Celebrity Status
I'm one of those rare birds who thinks Britney now is in better shape than Britney then, so read no further if you think it's normal for children to be raised by the Disney machine (and why nobody is pointing a finger in that direction while this all plays out, I have no idea) and dutifully morph into X-rated Adult Mouseketeers.
Most kids need a rebel stage to assert themselves and break away from the authority of their parents (if not, you do it when you turn 40, or so I've heard) and really, Britney is just rebelling. That she's doing it in public is the problem for everybody isn't it. Because we feel guilty watching on account of PEOPLE AREN'T MEANT TO LIVE OUT THEIR LIVES ON CAMERA!!!!!!!!!!
But that's what Disney et al set her up to do, isn't it. And I don't know about you, but my two favourite things about my own mom are that 1) she didn't care what we did as long as it didn't involve her; 2) she didn't pimp us out to Disney.
So I can't imagine being Britney. BUT I can't imagine Britney being anyone else. She's kind of stuck, like the inverse of Peter Sellers' character in Being There, to live out her days in the spotlight. Wouldn't you go kind of crazy? I would. Or I'd fake it. I mean, she's getting older, her talent was pretty much limited to being d'une certaine age (I love that expression - it's French, you know, and means literally "Ladies with burgundy hair") and she's not so completely uneducated that she can't read the writing on the wall - which says, "Baby's gettin' fat". I know, I know - I used the "F" word. My kids weren't allowed to use the "F" word growing up because my son once asked a family friend, "Why are you fat?" Of course, after I'd made it clear about the "F" word in public, he told a couple of visiting kids, "We don't say words that start with "F", like fuck and fat, because they hurt old ladies' feelings".
I'm sure I didn't put it like that, but who the fuck knows? I can't remember the toddler years. My kids' toddler years, I mean. My own I remember like they were yesterday. Me and my two sisters and brother running around Narnia, killing vampires with a wink of an eye - no one even noticed us missing - until the day my older sister came home with her clothes on backwards and the shit hit the fan.
But Britney. Who told her what not to say? Well, remember when she had to pretend she was a virgin because if she didn't it meant that she'd had sex with Justin Timberlake? And people might start asking questions about Disney's industrial parenting skills and wondering why pimped out industry kids were acting like regular same old same old American teenagers?
And it's interesting that nobody's gone there, eh? (YET) To, you know, ask around a bit, maybe dig up a couple of funny Disney uncles who hung around the Mouseketeer Club a little too much, the kids calling them behind their backs, "Uncle Flieslow" and so on and so forth and more of the same etc etc.
Anyway, I don't feel sorry for Britney so much as I feel hopeful that some light will be shed on the truth of America's addiction to celebrity, which is her addiction, too, isn't it. So when she's trying to kick the habit - who do they send in?
Why Dr. Phil, of course - a celebrity doctor. I mean, if you weren't crazy already, that would pretty much put you over the edge, wouldn't it. Nobody's real, nobody's acting without motive, nobody's worthy of trust. That's the environment she was raised in and she's the crazy one?
It must be like starring in a horror movie with endless sequels. And should make us appreciate our own non-interested even remotely in our childhood parents even more, I think. Never before have I cherished so much the memory of my mom asking every time we entered a room and then replying before we could answer, "What the hell are you doing in here? - Go outside!"
