Toss the Small Ones Back

by Kanrei

I don't want to have to do this again. I feel dirty, but I am going to defend Britney Spears. I know, I know. It shocks me too, but she has been getting attacked quite a bit lately and I think much of it is just mean and without merit.

I had started feeling sorry for her for a few months ago, but not to the point of actually feeling the need to defend her. After the release of a video tape and reading how others have seen it, I feel I must add my two cents.

Britney Spears was a lightning rod for years, but it appears to me that she is retired. The only time she makes the news now is not through her publicist, but rather through paparazzi that follow her every move.

Is she a bad mother? I must ask anyone asking that question who judged them fit to be a parent? She is a mother and she will make mistakes. We also seem to forget, possibly because she has been in the limelight for so long, that she is only twenty three years old. I was an idiot at twenty three. I am still one today. How together were you at twenty three and how together would you appear if cameras followed your every move?

A video tape came out last week that showed Britney down on herself, not dressed up and maybe too relaxed. The press has had a field day with it, attacking her looks, her attitude, and everything else they can think of. They seemed to pass on her talking about drinking while pregnant, but oh well. It is a glimpse into the real person and many people seem to be upset with how real she actually is.

She is a twenty three year old mother. That is all. A belching, cursing, joking around, and pain feeling mother and wife. It was a side of her not seen before. It actually turned me around a bit. It showed her not being "Britney Spears", but rather just being a girl from Louisiana. She isn't bright, but she is a twenty three year old girl who has been in the spotlight since she was twelve so I am positive her education suffered.

I am by no means a fan. In fact, I hated her with the intensity of a thousand suns. Talent wise she is a void. She is cute, but not pretty or traffic stopping and as a dancer she is only average. She was the result of cleaver marketing and a cultural void. For that, I mocked and ridiculed her daily. She was the perfect punchline for almost any joke you could think of.

Pop Culture is a pendulum. It swings towards disco, then comes back for metal. Along the way you get rap, pop, country, and any other fad you have experienced. The New Kids on the Block and Debbie Gibson were on the same side of it as Insync and Britney Spears. The other side holds the Ramones, the Clash, Nirvana, and all the other hard bands that took the spotlight away from the sweet pop. It was going to be a nasty decade. I could feel it. The Nirvana trendies had become boy band crazy. I was ready for a repeat of the mid-eighties until Britney Spears did something I did not see coming. She retired.

I must have respect for people as people. People are private beings. If you are a celebrity then you are fair game, but once you retire, you should be left in peace. She is not touring, not recording and only posts on her blog from what I can tell. She has done a magazine cover and an interview here and there, but they usually deal with a response to something the paparazzi has said. Just let her go.

Let her go the way of Debbie Gibson and Tiffany. Let her move on with her life. LiLo & Princess Diana Monroe, Taralized Reid, Tomkat, Vaunistan, et al give us so much fodder, just let this one go. She was fun to bash while she was on top, but now it is like picking on the handicapped: fun only for the truly sadistic.