2008 Woodie Awards
Just leave her alone
Amber Chemam
Issue date: 10/11/07 Section: Opinion
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I heard yesterday that Britney Spears lost custody of her two kids. Blame me if you will, but I think this is a tragedy. Poor Britney already has a transvestite super-fan sticking up for her, but I really can't help myself here. The woman needs help.
Perhaps the saddest thing about Britney is that she is a representation of our generation. We grew up with Ms. Spears. Even at 16, when I was still an awkward sixth-grader, Britney was a figure-head for corruption and young stardom gone wrong. She managed to pose half-naked on the cover of Rolling Stone while I was still being forced to endure the "skirt-must-be-longer-than-the-tip-of-your-middle-finger" rule. She danced around in a naughty school-girl costume in her "Baby, One More Time" video while I was still struggling to forge a note to keep me out of gym class for a week. And let's not forget the time she writhed around in a flesh-toned body suit or got down with a big snake around her neck while I was still too young to drive and therefore was reduced to watching her routines on the MTV Music Awards.
The difference between me and Chris Crocker is that I always hated Britney Spears. Even when I was too young to join in my parents' controversial debates regarding the appropriateness of her behavior, I knew well enough to despise it.
Perhaps the greatest example of my former disdain for Spears is the year my best friend Kelly and I dressed up for Halloween as Cristina Aguilera and Britney (respectively), after a bout on Celebrity Death Match. I volunteered to be a dead version of B.S., complete with pigtails, a fake belly-ring and a lot of red-dyed corn syrup. There was nothing more disgusting, I thought, than the exploitive filth that Britney and her mom-ager made their millions from.
Still, as she has grown into a troubled young mother before my very eyes, I have formed this sense of sympathy and compassion for my former celebrity-nemesis. She seems to have become scarily relatable in that her outrageous behavior, if nothing else, makes her human. In the last couple of years, she has married a moron, had at least one likely accidental pregnancy, gotten divorced from the moron and immediately afterward embarked on a rampage of substance-abuse, bar-hopping and at least one very bad haircut. Take away Paris Hilton and the designer drugs, and she becomes more an example of a young woman who's made some all-too-common mistakes than a former-child-star-gone-terribly-wrong.
Perhaps the saddest thing about Britney is that she is a representation of our generation. We grew up with Ms. Spears. Even at 16, when I was still an awkward sixth-grader, Britney was a figure-head for corruption and young stardom gone wrong. She managed to pose half-naked on the cover of Rolling Stone while I was still being forced to endure the "skirt-must-be-longer-than-the-tip-of-your-middle-finger" rule. She danced around in a naughty school-girl costume in her "Baby, One More Time" video while I was still struggling to forge a note to keep me out of gym class for a week. And let's not forget the time she writhed around in a flesh-toned body suit or got down with a big snake around her neck while I was still too young to drive and therefore was reduced to watching her routines on the MTV Music Awards.
The difference between me and Chris Crocker is that I always hated Britney Spears. Even when I was too young to join in my parents' controversial debates regarding the appropriateness of her behavior, I knew well enough to despise it.
Perhaps the greatest example of my former disdain for Spears is the year my best friend Kelly and I dressed up for Halloween as Cristina Aguilera and Britney (respectively), after a bout on Celebrity Death Match. I volunteered to be a dead version of B.S., complete with pigtails, a fake belly-ring and a lot of red-dyed corn syrup. There was nothing more disgusting, I thought, than the exploitive filth that Britney and her mom-ager made their millions from.
Still, as she has grown into a troubled young mother before my very eyes, I have formed this sense of sympathy and compassion for my former celebrity-nemesis. She seems to have become scarily relatable in that her outrageous behavior, if nothing else, makes her human. In the last couple of years, she has married a moron, had at least one likely accidental pregnancy, gotten divorced from the moron and immediately afterward embarked on a rampage of substance-abuse, bar-hopping and at least one very bad haircut. Take away Paris Hilton and the designer drugs, and she becomes more an example of a young woman who's made some all-too-common mistakes than a former-child-star-gone-terribly-wrong.