AJBSLive

Britney Moving Up The Hate Parade
Virginian Pilot – The Daily Break
By Laura Sessions Stepp

So pop-tart Britney Spears says she’s abandoning her teen fan base for older listeners.
This will come as a great relief to the grown-ups who, no to put too fine a point on it, hate Britney, who just released her fourth CD, “In the Zone.”
Google on “Britney hater” and you get 9,000 hits. Go to the CNN Web site and learn, from a Quick Vote poll earlier this month, that one out of three visitors enjoys Britney while the rest say she’s either “living off her past glory” or is “about ready for the ‘Where Are You Now’ file.”
Karen Kreutzberg, a Navy commander with an 11 year-old daughter, Kara, tries to be polite by calling Spears “lightweight,” then adds, “Don’t get me started.”
Britney rage isn’t confined to custodians of the cradle, but there were a lot of parents silently cheering when they heard that Maryland’s fist lady, Kendal Ehrlich, pumped up a crowd last month by saying “If I had an opportunity to shoot Britney Spears, I think I would.”
Maybe moms are jealous that, at age 21, Britney looks better in boy briefs than they do or ever did.
But it’s more than that. You don’t heart the same comments about hotties such as J.Lo or Xtina (other wise known as Jennifer Lopez and Christina Aguilera. At least Britney has kept a full name –so far). Over the five years of her pop career, Britney has come to epitomize the widespread belief that there’s something rotten in girl culture, something that tells their bodies, no their brains, are the means to power and success, especially if they’re wrapped in skintight pants that stop just above the pubic bone.
Britney popularized the slut strut in music videos assembled by a former porn director and single-handedly wiped out the Spice Girls. Short skirts became known as “Britney skirts.” Young girls grabbed Teen People off the shelf when Britney was on the cover, packed Britney look-alike contests and Britney concerts.
Girls, especially pre-pubescent girls, want desperately to grow up. Britney gave them a way to do that. At the tender ages of 8, 9, and 10 they became thong feminists singing that they would do whatever it takes to snag a man. This drove older pantsuit feminists crazy.
The pantsuits asked, “Did we work our way into America’s boardrooms for this?”
Every quote that came out of Britney’s mouth confirmed their impression that she was a lightweight.
“I like lighthearted, girl-flick, love-story movies,” she told the Associated Press. It’s easy to watch, not that deep.”
Newsweek quotes Britney saying she’s “been into a lot of Indian spiritual religions.” Is Hinduism one of them? She replies: “What’s that? Is it like kabbalah?”
She told the German magazine Cinema that heaven is a place where “everyone it as peace and happy, and they all hop around from one cloud to cloud.”
She told the London Mirror, “I don’t like my fingernails, I don’t like my feet, I don’t like my nose…I do like my lips.”
Why?
Because her then-boyfriend—singer Justin Timberlake—“says he likes my lips.”
Some Britney haters feel betrayed because they took the pop icon at face value. They watched her grow up starting out at age 12 as a Mouseketeer. She sang in the choir at First Baptist Church in her home town of Kentwood, La., and at age 16 she launched her first CD, “Baby One More Time,” wearing a Catholic school uniform on the accompanying video. Her blond, girl-next-door looks won her acclaim as the country’s prom queen in national magazines.
When she started revving up the sexpot image, it was all right, at first, because she claimed to be a virgin. “I’m not a girl, not yet a woman,” she sang.
Then it came to light that she had given up her virginity while pretending she hadn’t, and Britney haters really came out of the closet. She was losing her voice, they said. That’s why she lip-synched all her concerts. Her voice was digitally processed, they said her dancing not as fluid as it was when she was younger.
Britney rage is not just about Britney, says Nancy Gruver, publisher of a magazine for girls and a newsletter for their parents. The anger is also aimed at an increasingly savage marketing industry that sells fashion and beauty to girls with the notion that sexiness equals independence. In 1959, Mattel started pitching its Barbie doll directly to girls instead of their parents, and almost half-century later we have Mattel’s Miranda doll, which closely resembles Britney. There’s also Britney on sunglasses, handbags, bellybutton rings, video games and, of course, singing Pepsi’s “Joy of Cola.” Last year, according to news reports, the Britney Empire made more than $100 million, more than the Tiger Woods machine. Is this what America means by girl power?
Parents don’t get off hook here, not entirely. A not-so-secret secret is that Britney’s mother has stage-managed much of her daughter’s career. And who takes all those young girls to Britney’s concerts? Who doles out $18 for a Britney baby-doll shirt or $33 for a corset?
Perhaps parents are overheated because they haven’t told their daughters that trash is trash no matter how glamorous it may seem. Of they’ve told them, and it didn’t amount to a hill of beans against the Britney package.
Kay Hymowitz, a scholar at the Manhattan Institute who writes about children, thinks parents should give their Britney anxiety a rest. At least some teens are losing interest in Britney, she says. “Britney’s a little too shelly,” says Kreutzberg’s six-grader, Kara.
As in skanky? “Yes. 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.”

My Response
First off, Britney’s a woman now. She’s 22 years-old and can do as she pleases. If parents think that Britney’s dressing too “skimpy” for their daughters to view, then change the damn channel. If you don’t want your child to see Britney in concert, then don’t buy tickets. Tell you children “no.” They will have to listen because you are the parent.
Second thing, why is it always “Britney this and Britney that”? Christina Aguilera poses provocatively as well, but with more stress on “Provocative.” In her Maxim Magazine spread in January 2003, she posed nude in a pool, giving the bird. On her October 2002 photoshoot of Rolling Stone, she posed completely nude with a guitar. Britney covers herself, with clothing.
If people would watch the interviews on television, they would know that Britney thought that she was going to be with Justin Timberlake for the rest of her life. When they broke up, she didn’t go around blabbing about their sex-life or make a music video about the breakup. About the lip-synching, I’d like to see an amateur get on stage dancing his or her ass off trying to sing a song live. Britney has admitted to having the CD track for help, but most of the time on TV concerts, the station dubs over the live track. Back in 2002 when Britney performed for the Macy’s July 4th Concert, NBC dubbed over the show with the CD track. On that point, what people don’t realize is that she has back-up singers, which is who you hear too, giving the impression of lip-synching.
If Britney is such a horrible person and if more teens are “fading” away from Britney, then why has her fourth album gone to #1? Why have all her albums gone to #1? Why is her single “Me Against The Music” the most requested video on MTV’s TRL?
When Britney first came onto the scene, she was being told what to do by her managers, just like all new artists are. They are new to the career and need guidance. Now that she’s been around for five years, she knows what to do and what she wants. For her October 2003 Rolling Stone photoshoot, she posed in elegant ballroom gowns, but do they appear in the magazine? No. They magazines choose what pictures go on the cover and on the inside story. On her Esquire magazine shoot, just because she posed without underwear on the cover and then without a bra on inside the magazine isn’t wrong. She was reliving a previous pose by another famous female. She regrets posing that way with the beads, but it’s something she’s done and will never do again.
Instead of saying Britney is a bad influence on children, tell your kids not to watch or listen to her if you don’t approve of her. One final thing is that her fans when she first arrived on the scene are now 18 and older. So her fans from way back when are now adults and is why she’s turned to a more older audience. I’ve been a fan since the Mickey Mouse Club and “Baby One More Time.” I’ve ran my website BSLive (http://www.bslive.org) Since January 1999 and it’s been strong ever since. I support Britney in everything she does because she has taken control of her career and is doing what she wants to do because she’s just begun to have her fun.

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Thanks To Grafix @ BreatheHeavy For The Blend

Duffyboy

Has that article not been posted before?

No offence, just wondering.

Mikky

eh, it's too long for me.

PapRoach123

You can't really blame Britney, but you can't really blame the parents either. That's too easy. I've noticed also that most people who say it's the parents' fault never had any children of their own. They dunno what it's like.. it's not as easy as you put it out to be. Go forbid your child to watch Britney then. I give you two months max, and then you're at war with your own child, or your child is sitting at home deeply depressed because the rest of the world enjoys Britney except her cause her parents don't let her. Try to deal with that first and then repeat your words, heh.

I think the only thing you can really blame for all this is society itself. The entire media can be blamed, that includes magazines, movies, TV shows, TV channels, etc. Hollywood stars can be blamed. Everybody is helping enforce this image AND people are sheep. They can't say no. They do what other people do.


Britney was always looked at as "the only girl who did not do that shit". Your "next door neighbour", or "the girl next door". People loved that, parents loved that. Britney turned that around and now everyone is disappointed, especially those parents. I can't say I blame them either, heh. I used to think that Britney was independent too, one to just do her own thing. She still says she does that, but ironically what she does is what everybody else does, and by hearing her speak it's as if every damn girl is like that. And that's just plain wrong. "She's not just a girl doing her own thing anymore." "She's one of them now, and they all do the same thing." People get confused. They don't follow Britney as close as her fans do. They feel somewhat betrayed, because the image was created that Britney was the one they could "trust". The only one and I quote "who would never do that". It was a lie.

Nobody can really get the full blame for that, except for everybody, heh.


Agreed. And Britney gets flack for him doing that, because the media is trying to pull her in with it. But people don't know. They don't know Britney never made a move. They just say "Justin and Britney? What a bunch of crap."


Simply not possible, heh. The dance + sing act was a risky theory, but the crowd liked it, so they made it fact.


Britney lips while sitting down too though, heh. And there was a time where her backup singers had stronger voices than Britney has herself. They didn't match at all, and so the vocal technicians or whatever those people are called these days, screwed up big time. If I was Britney I'd sue them, heh. But then again, she would be admitting the weaknesses in her voice, which Jive will never let her do. So the techs are off the hook and do it again the next performance. That's why I like the following statement: "If you want something done right, do it yourself."

Britney lipped alright. And the reason for this is not just one, but many. Though I've said that so many times already on here, I'll let that issue rest for this one.


TRL is rigged, man.

As is the rest. People buy cause it's hot, not cause it's good. If you want a CD to sell, all you need to do is promote it until you drop dead, heh. Lie about it, say that it's the hottest thing eva, the "NEW BRITNEY ALBUM!!!". Those three words alone will make 5 thousand people run to the shops on the first day of it's release. It doesn't matter if the album sucks or not. If it's hot, people will buy it. This way they control the sales. And that's pretty much the bottom line.

Furthermore, whether or not Britney is a horrible person has nothing to do with her sales. She's no horrible person by any means. What's horrible is the industry, which Britney is a part of. It's like a war between politicians going on behind the scenes and Britney is staged as their representative. She portrays them in corporial form, and therefore she's taking their bullits too.


Yet she's still a puppet. They all are. That's how the pop industry rotates. Britney just sings tracks and others edit her singing to make it sound cool. Why? Cause they can't afford to publish an album that won't do very well. Britney's success is a formula, not just something some girl from Kentwood coincidentally wants to do every time. Because if that were true, she would end up to be so self-contradictive that you'd sign her up for a mental institution due to suspicion of indentity disorder, heh.

I won't agrue the statement that Britney helps composing this formula though. I'm sure she knows by now what sells and what doesn't.


I agree, but I also think that you should never say never. Especially when we're talking about Britney and pop music, heh.


That's an interesting theory, but I disagreed with the statement in the article that Britney turned to an older audience. Because it's not true. She might think that, but that formula is miscalculated. In fact, she lost so many of her older fans now, the numbers are unmeasurable. Unfortunately, I'm one of those too. I feel insulted actually that people think what Britney does now is what a mature crowd wants to see. That is complete and utter bullshit. What a mature crowd wants to see is what Britney is supposed to do, but isn't doing. Singing. heh.

I don't want to hear her moaning using sensual voices and singing about masturbation. Now that is for children. Teenagers. They love that shit. I personally think it's boring. heh

Also, adults are not just people between 20 and 23, heh. We're talking 30, 40, 50... Make no mistake about it, Britney is still a teen idol, and that will never change until she starts to take singing seriously.

Im_In_The_Zone

People need 2 give Britney some slack.Omg theres other singers that dress way more sexier then she does.Let Britney dress the way she wants.Leave the girl alone damn.Just cuz Brits not insecure about herself n puts a bunch of clothes on shes a bad person leave Britney alone.Let her wear wut she wants 2.Its not like when Brits not on the job she walks around wearing lil 2 nothin no she wears clothes.And parents can kiss her *beep* cuz that aint Brits kid its theirs so parents need 2 put there foot down obviously.

Nanny

Just another person trying to bring down Britney's image. Next.

Wdnesday

I'm independent and I don't show my body.

I'm the girl next door. She's something straight off of 9th street. /local prostitution reference.

You know, people on Broadway stages sing AND dance at the same time six times a week! They work their asses off and don't sing to some prerecorded track. Britney's voice is weak, and she's done nothing to make it stronger. Even in her prerecorded tracks, she sounds thin. Her talent is her body.

PapRoach123

Indeed you are. And the fact that Britney traded that imagine for what she has now (what everybody else already has ) disappointed a lot of people. Cause "Britney would never..." I really don't find it surprising what people say about all this. In essence, Britney and all the people around her are asking for it.


Yeah I'll take your word for it. I've never been to a Broadway performance before, I've never seen what those people can do. But yeah, it doesn't look like Britney is really doing something with her voice either way.

CrAZyBeAuTiFuL4

Fisrt of all, who the hell cares if parents hate Britney? A lot of people hate Britney and there's nothing any of us here can do about it. It's a fact of life and it will continue to be a fact of life.

Secondly, parents can do SOME things to censor what their child sees and hears, but they can't totally stop their child from being exposed to something. Why? Parents aren't superheros, they can't be everywhere their children are. Even if the children don't see Britney at their own home, they can see her millions of other places.

Also, the comment on why people don't target Christina like they do Britney. Plain and simple, the two have a totally different fan base. Britney has ALWAYS appealed to the younger kids. Christina did at first, but her fan base didn't go nearly as young as Britney's did. Christina has always appealed to a more mature fan base, especially right now. She's not a huge huge role model/icon for the 8-12 year olds of today's world, Britney is. Which, in my opinion, is why people target Britney more. Also there's the fact that Christina has raw talent, that's been proven many times. She can hold her ground. Britney, while she is talented, has never been able to awe people like other artists. People who hate Christina will admit that she has amazing vocal ability, people give her credit for what she can do. It's much eaiser for people to pick on someone who get's no credit for what they do, IE. Britney.

Just my opinion, don't jump on me for it...

PapRoach123

I see 8 year old kids walking around in low-rider pants and short tops with Britney's face painted on it. I dunno about you guys, but I find that sick, heh. Really really disgusting. Sometimes, they're even wearing make-up.

Those parents obviously don't give a shit, but the parents of their friends might, which creates problems. "Mommy, they're all wearing that at school except for me, please please please please please please let me wear that too? *sad face*" But because their parents won't allow it, cause 1. it's sick and 2. it attracks pedos, their kids get teased at school cause they're not with the rest.

Result: problems problems problems. And why? Because Britney and her crew refuse to realize how much responsibility Britney is actually carrying. Dusting it off by saying "I never wanted to... // I never asked to..." is running away from the problem. Saying "Not my problem -----> parents" is running away from the problem too. A lot of people feel that Britney doesn't want to face the facts and stand for her influential position and deal with it accordingly. They feel she's running away from it, pretending she doesn't see it.

THAT is what pisses most parents off, heh. I can somewhat understand their point of view. It's not easy to raise a kid in this world anymore. In fact, it's damn hard. Before you know it, they're on drugs, heh.