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How can Britney achieve a normal life? Recently, I’ve been thinking about that a lot. And I keep coming back to the unavoidable conclusion: Britney needs to leave LA and the whole music scene for a while.
Here are the ideas I’ve already gone through and discarded - well, discarded except for the last one. That idea I think is the best course for her to take, for a while anyway.
a) Stay in LA, keep it low-key and record music for an album out late fall 2007 or early winter/spring 2008.
Personally, as much as I HATE this idea, this is the road I see Britney taking. Her management and the people around her have never been overly concerned with putting “Britney the person” above “Pop Icon Britney”. I don’t think they intentionally mean to treat her like just a product, but they get so caught up with the Britney potential, what she can sell, how much influence she can have, how she can rule the world, that they forget that she’s a young woman who’s still figuring out her life.
Still, as much as I’d like to blame it all on Jive, I can’t. Britney is a workaholic. She’s never going to be content being a quiet, mumsy person. She’ll miss the action, the challenges, the adrenaline rush, and she’ll convince herself that she’s ready to be a pop star again…whether or not, she really is.
b) Go home to Kentwood, to Mom’s home cooking and a familiar atmosphere.
This is the route that so many people are suggesting she take. Not me! I loathe this idea. You know that famous line “You can’t go home again”. It’s so true!! I used to wonder why more celebrities didn’t keep a nice, quiet “away” place in their respective hometowns, but after watching Britney and the Kentwood situation, I understand now.
Back in 1999 and 2000, when Britney was still America’s Sweetheart, Kentwood and its’ residents loved her. They had banners declaring that this was the hometown of Britney Spears, and there was talk of them opening a local museum to celebrate her success. She could do no wrong. Fast forward to 2007, and that feeling has completely changed. Britney’s missteps haven’t made her a figure to be regarded with compassion and thoughtfulness. Instead, it’s been who can sell her out the fastest. Ex’s like Reg Jones and Jason Alexander have all sold pieces of Britney…(whether it be pictures, stories, love letters, or sordid details of what did or didn’t happen while they spent time with her)...to the press. Recent tabloid articles have carried stories from Alexander’s sister and other Kentwood residents who have not only volunteered their insider gossip, opinions and flagrant speculation, but have also been happy to give their names. No “unnamed sources” here, folks. These people are not ashamed to be publicly trashing “train-wreck Britney”, despite the fact that they once knew her, went to school with her, played with her, cared about her. She’s become as big a tabloid personality to them as Anna Nicole Smith or Courtney Love.
The idea of Britney escaping to a small town with a slower pace of life than LA is a good one, but with Kentwood the “escaping” factor is ruined. Everyone already knows her, or knows someone who knows her. If Britney went to “Small-Town, Missouri”, there is a good chance that if she settled down, with her kids, went to the local supermarket, exercised at the local gym, played with her kids at the local park, there is the chance that the residents of “Small-Town, Missouri” would eventually get to know Britney-the-person, and maybe get to like Britney-the-person. The tabloid version of “Britney Spears’ created in their minds by the media would be replaced by the actual reality of the person “Britney Spears” living there among them.
But in Kentwood the process is reversed. They already knew Britney-the-person, they already had a reality of this girl who had lived among them for 16 years, and who, when she became famous and then, infamous, they now saw as Britney-the-tabloid-star. The real girl was replaced by the media image, thus creating no vacuum for her to reinvent herself. They had already seen both incarnations.
In Kentwood, she has a family and childhood friends, but she also has a town filled with disillusioned people who, if the tabloids are to be believed, think that Britney has been spoiled by fame, that she’s lost touch with the real people. Jason Alexander accused her last year of not remembering that she was “just a country girl”, and suggested that she needed to lose the celebrity airs she has acquired in LA. Other news reports over the years have portrayed the residents as worried about Britney’s “ungodly” lifestyle.
There was much made in 2003 about her former pastor worrying that all she did in New York was party and get drunk, and after the scandalous Vegas wedding in 2004, Access Hollywood ran a segment where they gathered residents for an informal town meeting about Britney. The general consensus was that she had “sinned” and needed God’s forgiveness. (Now let me digress for a moment, and point out, that I am a Christian, I full believe in God and try to live to please Him, but to say Britney sinned is just ridiculous. She made a stupid mistake, as we all make stupid mistakes at times. God, I think, would understand that she was lonely and unhappy, and longing for love. To bring “sin” into the discussion is placing TOO heavy a religious importance on a human error!!)
My point is Kentwood has its own negative atmosphere which is not healthy for someone with low self-esteem and a troubled past. I’m hoping Britney skips the hometown reunion and looks for a quieter lifestyle elsewhere.
c) Move away from the US; Go somewhere isolated in Europe, or a sunny, Caribbean island.
I live in the Caribbean, so I’m a bit partial to this idea. I’d love to see Britney living in the Turks and Caicos, or in the British Virgin Islands. She’d love the sea, and the sunshine, and she’s been on vacation in the Caribbean before, and loved it. But even so, I don’t really see Britney making this work. She’s not going to want to be away from her family for a prolonged period of time, and it’s unlikely that Kevin will agree to her moving the boys away from the US. Shar Jackson once claimed that he was probably filing for sole custody of Sean and Jayden because he was worried that Britney would take the boys back to Louisiana permanently, and he wanted to forestall that. Although that claim seems rather doubtful, I do think he’d protest if Britney moved them out of the US. The same applies to moving them to Switzerland, or anywhere else in Europe. But I would love it if she took regular vacations to these places. Stalking Britney would be SO much simpler if she’d just come to the Caribbean!
d) Move to Northern California
This is the idea I think would work the best. There are lots of quieter towns away from LA, in quieter areas such as the Napa Valley and Monterey. Monterey is especially beautiful and it’s near the beach, so Britney wouldn’t miss Malibu too much. It wouldn’t be Kentwood, but the pace of life wouldn’t be as hectic as LA. And since Britney would only be 2-3 hours drive away from LA, she still could drive in twice a week and record new music if that’s what she wanted. Most importantly, it would be close enough so that Kevin could see the boys regularly, but far enough away so that the paparazzi would be disinclined to move there permanently.
Through it all, I’ve come to realize, especially after seeing the wide spectrum of ridiculous rumours that have been published while Britney is in rehab, that the media and the press will never leave her alone. There will always be some “inside source” who has a story to tell, a “former employee” who has an exclusive to give, or a spurned “lover” looking for some public vengeance. Trying to avoid it all is impossible, even if she were to give up her career, but I think there’s a decent chance she can find some balance in it all.
Who would have thought in the 1980’s and 90’s that Madonna would one day be seen as the quiet, mumsy type, writing children’s novels and adopting orphans? Who would have thought that devil-without-a-cause Johnny Depp would have happily settled in Paris and be written about only as a great actor, and a great dad? Even rehab renegades like Charlie Sheen and Robert Downey Jnr have transitioned away from the tabloid main page, and into credible celebrities. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Britney’s time will come too.
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