Letters to the Editor
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Anon. 8:19: Britney Spears is not fat
I just found a video of Spears' MVA performance, and it was lame in all the ways described here, but the woman herself is not fat, and I'm puzzled why you would say that.
This is not to say that she has her athletic, 19 year-old body (not surprising given that she's had two children), but not being a taut athlete does not mean, ipso facto, that a person is fat.
When I read people calling Britney Spears fat, I sympathize with all the women who complain that they are being held to impossible standards of bodily beauty.
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A country of Rubberneckers....
We just love to see a train-wreck...the carnage is so amusing!
You hit it right on the head with this article. I wouldn't call myself a Britney fan out loud, but I think her little songs do tend to have a good beat and I like that. She's not the most talented singer (fo' sho), but we seem to accept mediocrity more readily these days, when it's wrapped in booty shorts and a bra top.
I didn't watch the VMAs. MTV is not what it used to be and I was around when it first hit the airwaves, so I remember the good ol' days...cheesy music vids and smart VJ's. I have also seen the decline of MTV to what it is today....the new trash tv. I'd rather read a book.
I am disgusted at MTV and I am disgusted at Britney and those who claim to be her friend or care for her. Where is her family? Where are her friends? Does anyone truly give a damn about this girl? She's a woman who needs help.
I don't even know where to begin when it comes to the behavior and treatment of these young starlets/entertainers....Paris, Lindsey, Britney, .....famous for nothing (or lil' talent) and yet their self-destruction is our entertainment. And although I have to admit to a lack of empathy at times with their self-inflicted plights, this reaction is immediately overshadowed by my disgust at the public glee of their demise.
Your Moose story was right on the nose.
There is something wrong at the core with a society that takes pleasure in watching someone literally self-destruct. I guess all the Christian values go right out the window....so much for being my brother's keeper and loving the neighbor!
Britney, take heart....But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. (Matthew 5:43)
(and i don't consider myself to be ultra-religious...but there is something truly broken within us, that needs to be fixed)
There's nothing entertaining about any of this.
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The double standard
A male drinks too much and makes a fool of himself (i.e, Nick Nolte, Mel Gibson). It's his fault and there's nothing to say about it. In fact, he apologizes for his misbehaviour.
A female drinks too much and makes a fool of himself (i.e, Britney Spears) and this "embodies the disdain in which this culture holds its young women", "she's embodying someone's fantasy of laughable girliness" and so on and so on.
Women are never fully responsible. Responsibility belongs to patriarchy, society, culture, America. All of these are responsible that a young women, with more wealth than she needs in her whole life, divorces, takes drugs, shaves her hair, behaves in a bizarre way, performs in front of million of viewers without rehearsal.
So feminism aims to turn a women into a ever-lasting children, with no responsibility. Only men are full grown-up and adult, because only they are supposed to stand for their actions.
Another piece of female victimism.
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This country runs on misogyny
I think, if anything, we've become MORE misogynistic over time. Whatever else may be wrong with Britney Spears, any rational person can see she's not really fat. At 25, she's not really old. But that's what our daughters are being led to believe. She's, what, a size 8? MAYBE a 10? And she's a hog. Age 25, and ready for the nursing home.
And yet some people actually believe that Hillary Clinton has a chance in hell of being elected president. It ain't going to happen -- not in my lifetime anyway.
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Young musician?
To call Spears a musician is adding to the problem. She is hardly that. She is a performer who lip-synchs to tracks of a completely engineered voice. If she had to hold a mic and sing a song straight with just a backing band and no backing tracks we would all see the truth of that. She is a packaged product. Sad that she was packaged by her family and her management but packaged nonetheless. The shelf-life on this package has run out as it has on so many pre-packaged acts (e.g., The Monkees, Tiffany, En Vouge, New Kids on the Block, Backstreet Boys). What is so hard to watch is when the person who has been packaged doesn't understand those rules. She is not a musician. She is not an artist. She is a performer who was marketed to us in an extremely successful way. We're not buying now. Spears has to figure out if there is a real person behind the package and see if she can salvage some self-respect in who that person is.
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Comedy, and tragedy
For God's sake, all this bizarre hand-wringing about what it all means! I got suckered into watching the post-game video, and here's what's really going on: Britney Spears is a comic genius (unlike Sarah Silverman).
The only important thing to take out of the essay is awareness of the casual cruelty of bigshot stupid men towards nature's wonderful, beautiful animals. THAT's a problem worth handwringing about.
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Britney
Ah I guess I'm old fashioned about this.
It saddens me that there seems to be no one who will talk sense to this young woman. Where is the woman's father?
Also I have to agree with the author, Ms Silverman's routine was cruel and smacked of shooting fish in a barrel.
Very poor form.
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She's not that innocent; she was legal child-porn and she is now past her shelf date. And, she's *no* Madonna.
First, people, stop with the terribly misplaced sympathy. This 25 year old is worth over 100 million dollars, which is not being given to charities -- unlike rockers such as Bono or David Gilmour -- and she has been caught repeatedly on tape making obnoxious comments to and about others, including the weight of another woman, telling this woman to go to Weight Watchers, "byatch." Britney is an exceptionally narcissistic, selfish, shallow human being who cares nothing for the little people, as evidenced by the time she crashed into another car in a parking lot, damaging it significantly, and then took off. Consider the ways in which she flaunts her drunken, expensive revels while nannies take care of her two children. Do you honestly think she doesn't realize that the paps are going to follow her to whatever club she is getting stoned at for the night?
Sorry, earlier poster, but you are wrong about the Madonna comparison. Madonna's lyrics were "trite" but Madonna herself was an absolute original and an innovation in 1983. She was a genius at self-promotion, she was aggressive and smart and went to clubs in New York over and over again promoting her own music. Madonna made herself; Britney has been made by a massive publicity machine that swept her up from Disney and made her into a disgusting child-porn icon. Her school girl costumes, her open-mouth gapes at the video camera, her obnoxious moans and gasps in her songs, her claims of being "not that innocent" -- clearly meant to attract a particular kind of audience beyond the pre-teen girls. And it's disgusting, and she has no talent at all for anything genuine, which is now very evident. Don't worry, she can survive on her 100 million just fine.