They would naturally like to restore “Britney” to health, whereas Spears obviously wants to get rid of her dolldom. Her rejection of rehab is provocative: The doctors may be treating the wrong addiction. Will she OD or commit suicide like Monroe? Will she have a Grand Guignol death like the fat-obsessed Anna Nicole Smith? No one publicly asks those questions, but that’s what everyone wonders. The latest news is that Spears is dropping in and out of rehab. It made perfect sense for Spears, after her mortification, to hide as Marilyn. (The current hysteria about anorexic fashion models, who treat the body as something to be designed, like clothing, is another example.) The sacrificial standard was, of course, set by Marilyn Monroe. Her mortification of the flesh at 25 is just the latest example of how bizarrely troubling American society finds the female body. She was first marketed as a child celebrity-beginning as a Mouseketeer-and then, when she filled out, transformed into teen cheese. The press rarely calls her “Spears.” That might suggest she’s human. She is just a money-making toy adults sell children. Unlike Madonna, Spears has never called her own shots. The French, after the liberation, shaved the heads of collaborators. Delilah cut off Samson’s to make him defenseless. In boot camp, soldiers lose their individuality with their hair. That’s what monastics do when they reject the flesh to dedicate themselves to the spirit. Few gestures are as symbolically rich as the shaving of a head. She stripped herself, publicly, of her sexuality. She recoiled from celebrity culture by mortifying her own flesh. She seemed to be trying, with befuddled brilliance, to tell the truth. What the press, which was busy moralizing (“her poor little boys”) and faux-empathizing (“she needs help”), never acknowledged was that Spears’s crack-up was the most interesting performance of her life. The next day she was wearing a cheap Marilyn wig. After the hair came off, she’d gone to a tattoo parlor and, weeping and screaming, inked a kiss on her wrist and a cross on her hip. Online, I caught up with the divorce and the party binge (sans her two baby sons), the pantyless paparazzi photos, and the vomiting on her entourage. But the photographs of her shaved head stopped me short. She just seemed to be a piece of the celebrity trash that’s always sloshing around. All I knew was that she sang music for 12-year-olds, was nicknamed “Pop Tart,” and lived in Paris at the Hilton, or something like that. Many have linked this to the idea that Britney wanted control of her life and image, after reports claimed that music executives had been in control of every detail of her appearance since she first became famous at the age of 16.Until she shaved her head, I had not spent a moment thinking about Britney Spears. She claims Britney told her, "It was, you know, 'I just don't want anybody, anybody touching my head. I remember asking here, 'why do you shave your head?'" I wasn’t sure what was happening, if there was a riot outside and then the flashes came." Wynne-Hughes, who has never spoken about that night before told interviewers for the documentary, " an insane roaring sound outside. "She had two bodyguards supposedly keeping an eye out to make sure the paparazzi were not getting any pictures," claimed Tognozz, but reportedly more than 70 paparazzi were still able to take pictures through the windows of the salon as the incident took place, while her security did nothing.įrom there, Britney went to a nearby tattoo parlour and asked tattoo artist, Emily Wynne-Hughes for an inking of a woman's lips, followed by a cross. Britney with ex-husband Kevin Federline in 2006 Michael Caulfield // Getty Images
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |