Hell has frozen over...
...or it's about to, because I am about to make a statement that is rather uncharacteristic of me. Especially if you've been reading this blog over the years and know my disposition towards celebrities. Here goes...
I sympathize with Britney Spears. I truly do.
To be in enough distress to take clippers to your head and go the Sinead O'Connor route means you're serious.
Yes, I know that even I am guilty of ripping on Britney.
But humor me for a moment and try to take a walk in her shoes.
For over ten years, she's been packaged and managed within an inch of her life. She's had a whole army of parents and agents and managers and label reps and trainers and stylists and PR people telling her where to go, what to do, and who to be. Practically every waking moment has been tracked by the paparazzi, and everything gets printed in the tabloids the next day.
She couldn't hang out at the mall with her friends. She couldn't go to football games on Friday nights. She couldn't go to Six Flags for Fright Fest. She couldn't make a late night Taco Bell run with her girls. She couldn't go to the beach for a day.
Now you're saying, "Yeah, she could do all those things. She's probably done all of that stuff before." Ok, she probably has, but she didn't get to do it the way the average kid in America has. The average kid in America doesn't have photographers chasing her and people creating a scene wherever she goes.
Like countless other people who became famous at a young age, Britney Spears didn't get to grow up normally. Yet we expect her to act like a normal person.
And Brit has had enough. Short of doing something catastrophic like OD-ing or driving her car over a cliff or blowing up a building or slitting her wrists, she had to do something to get her point across. Her point is: Leave me the hell alone.
I bet that some days, if not every day lately, Britney would easily give up all the money and all the fame just to be a regular girl from wherever-it-is, Louisiana. She'd be married to a decent man, have a few kids, and just be fat and happy. Isn't that what a lot of us want someday? To at least be happy?
And she's tried. As bizarre as it may look to us, she really has tried. And everything has been a tug-of-war between rebellion and normalcy. She got married to Kevin Federline. She wanted to be married, like most of her normal friends back home are doing (they marry young down that way, I imagine). Her handlers probably didn't want that, and no one on earth wanted to see her together with K-Fed. So she rebelled and married him. Marriage = normalcy; K-Fed = rebellion. Then she decided to have a baby. The whole world, myself included, said, "Aw hell-to-the-no! The last thing she should do is have kids!" But lots of people who get married have babies and make it a family. Baby=normalcy; baby=rebellion. Then came baby #2. Then came the divorce. Then came the partying.
Be honest, ladies. If you were filthy rich and managed to divorce your skanky freeloading cheating husband, win primary custody of your babies and keep your prenup mostly intact, you'd go out and party with Paris Hilton too. And as far as not taking care of the kids...mommies deserve a break. She was just lucky enough to be able to hire a nanny. And, hello, Brit is only 25.
So she forgot to wear her drawers a few times and she got a bit too drunk a few times. Sounds like something that would happen to any other 25 year old in her situation. It's just that Britney happened to have about 20 cameras on her for the infamous crotch shots.
So really think about this:
If you had little to no control over your life, and everything you did to normalize it (in whatever bizarre way you did it) blew up in your face, and the whole world is passing judgement on you, calling you fat, stupid, lazy, slutty, backward, negligent, and lord-knows-what else...
...what would you do?
So Britney shaved her head. Let go of all that pain and stress that was locked up in that hair. And if you don't believe me, ask someone who has had a major haircut at one point in their life. It truly is an emotional experience. And Britney took a step, albeit a drastic step, toward letting everything go and starting all over again.
In closing, I wish Britney Spears the best of luck. I hope she finds a way to get out of the spotlight so she can get whatever help she needs. I hope she can find a way to live like the normal girl she wants to be. I hope she'll keep spending time with her kids and being the best mom she can be (and keep them as far away from K-Fed as legally possible. He's not a daddy, he's a sperm donor).
And for now, all of us just need to leave her the hell alone. Seriously. Leave her alone and let her heal. If she wants to come back, she will.
Please, please, just leave her alone.
(And if hell hasn't frozen over, I must truly be crazy. I don't know why I felt the need to air this out, but I did.)
I sympathize with Britney Spears. I truly do.
To be in enough distress to take clippers to your head and go the Sinead O'Connor route means you're serious.
Yes, I know that even I am guilty of ripping on Britney.
But humor me for a moment and try to take a walk in her shoes.
For over ten years, she's been packaged and managed within an inch of her life. She's had a whole army of parents and agents and managers and label reps and trainers and stylists and PR people telling her where to go, what to do, and who to be. Practically every waking moment has been tracked by the paparazzi, and everything gets printed in the tabloids the next day.
She couldn't hang out at the mall with her friends. She couldn't go to football games on Friday nights. She couldn't go to Six Flags for Fright Fest. She couldn't make a late night Taco Bell run with her girls. She couldn't go to the beach for a day.
Now you're saying, "Yeah, she could do all those things. She's probably done all of that stuff before." Ok, she probably has, but she didn't get to do it the way the average kid in America has. The average kid in America doesn't have photographers chasing her and people creating a scene wherever she goes.
Like countless other people who became famous at a young age, Britney Spears didn't get to grow up normally. Yet we expect her to act like a normal person.
And Brit has had enough. Short of doing something catastrophic like OD-ing or driving her car over a cliff or blowing up a building or slitting her wrists, she had to do something to get her point across. Her point is: Leave me the hell alone.
I bet that some days, if not every day lately, Britney would easily give up all the money and all the fame just to be a regular girl from wherever-it-is, Louisiana. She'd be married to a decent man, have a few kids, and just be fat and happy. Isn't that what a lot of us want someday? To at least be happy?
And she's tried. As bizarre as it may look to us, she really has tried. And everything has been a tug-of-war between rebellion and normalcy. She got married to Kevin Federline. She wanted to be married, like most of her normal friends back home are doing (they marry young down that way, I imagine). Her handlers probably didn't want that, and no one on earth wanted to see her together with K-Fed. So she rebelled and married him. Marriage = normalcy; K-Fed = rebellion. Then she decided to have a baby. The whole world, myself included, said, "Aw hell-to-the-no! The last thing she should do is have kids!" But lots of people who get married have babies and make it a family. Baby=normalcy; baby=rebellion. Then came baby #2. Then came the divorce. Then came the partying.
Be honest, ladies. If you were filthy rich and managed to divorce your skanky freeloading cheating husband, win primary custody of your babies and keep your prenup mostly intact, you'd go out and party with Paris Hilton too. And as far as not taking care of the kids...mommies deserve a break. She was just lucky enough to be able to hire a nanny. And, hello, Brit is only 25.
So she forgot to wear her drawers a few times and she got a bit too drunk a few times. Sounds like something that would happen to any other 25 year old in her situation. It's just that Britney happened to have about 20 cameras on her for the infamous crotch shots.
So really think about this:
If you had little to no control over your life, and everything you did to normalize it (in whatever bizarre way you did it) blew up in your face, and the whole world is passing judgement on you, calling you fat, stupid, lazy, slutty, backward, negligent, and lord-knows-what else...
...what would you do?
So Britney shaved her head. Let go of all that pain and stress that was locked up in that hair. And if you don't believe me, ask someone who has had a major haircut at one point in their life. It truly is an emotional experience. And Britney took a step, albeit a drastic step, toward letting everything go and starting all over again.
In closing, I wish Britney Spears the best of luck. I hope she finds a way to get out of the spotlight so she can get whatever help she needs. I hope she can find a way to live like the normal girl she wants to be. I hope she'll keep spending time with her kids and being the best mom she can be (and keep them as far away from K-Fed as legally possible. He's not a daddy, he's a sperm donor).
And for now, all of us just need to leave her the hell alone. Seriously. Leave her alone and let her heal. If she wants to come back, she will.
Please, please, just leave her alone.
(And if hell hasn't frozen over, I must truly be crazy. I don't know why I felt the need to air this out, but I did.)
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