Then, of course, there is the problem of her sexuality. Her songs only compounded this ambiguity. All of this only stoked the jealousy that bubbled in my heart. That the right look or grin from the right boy could kindle a light inside me that would glow for hours. But there was no way I could find to act on these feelings. Instead, I watched the boys around me the way they watched Britney: armpits damp and throat tight, yearning for the impossible.
My teenage hatred of Britney was a largely private experience. Hating Britney was easy. It was a way of announcing — to the world, in theory, but in practice only really to myself — that I was different from the other boys in my high school. Better, more refined.
Their desire was common, sloppy, relentless; mine was rare, secret, forbidden. But after I graduated from high school and came out as gay, my feelings toward Britney started to become more complicated. Freed from some of the fear that Saint Francis had brought, I wanted to do more than look at the boys that I liked; I wanted them to look back. I wanted to make them look back. And Britney had always been an expert in that. I pulled my hair back into what else? I smoothed raspberry-flavored gloss over my lips, concealer over any zits, and a smudgy, smoky cloud of shadow over my eyelids.
It was a feeling that was all about becoming — a sense that a thousand possible selves waited before me, a thousand possible lives. Britney understood. That Halloween night, my friends and I went party hopping, wandering through suburban kitchens sticky with spilled beer and down into finished basements where girls dressed like sexy angels and sexy devils and sexy cats were giggling into their red plastic cups.
Everywhere I went that night, boys watched me. They looked at me in a way I had never experienced before: slowly and unabashedly, as though it was their right to look for as long as they pleased. At my high school, no boy looked at another for more than a few seconds; any longer would have been an insult, a provocation.
But the usual rules dissolved when I pulled on the schoolgirl kilt. Even boys who already knew me let their eyes travel over my body — over my slim waist and sock-padded bra — before arriving at my face and blinking hard, their surprise giving way to rueful smiles. Or Perez Hilton, who built a personal industry mocking Spears and her peers? Or Matt Lauer, now a known sexual predator , who implied during a TV interview that the crying year-old mother of two was a bad parent?
Or was it the men who drifted in and out of her life—often older, greasy, almost typecast versions of men who prey on vulnerable women? Or the paparazzi, who harassed her? The result: viral status, support from stars like Sarah Jessica Parker and Miley Cyrus, and huge buzz on social media. Of course! Take one step back—the framing of Framing Britney Spears is that Britney Spears is still a product that sells.
The rise and fall of a famous woman is an infinity loop of content, and at no point do the makers of the documentary acknowledge that they too are in the business of Britney. The docuseries does not analyze them, despite its focus on media coverage of the pop star.
I strongly believe that we can be so much better about the way we relate to woman celebrities without giving up our love of drama and gossip and sparkles and pop music. Let's shut down our own baseless hatred of celebrities. Not because famous people are charity cases, but because the way we treat them informs the way we treat people who we do not think are pretty and important.
Public obsession with Britney Spears's virginity informed and reinforced the way we talk about girls and sex. As in skanky? Like the clothes she wears, the underwear. I liked her when she was younger, but her style has kind of changed.
She has to keep her publicity up. All Sections. About Us. But his whole monologue is remarkable. What the hell is wrong with you? People are dying. That Anna Nicole Smith woman, she died. The audience laughs, again.
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