Who would ever let their child be a star?
Britney Spears may be the ultimate example of such exploitation, but she is hardly alone.
We’re in a moment of cultural reckoning with childhood fame and its monstrous costs: From the shocking docuseries ‘Quiet on the Set’ to Jennette McCurdy’s runaway bestselling memoir ‘I’m Glad My Mom Died’ to Justin Bieber’s breakdown this week — and his naming as part of the ongoing Diddy scandal — and Drew Barrymore’s desperate on-air search for the mother she never had (calling Kamala Harris ‘Momala’ this week), we have no shortage of human carnage on display.
Who among Drew’s generation can ever forget those infamous photos of her as a small child at Studio 54, lighting Stephen King’s cigarette or sitting disconsolate at a table full of cocktails, head in her hand?
It’s understandable that Drew’s such a close talker when she’s interviewing someone. Less so, perhaps, that she often looks like she’d like to cut a slit in any given subject’s skin and crawl inside them for warmth and comfort, but hey — she’s intact, a survivor, and that’s no small thing.
Britney Spears, though. This latest crisis, dragged out of the Chateau Marmont nearly naked and barefoot, bedraggled and teary, is hardly the post-conservatorship victory we all rooted for.
Who would ever let their child be a star? Britney Spears may be the ultimate example of such exploitation, but she is hardly alone. (Above) Spears seen barefooted outside the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles on Thursday, May 2
Who among Drew’s generation can ever forget those infamous photos of her as a small child at Studio 54, lighting Stephen King’s cigarette or sitting disconsolate at a table full of cocktails, head in her hand? (Above) Drew Barrymore attends party at The Palace in Hollywood in 1985
We’re in a moment of cultural reckoning with childhood fame and its monstrous costs: From the shocking docuseries ‘Quiet on the Set’ to Jennette McCurdy ‘s runaway bestselling memoir ‘I’m Glad My Mom Died’ to Justin Bieber ‘s breakdown this week. (Above) Bieber recently posted a selfie showing tears streaming down his cheeks
It is abundantly clear that those who argued to #FreeBritney, myself included, were very wrong. But after her trial became an international cause celébre, after her tearful testimony about her father controlling every aspect of her life down to her birth control — well, what judge would ever sign off on reinstating a conservatorship for Britney now?
Her public disintegration seems precipitated, perhaps, by two major life events: Reportedly paying her estranged father’s $2 million in legal costs last week — this after he paid himself $6 million as head of her conservatorship — and the finalization on Thursday, the night of her breakdown, of her divorce from Sam Asghari.
Asghari was supposed to be Britney’s happy ending, the man she walked off into the proverbial sunset with, per her New York Times bestselling memoir.
As for that memoir, wishfully titled ‘The Woman in Me’: It is a strange book, the rantings of a rage-filled author who does not know or understand herself, who discusses — to an extent — her heavy drug use and losing custody of her sons, but who takes zero responsibility for her life or the wreck it has become.
Like Drew Barrymore, she was raised by a mother who treated her like a friend, who took a 13-year-old Britney to bars where they would drink daiquiris and smoke cigarettes.
When she was signed to a record deal at 15 years old, Britney was packaged as a hypersexualized Catholic schoolgirl in her first video (for a hit called, with the subtlety of an anvil, ‘. . . Baby One More Time’) and photographed at 17 years old for the cover of Rolling Stone in her own bedroom, clutching a Teletubby while reclining in a bra and underwear.
Asghari was supposed to be Britney’s happy ending, the man she walked off into the proverbial sunset with, per her New York Times bestselling memoir.
Spears’ memoir, wishfully titled ‘The Woman in Me’: It is a strange book, the rantings of a rage-filled author who does not know or understand herself, who discusses — to an extent — her heavy drug use and losing custody of her sons, but who takes zero responsibility for her life or the wreck it has become.
It doesn’t get closer to child pornography than that.
‘My mother seemed concerned,’ Britney writes.
That’s nice, but concern without intervention means nothing. It’s actually, to my mind, a form of child abuse.
Here we see the compromised dynamics at play, parents who see in their children the potential for fame and wealth, who consider their possible sexualization and exploitation simply the cost of doing business.
Consider Usher, who in a recently unearthed 2016 interview with Howard Stern said he was sent to live with Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs at age 15.
There is absolutely no reason a child should be sent to live with an adult male who is, for all intents and purposes, a stranger — let alone a famous adult male with access to all manner of depravity. Then again, far too many parents allowed their young boys to have ‘sleepovers’ with Michael Jackson — and that was just for ostensible bragging rights.
‘I got the chance to see some things,’ Usher told Stern of that time. ‘It was pretty wild’.
Would Usher, Stern asked, ever send his own kids to live with Diddy?
‘Hell no,’ he said.
Usher was the one who mentored a 13-year-old Justin Bieber, himself having a public breakdown on social media this week.
Spears was photographed at 17 years old for the cover of Rolling Stone in her own bedroom, clutching a Teletubby while reclining in a bra and underwear.
‘I got the chance to see some things,’ Usher told Stern of that time. ‘It was pretty wild’. Would Usher, Stern asked, ever send his own kids to live with Diddy? ‘Hell no,’ he said.
‘Success comes with a price,’ Usher said of a troubled Bieber in 2014. ‘I . . . always told him it was up to him if he wanted this. Now that he has it, as an adult, it’s his to manage.’
Is it, though? Is it fair to expect a child performer whose brain isn’t fully matured, who is catnip for predators, whose parents likely want fame and wealth more than their small child does, to ‘manage’ their anxieties and emotions as adults?
How much does anyone think Justin Bieber or Britney Spears have in the way of inner resources, let alone the ability to recognize and manage their emotions?
Britney was a clear money-maker, a natural star, and as a young teenager was paying off her father’s debts and buying her family a new home. She was, in effect, the boss, and it was probably the worst thing that could have happened to her.
By 2007, she had a public meltdown that culminated in shaving her head and attacking a paparazzo’s vehicle with an umbrella.
The photo of Britney just last weekend sitting in a car, her foot up against a shattered windshield, evoked that very era of Britney, then at her lowest.
It seems very clear that Britney Spears is incapable of helping herself — and that’s if she even wants to. No one, it seems, is a worse enemy to Britney than Britney herself.
The photo of Britney just last weekend sitting in a car, her foot up against a shattered windshield, evoked that very era of Britney, then at her lowest.
By 2007, she had a public meltdown that culminated in shaving her head and attacking a paparazzo’s vehicle with an umbrella.
On Friday, Spears posted a video of her swollen foot and ankle and explained, while seemingly slurring, that she ‘turned’ her ankle on the hotel’s staircase.
She has no relationship with her two sons, now 17 and 18 years old. She is estranged from her parents and her younger sister, and seems to have no real friends in her life. She spends her free time, of which she has way too much, on social media, dancing half-naked and twirling knives and, as she did on Thursday night, issuing nonsensical denials and declarations.
‘The news is fake!!!’ she wrote in a since-deleted Instagram post on Thursday, also claiming that ‘most of the pics are body doubles.’ On Friday, she posted a video of her swollen foot and ankle and explained, while seemingly slurring, that she ‘turned’ her ankle on the hotel’s staircase.
‘It’s so bad,’ she said, ‘ . . . but s—t happens.’
She has the first part right.
Britney Spears recalls no other celebrity right now more than Matthew Perry, who also wrote a self-serving memoir that was a total fiction, that tied his messy, complicated, self-pitying and blame-free life into a nice little bow, and who ultimately fell victim to the truth: He was a drug addict who abused the people around him, nothing more, and possibly possessed a death wish greater than he knew.
Britney seems on a similar trajectory, incapable of taking a victory lap with her bestselling memoir because, deep down, she surely knows one true thing: The happy ending she wrote for herself is a lie.