One downside to being in the public eye is the world scrutinizing your every move. You could be like Kristen Stewart and pretend you aren’t famous and hate the attention you essentially asked for. You could be like Emma Stone, embrace your celebrity status and use that platform to be charming and lovable. Or you could take the crazy route. Who comes to mind, other than Lindsay Lohan? None other than the princess of bubble gum pop herself, miss Britney Spears.
Spears sauntered into our hearts wearing a too-short mini skirt, roaming the halls of a fictional high school singing about domestic violence (just kidding). She transcended from her cute, bubbly image to the slightly less teeny-bopper look for “Oops!… I Did It Again” and then became more and more slutty as she moved through “Britney,” “In the Zone,” “Blackout” and that tragic record, “Circus.”
Through her image transformation, Spears went headfirst into the all too cliché and mandatory public breakdown starting with her 55-hour marriage to a childhood friend and quickly followed by the epic failure that is the “Britney and K-Fed” saga. America watched the girl lose her mind. She shaved her head, let her toddler drive her car and the worst offense of them all, walked around a gas station barefoot and holding a bag of Cheetos.
I think the beginning of the end was her stomach-turning performance at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards. Rumors spread before the show aired about her supposed comeback— the first of many. If you have that many comebacks, doesn’t it negate the purpose? Much like Cher’s farewell tours; if you’re leaving, just go. Don’t have nine farewell tours.
The show started with a tight shot of the world’s worst weave. Post-head shave, Spears had to do something to bring back her signature blonde locks and the best option was the tragedy atop her head at the awards show. Even the glue-in extensions I had in high school looked better than that monstrosity. She was obviously lip-synching her new hit “Gimme More” and this was the first time we had really seen the ‘dead behind the eyes’ Spears. She was unenthused, horrible at dancing all of a sudden and barely did much to show the crowd she was back in the music scene to make up for her crazy antics. During her performance, crowd shots of celebrities, such as 50 Cent and Rihanna, showed the discomfort in the room. A line from “Country Strong” comes to mind—something about how you cant take someone out of rehab before the rehab.
It reads like a tragic story headline: “Pop princess who dated Justin Timberlake and wore matching denim outfits turned into public train wreck.”
Are you rolling your eyes yet? Bottom line is, don’t get famous if you can’t handle it. Obviously, Spears’ bad choices, exacerbated by her obvious mental deficiencies combined with having to look at the ever- expanding waistline of Kevin Federline, contributed to extreme mental deterioration.
So then there was some radio silence. No Brit for a while.
And then “X Factor.” She was to make, yet another – you guessed it – comeback. Even I was roped into watching and the last thing I need in my life is another TV show to watch. In the five years that have passed since her cringe-worthy VMA performance, not much has changed. She’s still got a bad weave, she still looks dead behind the eyes and her energy level is comparable to that of a sleep-deprived morphine addict.
The show itself is shot in a bizarre fashion (that’s an entirely different set of complaints) and when they show Spears behind the
scenes, she seems tentative and uncomfortable; like you would at a function your mother made you attend at your grandma’s senior center. All comfort in front of the camera she had perfected since her debut on “The Mickey Mouse Club” is gone and don’t even get me started on when she sang “Happy Birthday” to L.A. Reid, completely a cappella. It was the most uncomfortable 30 seconds of TV I’ve experienced since she made out with Madonna almost 10 years ago.
Stars falling at the whim of their fame is a tale as old as time and few can be chronicled as closely as Britney Spears. God knows there have been enough—”Behind the Music” and “E! True Hollywood Story” type shows about her. But what really matters is that this one is still happening. This one is unfolding in front of our eyes every time “X Factor” comes on, and you better believe I’ll be sitting there with my popcorn just dying to see her next move. Or fall.
