Jezebel
It started with a song, "...Baby One More Time." In the last ten years, Britney Spears has gone from a shooting star to a fallen one. And while her rise to fame made the pop singer lots of money, the cash right now is in covering the fast-moving trainwreck-esque soap opera her personal life as become. The facts and figures in a detailed AP story by Jeremy Herron may not surprise you, but it's interesting to see them tallied: Britney is the number one celebrity in a multibillion dollar celebrity news industry. Her picture has been on 54 out of 103 covers of OK! magazine. The magazine, in fact, has a 10-person team in Los Angeles devoted to Spears coverage. "We're on constant Britney alert," editor Sarah Ivens says. In addition, according to a piece in the new issue of Blender, 15 photographers are on constant Britney stakeout. "Spears is the only celebrity in the world under photographers' 24-hour watch, a surveillance mode usually reserved for prisoners and suicides," writes Michael Joseph Gross.
More facts: Britney's hospitalization on January 3 drove traffic to new heights on sites like PerezHilton.com and TMZ. "Britney is the most bankable celebrity out there right now, and she has been for the past year," says Francois Navarre, co-owner of photo agency x17 (the same agency that posted those photos of Britney menstruating through her underwear). Sometimes we get e-mails asking us to "Stop writing about Britney." And the truth is, we don't post about her as much as we could, were we so inclined. We include her in Dirt Bag and Midweek Madness, but she's rarely, if ever, the subject of a Snap Judgment (and it's not for a lack of photographs!). Honestly? It's tough to stay away from her: She's been a part of the American — nay, global — consciousness for a decade, and it would be disingenuous to pretend we're not interested in what she's doing, where she's going and what's happening to her, especially since her life is a whirlwind of monumental events: rehab, head-shaving, losing custody of her kids.
There are many revelations in the Blender story: Britney wanted to get implants at age 17 because, she told a publicist, "I work like a woman, everyone treats me like a woman, but I look like a girl." Additionally, her seemingly erratic behavior may just be born of never having been "normal" at all: Her record deal saved her parents from bankruptcy, but she never learned how to balance a checkbook or do things for herself. She's never kept regular hours, or had a nine-to-five job. She also has an impulsive personality. A former record label exec says of her 55-hour marriage to Jason Alexander: "She doesn't connect the dots sometimes. Everyone thinks you only do those things when you're drunk or you're high. Britney can do things like that stone-cold sober."
But is the attention she's getting from the media part of her demise, or the key to her salvation? When she's lost, gets a flat tire, or needs her gas pumped, it's often the paparazzi who step in — someone in one of the 15 cars that follow her at all times. She's not used to not having cameras around her. Even when she first got together with Kevin Federline, they taped each other constantly. In an interview that aired on their show Chaotic, she says: "I'm not really good with just really being intimate one-on-one, and I think it helped me to have a camera there, instead of it just being me and him." Watching her or not, she craves the attention, even if it's negative. Writes Gross in Blender:
Britney became the tabloids' wet dream by making herself the very image of a bad person. More than that: the worst person. There is, it seems, no limit to the number of things you can hate her for. She's irresponsible, lazy, selfish, arrogant, stupid, tacky, rich and so depraved as to look almost subhuman.What's a celebrity-obsessed person (and this blog) to do? Do we make a pact to cover the most popular celebs — except for Britney? Doesn't some part of all of us want updates about Britney, if only to be sure she's still alive? Also, above and beyond the sadness, craziness and roller-coaster ride of who she is as a person, doesn't she also serve a purpose for each of us, allowing us to feel that no matter how bad things are, at least they're not that bad? For a woman who has been exploited as product almost all of her life, is there an easy way to say "I'm no longer for sale"?
The Britney Spears Economy Booms [AP, via Time]
Britney Spears: The Road to Ruin [Blender]
Comments
I genuinely want to know-what is it about her in the US that you guys loooo-ve soo much?? I'd love anyone to give me a run down because it is a phenomena....
I just don't get....She's a good popstar but??
I don't think that the phrase "prisoners and suicides" is exactly... in-applicable to Britney. Unfortunatey.
she's gonna be the most profitable suicide EVER!!! beating out kurt cobain.
It is amazing, this industry that's grown up around her. But I am still convinced there is not a person in her life right now that's not making money off her, or that cares enough about her to save her. Very very sad.
the prisoners and suicides thing is seriously scary.
@rantmagazine:
she's a disaster, and a lot of ppl take pleasure in watching her continuous failures. That's human nature.
Oh, God. She's not the WORST person. She doesn't hurt anyone but herself, the poor thing. She's messed up and seems to half zero self-awareness, but she's not evil/ depraved. Jesus.
Depressing.
I've never liked the girl, she's like a manufactured Hostess snowball.
But she's obviously been fucked by people who have put their own selfish needs above caring for her.
@J.D.Regent: Does Jesus count? Because technically kind of, right?
The more I learn about Britney Spears, the worse I feel for her. As soulless as TMZ and X17 are, they have, oddly enough, made me a more empathetic person, at least with regards to Britney anyway.
So, if her album deal didn't succeed, she'd be just as crazy, impetuous and crisis prone but just anonymously in Louisiana? I don't believe that.
@rantmagazine: It's not just the U.S.
She's the ultimate Billy Wilder movie. She just is.
I read an interview with her in which she stated, "If I cut everyone out of my life that has ever tried to exploit me or cash in on me, I'd be all alone. I don't want to be alone."
It made me so sad for her.
@rantmagazine: I don't think that the people who love to watch her like or love her at all. No one cares about her career, it's all about Britney the crazy bitch now.
For me, the part that is fascinating is that her actions are literally unbelievable. Who the fuck is she? How does she live this life? How does she really feel? But it doesn't keep me up at night or running all over the internet to look at all her pics.
@rantmagazine: I don't know if loooo-ve is the word. Loooo-ve to hate, yes.
@katastic: I don't know- I'd think that by being a completely unstable and irresponsible mother (ooh, so judgey! bad mother!) to her kids, she's hurting them.
@hortense: i was totally gonna break it down theologically for you, but then i remembered you are in catholic recovery too so instead i'm just gonna LOL.
Can't we just assume that she's alive and insane, and you can update us when she dies?
She's no more alive and insane today than she was yesterday.
@J.D.Regent: Well Amen.
Also: Seriously, where the hell is her momma? What the fuck is Lynn Spears doing right now and how come she's not in LA struggling to control her daughter? If I were Lynn Spears I'd wrestle her to the ground and SIT ON HER if that's what it took to keep her home and away.
@braak: yeah at this point i've kind of lost the plot. i used to be obsessed, but now it's just repetitive.
@katastic: I dunno. I think to have so much money and just flush it down the drain like she does, when there are so many people in the world who have nothing, it makes her a terrible person.
@rantmagazine: She was set to be the new Madonna. She was hot, talented (at least in entertaining), and fresh. Everyone watched her go from being a little teenage girl to being a huge global phenom. She was the golden girl. Which is why everyone is now fixated on her demise. Part of it is perverse- the car wreck you can't stop looking at, but mostly, I'm at least transfixed by it because 5 years ago this was the last thing anyone expected out of her. She was America's bubble-gum pop princess. Now she's America's favorite train-wreck. Love her or hate her, you can't help but be curious as to what's going on.
I just hope she gets better.
"For a woman who has been exploited as a product almost all of her life, is there an easy way to say 'I'm no longer for sale'?"
Well, first you have to know to say that in the first place, and if being exploited as a product is pretty much all you've ever experienced, you're not necessarily going to know that it's something you can reject, much less that it would be good for you to do so. That certainly seems to be the case for Britney.
Wow, her record deal saved her parents from bankruptcy. And now she barely talks to either of her parents. This makes me feel bad for her.
I remember it like yesterday, I was fifteen, and my best friend was lamenting the fact that this new "Britney Spears" singer was rumored to be dating her boy-band crush, a Mr. Justin Timberlake. I told her not to worry - this Britney girl was a flash-in-the-pan, a one-hit wonder, she would be a has-been before she turned eighteen, I mean, the girl couldn't even sing for chrissake.
Hum. Well I was right, in some forms, although I'm fairly sure Brit will always and forever be remembered, no matter what happens to her from hereon out.
@hortense: That might be a joke, but between joke and joke many truths are told. Britney is a sacrificial virgin/lamb.
She is the extreme example of a celebrity becoming nothing more than a product. And unfortunately her parents pushed her into this world to be exploited so young that she really has no concept of what a normal reality is. I honestly don't think this girl/woman can be healthy and I don't think she can live without the papps and media attention. Without them she probably feels she ceases to exist. It's just really sad and a wake up call to all the future stage mothers who think its a good idea to pimp out your kids. People, this life does not end well no matter how much money you end up with at the end of the day.
Rant over.
@TeenageGangDeb:
honey, if you were Lynn, Spears Britney probably wouldn't be in the situation she is now.
Lynn is obviously one of the reasons Brit is where she is now. And she's probably on her way to the bank.
I can't imagine a more soul-sucking job than being part of a 10-person Britney reporting bureau.
@Pinkosaurus: If she seriously has a mental disorder, she probably WOULD be this crazy!
@TeenageGangDeb: She's in the state of LA struggling to control the fetus inside the womb of her youngest daughter. Sadly enough.
I think her way of saying that she was no longer for sale was shaving her head...we all saw how that yurned out
Bless her heart.
i think i would shoot myself if i had to be on Britney alert 24/7.
She doesn't know how to live without the spotlight. I think she'd be in much worse shape if she wasn't getting any attention at all. I do wish she would go away, though.
I don't know, the situation has gone from being vaguely amusing to just sad and pathetic.
We took a child and made her a sex symbol. We had a former Senator and presidential candidate salivate over her in a soda commercial. Now people are making millions of dollars documenting her fall from grace.
Jezebel needs to cover Britney Spears not to show us that Britney spears is alive, but because she is perhaps the ultimate objectification of a woman by the media.
@raspberryjamba: She really was set up to take a terrible fall. Anybody whose parents allow them to be blown up and marketed as a Lolita sex doll at age 15 isn't going to be okay at age 25. Period.
Seriously, she is like one of those teenage virgins of the sun that were wined and dined for three years and then sacrificed for the sun god. Britney is dead already. Poor thing.
@nadarine: @BiscuitDoughJones: Yeah, but she's not EVIL. People loooooathe her. My point is, she's mostly (with the exception of her kids) just a danger to herself. You never see any reports of her doing anything malicious (which you would if she was, just stupid, careless things.
@hortense: Her parents allowed this to happen to her for the priviledge of having her be everybody's sex doll, everybody's star.
Human sacrifice is alive and well.
@Lymed:
As much as I'd like to get on board with this argument, i think the Britney fascination is fueled by a healthy dose of Schadenfreude.
Not that I'm particularly above taking delight in the misery of others, rich, vapid others.
@Lymed: I totally forgot about that commercial. Yikes, that really is messed up.
On another note, that hat is awful.
@stacyinbean: Ah, well as long as her priorities are straight. (/sarcasm)
Would she even be famous if she hadn't been teetering on the edge of crazy disaster from the very beginning? I mean, several other similar female stars rose to popularity around the same time--and many, if not most, of them were more talented--but they have never held the same sway over the public "imagination."
Doesn't some part of all of us want updates about Britney, if only to be sure she's still alive?
The day the internet is broken, I'll know that Britney died.
Can we say "schadenfreude"? It's the deep (or not so deep)-seated desire to see those we envy brought low; and I don't care who you are, you feel it sometimes. I think it's the whole "Ah-ha! Being rich n famous doesn't prevent you from being a ginormous fuck-up!" Regular people go down the crapper daily, but who cares about them?
Ok, rant over.
@maggles: OK, you beat me. But great minds and all that, huh?
@AndSheWas: Ha, the same thing happened to me. Except the first time I ever heard of Britney was when my best friend in 9th grade was lamenting that her beloved Nick Carter was rumored to be dating "some girl called Britney Spears". I was like, "who the eff is that?? Girl, you know you'll get Nick someday." Haha, now he's a bloated trainwreck too, and she grew out of it thankfully.
I'd be fine if there was no coverage of her whatsoever - don't even need updates to know she's still alive.
@maggles: I think you misunderstood. My comment was about why Jezebel should be covering Britney Spears, not why people are fascinated with her.
As another mentally unstable young woman who refuses to seek treatment (but probably should), I kind of feel like her life could have been mine if I was suddenly picked to be a pop star at such an early age. So I feel for her a bit, but also breathe a sigh of relief that my life could be much, much worse. At least I know the people in my life are there because they care about *me*.
@Lymed: Definitely true, dat. There's so much to say about the Britney Spears coverage. It's almost as morbid as the Jon Benet coverage, and she hasn't even died yet!