As the public continues to be shocked by both itself (and what it was once game to accept–but also will be again due to renewed amnesia) and the relentless paparazzi harassment that Britney Spears endured in the 00s, the comparisons to other “lost lamb” angels of pop culture (e.g. Marilyn Monroe) have been made, most often to Princess Diana. Enduring a media furor unlike any other British royal in history–maybe even any person in history–Diana was pursued with the same kind of relentlessness and bloodlusting fervor as Britney–even more so, in fact. To the point where, as we all know, it’s what ultimately catalyzed her demise.
“The press were being unbearable, following my every move,” she would remark in 1991 of the days before she had even married into the House of Windsor. She would have no concept that it was only a petite amuse-bouche of what was to come. The same went for Britney as “…Baby One More Time” started to really blow up. There were moments when Spears would catch people staring at her in public and she would forget that it was because she was so famous. Her down to earth Southern nature was likenable to Diana’s own self-effacing tendencies. “Sweet, kind, nice and shy are all words to describe her,” one newscaster narrates of Diana as she walks through the streets at nineteen. The fact that both Di and Brit were hurtled into the spotlight in their teen years would later become a contributing factor to why it so steadily weighed upon both of their psyches.
To a certain extent, both women were being “groomed” for something. Britney for pop stardom with her dancing and singing lessons in New York, and Diana for being the wife of someone noble with her attendance at all the posh schools and her study of the arts (intermixed with playing sports–because all women should be well-rounded…but not fat). This early training and indoctrination would help solidify both of their respective meteoric rises.
Rises that were both, oddly enough, somehow dependent upon the image of chastity. As Diana would state of not having any boyfriends as the friends she hung around kept racking them up, “I knew somehow I had to keep myself very tidy for whatever was coming my way.” “Tidy,” of course, being a euphemism for virginal. Britney–or the puppeteers in marketing–was also aware that coming across as “innocent” would be a large part of her cachet. What the media vultures didn’t seem to understand was that the innocence in Diana and Britney were real until corrupted by the scrutiny of the spotlight, mutated into something that left both of them more jaded and dead-eyed.
As for Britney, whose own mother released a tell-all book in 2008 (at the peak of the tabloid frenzy) describing how her daughter’s experimentation with drugs and sex began when she was thirteen–then still on The Mickey Mouse Club–her early debasement speaks to the notion that fame was a primary source of stamping out her soul, or at least diluting it with other things. Lynne Spears would also admit her regrets about losing the reins of her daughter’s career long enough to let Larry Rudolph bill her as a virgin eschewing sex at all costs until marriage (just as Jessica Simpson’s shtick would also be). Where Diana was concerned, no “paternal figure” in her life ever lost control of the narrative, as evidenced in Diana: In Her Own Words. This much is emphasized by one commentator’s disgusting remark, “Her father, her uncle, Lord Fermoy, and others have even vouched for her virginity. Lord Fermoy stating categorically, and I quote, ‘I can assure you she has never had a lover.’” Eerily, it wasn’t too long after Diana’s marriage to Charles that Lord Fermoy killed himself.
America’s own desire for royalty–being the fucked up spawn of Britain and all–reached a crescendo when the Princess of Pop and the Prince of Pop a.k.a. Britney and Justin became an item. Like it was with Charles and Diana, America seemed to be looking for a bright spot in a new era of uncertainty. Something to calm the nerves after an election like the one that occurred in 2000. And then, of course, there was 9/11 to fuck with everyone’s anxiety. Comfort in the frothy presentation of Spears herself and who she was as “Justin’s girlfriend” was part of the country’s fascination. The same went for dreary, economically shattered Britain in the 80s when the nation first became captivated by everything Diana and Charles (but mainly Diana) did. As with all celebrity couples the public obsesses over, Americans were initially sated with the news of Spears’ and Timberlake’s happiness together before this gave way to a desire for something juicier, more sordid. Justin was happy to deliver the goods as he proceeded to publicly tarnish her name, immortalized in “Cry Me A River.” Diana, too, would have her affair(s), but Charles was the guilty party, having set her on the path of looking elsewhere with his undying love for Camilla.
As the press had a field day with the divorce rumors, so, too did they with reports regarding the circumstances of the Britney and Justin split. Diana, in talking about Charles, ends up hitting the nail on the head regarding the press’ treatment of both her and Spears: “He’d found the virgin, the sacrificial lamb, and in a way he was obsessed with me. But it was hot and cold, hot and cold. You never knew what mood it was going to be.” It didn’t take long for the collective media mood to be one of tireless invasion, fueled by a need to furnish the world with a daily smear campaign. In this way, Britney’s 2007 hit, “Piece of Me” was something that Diana seemed to be channeling her spirit on as well, particularlly with the lines, “I’m Mrs. Extra! Extra! This just in (you want a piece of me)/I’m Mrs. she’s too big now she’s too thin.” To that latter point, the dissection of Diana’s body as the wedding loomed likely only further added to her need to engage in the bulimia that had taken hold. A combination of stress and insecurity, Diana turned to this means of “purging” for many years.
The pressure of everything took a toll on both body and mind, with Diana assessing, “They wanted a fairy princess to touch them and turn them into gold, and all their worries would be forgotten. Little did they realize that the individual was crucifying herself inside.” Same as Spears. America’s little princess suddenly turned “redneck” “swamp thing,” no longer acting like a “lady” but a “peasant.” And even Diana had to lose much of her poise by the 90s. Ain’t nobody got time for that facade.
Back in the beginning of it all, however, with more interviews to be given as their wedding date approached, Charles and Diana’s appearances together became all the more awkward. For one set of interviewers, Charles tellingly noted, “If you don’t work out some kind of method in your own mind for existing and surviving this kind of thing, you would go mad, I think.” Of course, thanks to his own bloated ego, he believed that anyone ever actually gave that much of a shit about what he was doing. But the burden, the intensity was placed squarely on Diana’s shoulders. Just as it was on Britney’s after the breakup heard round the world. No one was putting Justin under a microscope or criticizing him in any way whatsoever.
Making the repeated analogy of being a sacrificial offering to both the House of Windsor and the media, Diana somehow seemed more aware of what was happening to her early on, reflecting, yet again, “I felt I was a lamb to the slaughter, and I knew it.” But what was to be done? Like Britney, she wanted what she wanted. There was no other path for her in life, even if the one she desired to tread on was decidedly filled with primroses. “By October, I was about to cut my wrists,” Diana said of returning to Balmoral that first year of their marriage for a stint from August to October. She added, “All the analysts and psychologists you could ever dream of came plodding in. Tried to sort me out. Put me on high doses of Valium.” Pills to prop her up. In so many ways, her screaming out and telling people what she needed but being entirely ignored mirrored the same thing Britney said in a 2008 documentary called Britney: For the Record. She looks earnestly into the camera and says, “If I wasn’t under all the restraints I am now with, you know, the lawyers and doctors and people analyzing me every day and all that kind of stuff, like, if that wasn’t there, I’d feel so liberated and feel like myself. When I tell them the way I feel, it’s like, they hear me, but they’re really not listening. They’re hearing what they wanna hear. They’re not really listening to what I’m telling them. It’s like–it’s bad.” She then breaks down crying and frankly admits, “I’m sad,” in another unbridled moment of vulnerability that Diana was also known for surrendering to the public.
Diana’s cognizance of being like that other aforementioned “lamb,” Marilyn Monroe, in relation to the world’s entranced reaction to her also revealed itself when she stated, “It was like a sort of Marilyn Monroe publicity, you know? She only had to click a heel, and the whole world was at her feet. It was very odd. I’m never comfortable in it. Never ever.” And why should anyone be? What’s worse is that the more elusive Diana and Britney seemed in their “heydays,” the more appetitive the paparazzi and the fans buying the papers and the magazines became. As though feeding off the distressed looks (deemed “candids”) and faux scandalous headlines.
Perhaps in some odd cosmic “eye for an eye” way, Britney was the reanimated “spirit” the press had been looking for after Diana’s death. Like Bob/Judy in Twin Peaks always being able to find Laura’s spirit in any timeline. In another kismet twist of oddly solidifying the bond between the Diana/Britney parallel, it was around 2002 that Britney was asked by a British interviewer if the rumors were true, and that she had really been an item with Prince William (you know, Diana’s eldest son). Yes, that would certainly cement a direct link to Diana beyond what was to come in terms of ceaseless paparazzi harassment as the 00s progressed (at which time Britney also had two boys of her own back to back, subsequently suffering from postpartum depression like Diana). But, as it turned out, Britney wouldn’t need to marry into the royal family to know the hell of what that was like for Lady Spencer, in terms of unremitting examination.
“At the end, something else Lady Diana is going to have to get used to: the fusillade of flashbulbs,” commented one reporter regarding the engagement party–Diana’s first official public appearance–for Charles and Diana at Goldsmiths’ Hall in March of 1981. Thanks to the merciless pursuit of the paparazzi, she–like Britney–might have gotten “used to it,” but at what price? They might be (or, in Diana’s case, might have been) the world-famous, rich ones, but what is the higher cost both were forced to pay in exchange for losing something perhaps more valuable? In this and so many other “sacrificial lamb” parallels, there are times when Britney and Diana could easily be merged into one massive “Dolly” (as in, the cloneable sheep), rife for the slaughtering/any use whatsoever that suits the “shepherd’s” purpose. Then, of course, the misogynists–male and female alike–would resoundingly counter, “Come on then, they’re not that innocent.”
