The Woman in Me: stronger than yesterday

Shortly after she eclipsed the height of her glamour, Britney Spear’s life became so, so sad; it was not so glamorous in between the paparazzi shots, due to her recount of the conservatorship held by her domineering family. She experienced joy, success, and creative fulfillment in certain moments, but her sadness was undeniable, ubiquitous, and it coexisted with almost all aspects of her life, down to whether she could eat a sweet treat or not. When she first started tasting that lick of fame, the power surprised her. It was monstrous. And it was just such an incredible amount of influence that she was handed so quickly, and an art to channel it finely and precisely, where she’d like it to go. It felt like a teeter-totter of a balancing act. Entire magazines stayed in businesses because of a few shots of her, while she was just a little girl adjusting to her reality. She did not understand that there were nuances to calculating it, chanelling it. Growing up through her words, I did not grasp it either. It just seemed so fast. At her peak, she was one of the most photographed and sought-after celebrities, driving the tabloid economy. She didn’t think much about how to channel it somewhere or do something with it long-term because it was also just her life, and she was just a girl learning to adjust to the cameras. And then in a blip, she was controlled by those closest to her.

It’s also fascinating how small and insular the entertainment world is, and how so many performers, Justin Timberlake, Ryan Gosling, Christina Aguilera, Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, they all grew up together, saw each other at events, knew of each other, competed in the same spaces, crossed paths at various casual social/professional events at different life stages, and moved to NYC at approximately the same stages to blossom in their careers. I thought that it’d be a lot more dispersed, but they all knew of each other already when they were 10 or 11. It’s so interesting to know that everyone already knows of each other, and the public images mix directly into their personal lives and images of each other, and sometimes there is no separation, or there is an intentional, intense art to it, if you do decided to finely balance both.

Some of her pretty iconic images, but then you hear her feelings in the moment and how she’s thinking out loud.

Britney Spears’ iconic I’m a Slave 4 U Performance at the MTV VMAs in 2001, and she was scared for her life when the snake started hissing at her when she held it to her own face.

Britney Spears & Justin Timberlake’s MATCHING denim, denim on denim, Canadian tuxedo at the 2001 AMAs. She didn’t talk shit about Timberlake in her memoir, and they really were in love. But also, how they handled the breakup reveals a lot about their maturity, and how selfish and heartless the entertainment industry is.

Britney Spears was wearing this iconic pajama top look at the Crossroads premiere with Colin Farrell. She mentioned in the memoir that she thought it wasn’t a pajama top but an ‘regular’ top because it had studs. We were definitely more critical of categorizing clothes back then. Now there is barely any separation. What’s supposed to be ‘regular’ anyway. The internet and the pandemic definitely have changed that line of thinking, in their respective and compounding ways.