So, getting naked on Instagram and disabling comments is an act of personal freedom?
When you look out among the sea of celebrities that are out there today, it’s not too hard to see those that are in the spotlight and notice the reasons why they’re still so popular. Then one gets to the middle-upper tier of celebrities, then the middle tier, then the middle-lower, then the lower. Each tier of celebrities tends to be populated by those that have been wildly popular at one point while many others have aspired to greatness but never managed to reach the heights. Then there are those that have reached the heights, somehow, and are still there even if people can’t figure out why.
Britney Spears showed up on the scene decades ago and was, as the saying goes, an overnight hit. She had teenage girls trying to be her, and adolescents and grown men drooling over her since yes, she does have a lot of sex appeal. Her career skyrocketed in a way that was absolutely amazing to see and to be perfectly honest, it feels that she wasn’t ready for everything that came along. She was thrust into the limelight in a manner that presented her as a sexy, young, vibrant singer that had the world on a string and an invisible leash around her neck just in case she decided to wander.
Oh yeah, I said it. She wasn’t always free to do what she wanted since when she started she was a minor, and thinking that she was locked into one contract or another isn’t too hard to believe since the fact is that while show business and the music industry might not be entirely evil, they’re known for being a bit cutthroat when it comes to securing and keeping the talented individuals that chain their lives to the business in the hopes that fame and fortune will be there for as long as they want it.
Let’s be honest, Britney isn’t a villain, but she isn’t a saint.
Britney has had fame and fortune since she was a teenager, she’s had pretty much whatever she could possibly need since that time, since money might not solve everything, but it definitely goes a lot farther than empty pockets. She had more fans than a person could easily count, and many of them would defend her to the death, despite the fact that she likely doesn’t know even a dozen of them personally. But that’s part of being a star, right? It doesn’t mean they don’t care, it doesn’t mean that they think they deserve adoration but can’t give it back, but it definitely means that some celebrities do happen to think that they’re above it all. Did Britney ever think this way? That’s tough to say really, since the information we’re given by the media tends to sway back and forth from positive to negative. So essentially, what we know about Spears could be entirely erroneous, or it could be a ploy to make us feel sorry for a person that gave up the freedom of choice, or is playing everyone like a fiddle and laughing behind the scenes.
That latter option might not be the case, but it does feel as though Spears is, at this time, trying to stay relevant, even if her fans would argue, vehemently no less, that she was never irrelevant. But if anyone looks up the average shelf life of a pop star, it’s about 2 and half years. Britney has survived at her current level for a much longer time since her sex appeal didn’t end up going down the tubes until around 2007 when her mental health issues forced her reputation to take a serious dive. To say that she hasn’t fully recovered from that dip is easy and accurate to say, since once the negative side of a person is revealed, it’s tough to make people forget it. In this case, the only ones that are bound to forget it are those that are so enamored of Britney that they won’t suffer to hear a bad word spoken against her.
Is it time for her to move on?
But her reputation has taken a lot of hits over the years, which, to her fans, might appear to be entirely unfair since apparently to them, Britney hasn’t done or said anything questionable, and might have been better off without her father taking over her life. Now to be fair, her father taking over wasn’t the best idea no doubt, but it would have been best for someone to step in and convince her that her time was done and she needed to consider what would come next. Maybe acting, writing a book (stop laughing, lots of celebrities write books, I mean, they hire ghostwriters, but still), or even doing something else with her reputation and remaining fortune that might be impressive to her fans and maintain her fame and notoriety. But what did she do?
Did she get out of the business that was damaging her mental health? Nope. Did she decide to fight her father and argue that as a legal adult that she could make her own decisions? She might have, but it doesn’t feel as though she pushed as hard as she could. Did she stand up for herself? Anyone saying ‘yes of course she did’ needs to wipe the glitter and fairy dust from their eyes and realize that Britney hasn’t been a young woman for a while now, and despite whatever her mental faculties have been like, it does feel that she’s been able to make her own decisions for a while. Of course, looking at these photos it’s hard to say that she’s of completely sound mind any longer, since of course women take pictures like this all the time, they’re called photoshoots.
I’m not sure what Britney is thinking with her Instagram photos, but her fans are loving it since they’re confident that she’s expressing herself in a way that celebrates her freedom and finally allows her to be herself. Seriously, these are people that have likely seen her on stage in outfits that leave nothing to the imagination and are only clothing in a technical sense. Now that she’s baring it all people are celebrating her slow but steady transition into a porn star.
If you don’t want people commenting, don’t give them something to comment about.
One thing that needs to be said about this, and to be fair if she wants to show her body then it’s her business. Anyone that reads the news and wants to take a peek has the chance to do so, but disabling the comments is what makes it easy to laugh at her mental state at this time and the attempt she’s making to express herself. In all honesty, any celebrity that disables comments is in the wrong business when it comes to showing themselves to the public. Why? They chose a profession that puts them in the public eye all the time, meaning that it’s recommended that they’d best have a thick skin if they’re going to be out where anyone and everyone can see them. Does anyone get that any longer? If you have a mental issue then it’s probably best not to belong to a profession where people are going to comment on what they see.
Anytime a celebrity, or even a well-known online personality, creates something online and disables the comments, it says something to a lot of people that are paying attention. Like many people, I’ve kind of ignored Britney Spears for a long time now, as her issues and struggles have been unending and don’t appear to go away for more than a year before she’s back in the news for some reason. But this conservatorship issue with her father has done a great job of keeping her in the news, much like her mental breakdown did. While it would have been easy to be on her side for a while, the fact that things dragged on for so long makes a person wonder why in the world she’s such a big deal any longer, and why her career is still what it is.
Apparently pride and dignity do have a price.
At this point in her career, it feels that she should probably think about just packing it in and calling it a day, but whether it’s ego, greed, or some twisted sense of vindication and pride that she still holds in a career that’s been marred more than once by controversy, she’s bound to stick around for a while. A lot of folks might argue that she should stick around since she’s still one of the hottest things going. But to be fair, while she is in good shape (thank goodness for personal trainers) and has a career, money, and fame (thank goodness for dim-witted fans…oops, did I say that out loud?), it’s still easy to state that Britney has little to no reason to stick around any longer. It might be best to simply claim the victory, put some clothes on, and walk away with whatever pride and dignity she still has.
On to the next one. Right?
This feels as though it might be true of a lot of celebrities, since the fame and fortune is what they seek and what they crave. Hey, it’s easy to see why, money makes a lot of things possible, and some folks can’t help but feel the need to entertain. But what happens when the attention starts to go away and more and more people see the stars as irrelevant? Oh yes, her fans will argue, successfully, that she’s still popular and still one of the hottest women around, excuse me a second…
…but the fact is that she’s kind of used up, washed up, and not nearly as interesting as she used to be, unless she’s being used as a punch-line. Support her if you want, like her if you want, but the fact is that plenty of people, including myself, are of the mind that Britney isn’t really expressing her freedom with her bare ass, she’s using her body to get attention in what could be a new career move.
WTR? (Why’s That Radass?)
Normally we might simply let this go and not give Britney another thought, but as I said, this is the rare lay-up that is given to many writers that deal with entertainment news of all types. Let’s be honest, she’s been a success, a hot mess, and everything the comes between. But this current move is something that makes one think that she’s about to announce that she’s currently applying to the local strip club or an adult magazine. But apart from that, it looks like another cry for attention that fans are going to answer and the rest of us are, well, bound to answer in our way.
