Something came up in the PoorBritney.com debate on Britney’s image that got me thinking. I was thinking back to an article I wrote called “An icon has no image worries”, and at the time of writing I really believed this was true of Britney. This is an except from what I wrote, back around 2006:
“The media killed the old Britney. And if she had been a regular little teenage music star, that would have been the end of her. But the difference with Britney was that she knew what had happened, accepted it and decided to move her life on in a very different way.
The key revelation for Britney was realising that she had somehow become an icon. She even referred to that in her letters to fans. And the thing is, when you become an icon, you enter a kind of timeless, ageless existence. You become the sort of figure who only has to walk on to a stage to get an ovation. You get to be applauded just for being you.
Nobody cares that much about the grubby details of your personal life. When you’re an icon, whatever happens only adds to The Legend. Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, Billie Holiday, Josephine Baker, Edith Piaf, maybe Janis Joplin – what did stars like these have in common? They all had messy lives, relationship problems, addictions, breakdowns. And they were legends. You can’t be a legend unless you’ve been around the block enough times to have A Story.
Just having a successful showbiz career doesn’t get you A Story, it’s all the accretions of a life well lived by larger-than-life people with larger-than-life appetites. Compare Britney to [her peers]. They are great singers, they’ve made great records, they look great. But that’s baseline activity for big-selling stars. For whatever reason, things don’t seem to happen to them like they happen to Britney. No matter how quiet and hidden she tries to be, things just keep happening to her. Yes, it’s a curse – but it’s also a kind of perverse blessing.”
But that, you see, was when things DID keep happening to her. Since then, she’s gone so low-profile she’s almost subterranean. And that’s not a bad metaphor because she has pretty much buried herself. In our PoorBritney.com debate it became clear that Britney actually has no up-to-date image. And is it possible that you can de-iconify yourself? I guess it all depends on what you were iconified for, and by whom. If you used to be deified as a great dancer and now you’re not, and meantime the world of dance has moved on... Also, it’s pretty obvious that you can have minor icons as well as major ones, superannuated icons as well as current ones and so on. Diana Ross was once voted Queen of Pop ahead of Madonna. Barbra Streisand used to be the most talked-about woman in showbiz.
It concerns me a little that the Britney of old seems to have vanished some time around 2007-8 and left nothing but bad memories for those whose business it is to sum people’s life up in shorthand. Christina Aguilera was lucky, in a way. She’s still the “dirrty” but “beautiful” singer with a sexy image who took her clothes off for Maxim magazine. That’s a good one to stick with. Beyonce is still (even now) “bootylicious”, the “booty shaking” star. That one never gets old. Whatever Shakira used to be, she is now the “she-wolf”.
Britney has already been through most of the obvious transformations, a long long time ago. She was the fun, carefree but beautiful Katy Perry girl that every young girl wanted to be. Then she was the glamorous, sexy, edgy Rihanna-style girl. Then.... it seemed like she was yelling “Stop the magic roundabout, I want to get off!” It was like “How can I destroy this effing Britney monster whose face is on all the magazines?! I hate her! I want to KILL her!!!”
For months, fans such as myself looked in the tabloids with dread. Every day, there were shock-horror pictures of Britney. Every day she looked uglier, fatter, spottier, sluttier. She was rarely seen without a cigarette hanging from her mouth. She wore crude message T-shirts and torn jeans, she had her hair greasy and pinned up, she seemed to eat nothing but burgers and Cheetos. The media came up with the phrase “trailer trash” for her, even though she came from a respectable family, went to a good school and had never lived in a trailer.
You can’t get rid of an image like that just by cleaning up, brushing your hair and teeth and going back to your day-job. You have to replace it with something equally powerful, dramatic and unforgettable. “Pregnant Britney” didn’t really do the job, even though the nude pictures were beautiful and striking. But what Britney did next was so unexpected and so stunning, it actually did make people forget the “trailer trash” days.
This was the era of “crazy Britney”, the toxic singer who ran amok around town, drove through red lights, drove with her baby on her knee, almost dropped her baby in the street, dumped her husband by text, partied heartily with Paris Hilton, barely contested a damaging custody battle that consisted of little more than K.Fed’s team smearing her reputation, lost her kids, shaved her head, hit a car with an umbrella, went into rehab, then was forcibly hospitalized with mental health issues.
And there, for most of those in the media whose those business it is to sum people’s life up in shorthand, the story ended. She hasn’t done anything remotely crazy in 3 years, but, as before, cleaning up your act and going back to what you did before you became notorious just isn’t enough. If her icon/legend status is fading through lack of drama and subterranean profile, she needs yet ANOTHER dramatic, unforgettable, perception-changing image makeover.
The problem is, good news struggles to shove bad news out of the way. Usually, the only thing that can do it is a different kind of bad news. But if you’re clever, you try to think of a kind of bad news that doesn’t contaminate you. Like Rihanna getting beaten up by her boyfriend. It was all over the media, humanized her, made her more “interviewable”. She was the victim and no dirt stuck to her. Or you could take Cheryl Cole getting cheated-upon by her husband. Martyrdom helped her career enormously. The bad news that changes the shorthand of your media image must not be something done BY you. It must be something done TO you. I offer these thoughts to Britney with a nod and a wink!
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