Among the seemingly infinite number of comments that stood out during Britney Spears’ June 23rd testimony regarding her conservatorship, one that rang especially true was in relation to the ingratitude of any asshole who would deign to say “OK Boomer” or wield the term “geriatric millennial.” More to the point, Spears did all the legwork for the pop stars that would succeed her. Got her snatch photographed while exiting from a car so that Miley could twerk freely, got her children taken away from her so that Marina could posit she might not want children at all, endured scrutiny for drug abuse and mental health issues while Demi Lovato gets praised for making a documentary about it. All of these things that she received endless flack for, in short, are what pop stars of the past decade have been enabled the freedom to engage in without even a modicum of the same judgment.
As Spears seems to be coming to terms with the extent of just how horrendous her treatment has been, she also acknowledged during her testimony that pride—one of the deadly sins—evidently played a large part in ensuring her silence for so long. Wanting always to appear “stronger than yesterday,” Spears at last admitted she’s been in shock and denial for all these years. And it seemed the outpouring of support from her fans (baby capitalists just dying to spend cash on more merch and another concert in a manner that doesn’t benefit the conservatorship) in some way might have helped give her the courage to speak out. And what she also spoke out against was how easy the present crop of pop stars has it. Miley Cyrus, in particular, was used as an example by Spears, who called out a double standard with, “…she smokes on joints onstage at the VMAs—nothing is ever done to this generation for doing wrong things.” The fact that Spears seems to be saying “wrong things” without quote marks around the phrase is likely a testament to just how brainwashed she’s been by old school patriarchal thinking. Of the variety that has conditioned her to believe she has to be “pretty and perfect” for Daddy—yet still doesn’t get the carrot of freedom in exchange (no matter how “white girl privilege” wanting a trip to Hawaii might sound to certain cynics).
Being someone with a strong work ethic who was taught that hard work pays off, Spears has instead been given a contrary lesson that it only pays off for the bloodsuckers in her “inner circle.” As someone who grew up poor, Spears’ attitudes toward money smack of the kind of person who was raised without it. And it would be somewhat ironic that a Southern “swamp thing” (as Vanessa Grioriadis called her) of modest means would end up friends with socialite Paris Hilton, one of the 00s OGs who came of age with Spears—albeit through an entirely different medium (being rich and making that fodder for a new genre called “reality” TV). Hilton, too, was also namechecked by the pop star in her testimony. And though it might have sounded like the same kind of shade directed at Miley, it was more about her fear of also being judged and ridiculed instead of believed (further proof of a certain frozen-in-timeness she possesses with regard to the era she still seems trapped in) as she commented, “To be honest with you, the Paris Hilton story on what they did to her at that school, I didn’t believe any of it. I’m sorry. I’m an outsider and I’ll just be honest, I didn’t believe it, and maybe I’m wrong and that’s why I didn’t want to say any of this to anybody to the public because I thought people would make fun of me or laugh at me and say, ‘She’s lying, she’s got everything, she’s Britney Spears.’ I’m not lying. I just want my life back.” Even if that life will never appear to transcend too far beyond a media freakshow.
A freakshow that commenced around the post-In the Zone epoch and reached a zenith in 2008, with the Rolling Stone article that had Grioriadis lashing, “If Britney was really who we believed her to be—a puppet, a grinning blonde without a cool thought in her head, a teasing coquette clueless to her own sexual power—none of this would have happened. She is not book-smart, granted. But she is intelligent enough to understand what the world wanted of her: that she was created as a virgin to be deflowered before us, for our amusement and titillation. She is not ashamed of her new persona—she wants us to know what we did to her. While it may be true that Britney suffers from the adult onset of a genetic mental disease (or a disease created by fame, yet to be named); or that she is a ‘habitual, frequent and continuous’ drug user, as the judge declared; or that she is a cipher with boundless depths, make no mistake—she is enjoying the chaos she is creating.” But no, if anything, Jamie Spears was (and is) enjoying the chaos she created, for it allowed him the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to step in and take the reins to her life, something that might have just as easily happened to the likes of Amy Winehouse or Lindsay Lohan if fate had decided to be fickler.
Speaking of these other 00s women, a Vanity Fair article released after the June 23rd hearing makes note of the fact that Spears, in so many ways, is in a state of arrested development. Trapped in the decade that made her and forced into the teen girl role she dominated when she first rose to international fame… as well as a woman still surviving 2007. Erin Vanderhoof remarked in the piece that Spears was “presenting with a teen girl’s affect—uptalking, a bit of vocal fry, a lot of apologizing—is a way to ask for something without ruffling feathers. You’d be hard-pressed to find an American woman who hasn’t felt compelled to do this. Spears’ early career was an important reminder of how much derision is aimed at the intelligence and taste of girls, even when they do have the power to determine what is popular and make money for others.” This latter point being Emerald Fennell’s very reasoning for choosing the specific pop songs of the Promising Young Woman Soundtrack, on which Britney’s “Toxic” is included, as well as Paris Hilton’s “Stars Are Blind.” Spears’ Southern politeness and unavoidable adherence to gender norms have also done her no favors in this particular matter of breaking the shackles of the late twentieth/early twenty-first century.
Cyrus, who has “paid homage” to Spears many times throughout her career, might have started out as heteronormative princess Hannah Montana, but her business acumen and evolution with the times has seen her alter into a pansexual “rock” queen with a mullet. And yes, again, this sense of freedom to experiment and make mistakes as a pop star is a direct result of Spears’ near Jesus-like stature in enduring all the stigmas that came at the height of the tabloid era and the dawn of social media/the proverbial gossip website (e.g. TMZ, Perez Hilton). While Madonna remains the progenitor of all these women, she was at least lucky enough to secure her fame at a time when PR could still be well-controlled and manipulated. Before it became a runaway trainwreck as unruly and unwieldy as the opening of Pandora’s box.
In essence, Spears is saying: what have I ever really done that was so wrong? Why am I getting treated this was when so many after me and even of my time have only gotten slaps on the wrist or, worse still, praise (that includes Spears’ contemporary, Christina Aguilera)? It’s a question that can only be answered with the recognition that every decade in pop culture requires its sacrificial lamb (who always seems to be a woman). It happened to Marilyn in the 50s, Elizabeth in the 60s, Cher in the 70s, Madonna in the 80s (during her Sean period, most notably) and Diana in the 90s. Britney, evidently, was the sacrifice of the 00s. In her wake, what has happened instead seems to be that everyone is susceptible to being cancelled for any perceived affronts (including Billie Eilish, a “victim” of pop culture herself).
And so, as all the drama and key players of the 00s tabloid headlines are dredged up again anew (this includes Bennifer and Lindsay Lohan), we, like Britney, really do have to ask, “And what the fuck is the current generation offering again?” Other than having no awareness of what it is to truly suffer the ills of confining attitudes.
