have to explain this so frequently—perhaps because much of her stage persona is so intrinsically tied to who she is during her “off” hours. Or, also just as likely, because she didn’t rise to fame while she was still in her teens.
Salon continues, in its perhaps “unwitting” debasement of Spears’ life choices, “In contrast, media hyper-sexualization of Spears and obsession with her body, appearance and sexuality while she was still a minor pushed her to the brink, and certainly could be seen as part of the reason she’s trapped in a conservatorship she’s called abusive to this day.” This, on many levels, extracts Spears from being part of her life, of having the agency to say, “This is what I wanna wear.” By writing it off entirely as being the calculated decisions of her “handlers” (before she was even in a conservatorship) is a rather affronting insult to Spears’ intelligence. She knew what she was doing when she chose to put on (or not) these ensembles, and chose to ignore, as best as she could, any unwanted commentary. Because she clearly preferred to wear what she wanted over engaging with the then unheard-of concept of body neutrality. Miley Cyrus, also frequently compared to Spears (complete with her Disney background), is mentioned by Salon in addition. Here, too, the media is blamed, de facto the star herself for not choosing to be “body neutral” like Lorde or Eilish. In short, it comes across as though, with hindsight, maybe these girls were actually “asking for it”—regardless of the media ramping up sexual controversies surrounding women like Spears and Cyrus (who didn’t bear even half as much of a brunt as the former). The article posits, “Early in their careers, and for Spears to this day, both were denied the agency in creating their public images that young women in pop like Lorde and Eilish thankfully seem to have more of now. The consequences of being denied this agency, as Lorde notes, can leave someone feeling ‘fucked up,’ or force them to deal with the mental repercussions of being exploited and hyper-sexualized for years to come. Industry sexism and sexual exploitation of women remain, but the growing ability of artists like Lorde to build careers around what’s comfortable for them and embrace a sort of body neutrality is cause for hope.”
Once more, it has to be said that Spears and Cyrus were not without agency. Their very deliberate breakaways from the “cookie cutter” pop scene tells us as much. If they didn’t have it, their careers wouldn’t have survived. Were they told “no” in many different aspects of their creative choices? Sure. But to say that neither woman had agency in choosing how they wanted to be consumed is to treat them precisely like the little girls they worked so hard not to be seen as. Some women who made this transition from wholesome teen girl to “oversexed” twenty-something did so with less public venom lobbied at them. Like Christina Aguilera when she came out with 2002’s Stripped. For whatever reason, Aguilera was always allowed a touch more leniency than Spears. Maybe because she was deemed to have “actual vocal talent.” The same went for Jessica Simpson when she started to show more skin on Irresistible. That theory might hold weight with Lorde and Eilish as well. Their body becomes less of a focus because their voices are viewed as “authentic” and “unmanufactured” in the way that Spears’ and Cyrus’ brand were at the outset.
The idea that Spears being so sexual as to indirectly launch an entire generation’s movement against their body being appraised in any way whatsoever seems manifest in Salon assessing, “Neither Lorde’s nor Eilish’s explanations of their unique fashion choices were solely about avoiding criticisms and attacks on their appearances, but avoiding this sort of attention or any commentary at all, positive or negative, really. Even positive and well-meaning comments about someone’s body can be harmful, triggering, or just uncomfortable for someone for any number of reasons in a society with so many exhausting, unattainable beauty standards.”
Meanwhile, Spears will continue to flash her ass and tits on Instagram in response, informing us she doesn’t much give a damn about beauty standards, having already conformed to and set them long ago. What’s more, her corporeal self has been so viewed, so studied at this juncture that she’s far beyond such “futuristic” ideas as body neutrality. Indeed, she could very well be laughing at the concept and praising God or whoever that she did come of age when it was okay to be sexual without it being, in this moment, one of the most politically charged things a girl (particularly a teen) can do. So in this regard, one supposes that the more things change, the more they stay the same. For a woman’s body continues to be treated like some kind of dangerous weapon that must be concealed for everyone’s safety, including her own. And yet, this appeared to be the very phenomenon that Spears, consciously or not, was rallying against in her “prime.”
