Weighing (in on) Britney

Since everyone else in the universe has opinions about Britney's disastrous VMA performance, and mine is probably more intelligent and thoughtful than a good number of them, I'm going to air them, and where better than on my blog?

An obvious issue, and the one I find most crucial to explore before critiquing the other elements of the train wreck, is her body. As a woman, a feminist, a former size 2 struggling with birth control-induced weight, a friend of women struggling with post-baby weight--as all those things, I don't want to criticize Britney for donning skimpy clothing when her body is less than toned and svelte. I don't want to criticize her, because I think women should have the freedom to celebrate their bodies, no matter what they look like, and the confidence to wear whatever they want.

That said, however, there was nothing in Spears' attire or performance that bespoke confidence. Delusion, perhaps, but not realistic appraisal, acceptance, and unapologetic enjoyment. Spears is no Beth Ditto. Her performance was a grotesque parody of her former glory primarily because it wasn't intended as a parody, or a statement of defiance about what makes women attractive, or anything that would have implied agency, awareness, and control on Britney's part.

We already knew Britney hadn't come close to regaining her pre-baby body. We knew that dance training and celebrity chefs and liposuction and every other slenderizing force she might have had access to were powerless to withstand the onslaught of constant Cheeto-crunching and boozing. We've seen her "ample bottom" hanging out of shirts she misguidedly repurposed as dresses. We've seen her thighs in torn fishnets. So we weren't surprised by her VMA tummy, but plenty of people are still commenting on it.

And you know what? Her defenders are right about a few things: She did just have back-to-back babies. Compared to most women, she doesn't look bad. Besides, as I've already said, I fully support her right to wear whatever she wants onstage no matter how she looks.

What makes her so tragic, to me, is the level of delusion that seems to be operating in her mind. Britney Spears' success is based on the way she has sold sexiness, starting when she was dancing through high school halls in a plaid Catholic schoolgirl mini almost 10 years ago. And now, in her mid-twenties and with two children, she's still frantically grasping at that look of innocence and seduction. Reportedly, she vetted the more flattering corset MTV had chosen for her to wear at the VMAs because she wanted to look "extra sexy." And she didn't. She looked awkward and uncomfortable and, yeah, flabby, and it didn't work because she was performing a song and a dance routine that called for sleek, svelte, toned. If she was redefining sexuality or expanding it to encompass the body she has now and the person she's become, I would applaud her. But her sexuality seems as out of control as everything else about her; her wardrobe choices smack of the desperate need to be a cute adolescent sex kitten.

In the end, I think it's her own failure to see herself as she is now--compromised by bad weaves and drinking, by her trailer-trash marriage to Kfed, by her public breakdowns, by her genital-baring couture--and move on from that to forge a new identity that is her greatest failure. Tragically, what the current shenanigans are showing us is that apart from the cute pout and the breathy croon and the toned muscles of the teenaged seductress, she is nothing. She has no genuine sense of identity as she struggles to define herself in adulthood. And maybe that's why her VMA attempt at sexiness fell flat: because to endure, sexiness requires substance, ingenuity, creativity--qualities whose absence from Britney Spears' person and work has never been more pitiably, pathetically apparent than it was Sunday night.