Britney Spears: Lolita to Cautionary Tale

I can't keep up with Brit and Sam's divorce because the hoopla is outsized, an event we all knew was coming from the beginning. Brit doesn't like the kind of men that stick around; perhaps, they don't like her, and the feeling is mutual. It isn't plausible that a stable man with emotional needs would choose a stunted aging woman dressed as if the last twenty years had never happened. 

Initially, Britney stormed onto the scene as a Lolita in a provocative video for One More Time when she wasn't even 18. Britney and I share the same generation, and our timelines are nearly parallel. Nothing about me was prudish, yet I remember my friends and me talking about how sleazy it looked and wondering how her parents could sanction something so overtly perverted. We knew what the bare midriff, schoolgirl outfit with the messy two ponytails looked like. We knew it was a whisper away from a porn fantasy and the flipside of Clueless' Cher Horowitz.  

Her public image has always been a push-pull between two extremes, and there has never been a middle ground. On the one hand, they sold her as this Christian southern virgin, and on the other, she was a naughty little adolescent sex kitten titillating grown men who, I remember clearly, had no qualms talking about how hot they thought she was. We don't live in that world anymore. American Beauty was a long time ago; Liv Tyler and Alicia Silverstone in Aerosmith videos, boy bands, Disney stars, Bill Clinton's scandal, and Napster feel like several lifetimes ago.

This was when she was at the height of her game and killing it. Hit after hit, her perfumes, she even had a "perfect" boyfriend for her brand. Justin and Britney were like the Ken and Barbie of pop music, the star QB and head cheerleader. That is the pop star that people remember, but many forget that version of Britney was short-lived. That was two decades ago. For most of her life, she has been slowly dismantling that image and replacing it was something less savory and more worthy of pity and disdain than anything else. Without a team behind her, a parent in charge, or someone at the helm, she is what she is today, like a ghost haunting her former life, constantly reminding us that she was a mirage. She is a cautionary tale and an uncomfortable reminder of what happens to child stars and sexualized teens as they age. 

By the time Sam Asghari entered from stage left, we expected him. He's more of a symptom than an actual person. He is painfully basic, embarrassingly opportunistic, and looks like a Boy Toy for hire. There is something bargain bin about him, but a C-list opportunist is about what she can pull these days. Sam's antics aren't even original. Was there a doubt he would fight the prenup, which is giving him far more than he deserves in the first place? In the age of social media, they are thirsting through it, posting every breath they take, milking the spotlight; glaringly absent is any mention of heartbreak, love, or yearning for the other one back. She's been making us collectively cringe in her clothes that look like they were in her closet since 2003, low rise everything, belly shirts on a body that no longer looks like it did 20 years ago. 

When did it all go wrong? Her rabid fans want to blame Kevin Federline, but it was the freedom her marriage gave her that changed everything. Without her team, she started revealing unpleasant things about herself. What she really is is what they had been hiding from the public. This version of Britney would never have been what she was. It is like we are watching Sunset Blvd Kentucky mountain folk version where she's a down-and-out server in a backwater bootleg strip joint on her 5th marriage with six kids, a flirtation with Jack Daniels, and crank. 

Sam is a villain for sure, but he is less a person than a pit stop on the way to the next flatterer who knows she's good for 5 million, and he only has to stay married to her for a year. Because she will do this again. The male gaze is what she wants more than time with her sons, more than respectability, more than a successful career more than money, and she is willing to lose everything to get it.