She's Come Undone (My One & Only Britney Spears Post)

"There's no master plan. I'm just gonna be me and hope it all works out!" -from an old interview with Britney Spears


Well, clearly it hasn't worked out so well.

I've been wrestling with the Britney dilemma for a while now: the dilemma being that I don't know whether or not to blog about her, as any more publicity on this subject is just further distraction from truly important -- or even remotely more entertaining -- subjects. But I came across this interesting article from 2000, written about Spears, by one of my favorite writers, Elizabeth Wurtzel. Reading this view of Britney in her heyday gave me a lot of perspective on why she is how she is at the current time. Then I figured, what the hell? Everyone else in creation has weighed in on this topic, so why not me dammit?

I've never owned a Britney Spears album. I've never even seen one. Nor have I ever listened to a Britney Spears song all the way through. It's not my style. It's not that I've just never been a Britney fan, I've never been a fan of any singer of bubblegum pop with a computer-perfected voice and a stripper's dance moves. There are a lot of them out there, and I regard them all as the same old tired product.

And that's precisely what has led me to blog about Britney today. We seem to have forgotten that she has always, from the day she stepped into public view, been a product. Record company executives, money-seduced parents, parasitic hangers-on, agents, managers, makeup artists, music industry honchos, the millions upon millions that bought her albums....we all created her. Now we watch as she unravels and wonder how and why and scrutinize her every move. We have no one to blame but ourselves.

It is baffling to us that this product, which has never malfunctioned, is now beginning to show actual human emotion. She is struggling. She is in pain. How can that be?!?!? We created her to be perfect, and now she has turned on us. Well let's do the only thing we know how to do in situations like this: crucify her. Send her back where she came from. That's the only solution. I mean, How dare she remind us of our own imperfections? She was supposed to be our ideal escape.

Yet where did she come from? She will never have a normal life. At first, she was able to maintain some normalcy. I remember seeing Rosie O'Donnell interview her after her first album came out. She was all "Yes, ma'am" and "No, ma'am". It was completely endearing. Even though my ears bled during her musical number, she was a charming Southern girl still rooted in reality. But there were world tours, more albums, provocative photos and interviews (and let's remember, she was underage for a lot of these). All of these things were orchestrated by the grand puppet masters of her life and career. At some point, I'm sure Britney just wanted to be a real girl. Yet that wasn't in her future. Too many people were relying -- are still relying -- on her to make them insanely rich. The only way to satisfy everyone was to destroy any semblance of a human being and replace it with a Southern-twanged wet dream for every adolescent boy and old perv out there, and a down-to-earth good girl for every preteen female. For the last several years, this plan has worked alarmingly well.

Then the product started to show flaws in its design. It started to make mistakes. Questions were raised about its ability to mother, to choose a worthy mate, to make wise and healthy decisions. Of course she can't do these things! She has never been allowed anything remotely resembling human emotion. She treats "her people" like garbage, she seems not to care that her sons were taken away, she surrounds herself with, what Ouiser Bordreaux would call, "boils on the butt of humanity". Is this any surprise? My toaster oven, thrust into the exact same set of circumstances, would probably behave the same way.

I'm not comparing Ms. Spears to a household appliance, I'm simply using it as a "product analogy". I'm also, despite the tone that may come across in this post, greatly saddened by what has happened to her. I firmly believe she has created none of it. Those around her have created it, many, in their defense, unknowingly. Now we see her traipse around Los Angeles at all hours, frequenting Starbucks and, inexplicably, gas station restrooms, and the paparazzi follow her everywhere (yes, even into the bathroom). We chastise her to just stay home already! Even LAPD Chief William Bratton said this in an interview yesterday.

But this cannot be. Why? Because the only time Britney is permitted to feel anything is when she is in the spotlight. That's how she was created, controlled, and marketed. The flashbulbs are pretty and all those men holding them love, love, love her. She has money to make for a lot of people. Her work, even today, in all her turmoil and unending drama, is still not done.

She's ready for her close-up.