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I realise that what I’m about to say is not going to be popular with some people, because it ends up with a positive prediction. Not a "she's gonna come back and be the old Britney again" prediction, since I don't believe that will EVER happen. But it's one that shows how past events, even if they looked horrific at the time, can lead naturally and organically to progress on a long and difficult path.
I’ve noted down the years that Britney has a habit of image destruction. The sweet, homely-looking little brunette virgin was trashed and she became the glamorous, untouchable, tanned, superfit blonde vixen with a celebrity boyfriend on her arm and rumors of all kinds of sexual activity swirling around her.
The blonde vixen was then carefully dismantled as she got tired of her glamorous, manufactured image and, in apparent empathy with Kevin Federline, turned herself into a more human figure, fallible, messy, unkempt, smoking, drinking, and looking trashy and out of shape. Oddly enough, a lot of people who previously hated the pristine, squeaky-clean Britney came to feel a lot closer to this one.
What Britney always seems to have grasped - whether by innate showbiz intelligence or pure instinct - is that you can’t negate an image-change by going back to the way you were before, so when she split from Federline she began on a different course.
What she had to do was erase the trailer-trash image from our minds by implanting another powerful image that would take its place. And so we came to the era of party-girl Britney, looking and dressing very differently but providing us with plenty of lurid headlines to distract our attention from the change.
Then a famous head-shaving incident ushered in the era of Crazy Britney, who didn’t party so much but eventually succeeded in creating a kind of meta-celebrity where stars don’t do anything EXCEPT hang out with the people who report on their doings - and so the media become the story, which flatters them and keeps them on-message.
Meanwhile, Britney’s look became further and further removed from anything we may have remembered from the past. Her hair was normally dark, her skin pale, her plumped-up lips ruby red and she wore dresses almost all of the time, instead of jeans and pants as in her blonde vixen days. Maybe she wanted to look like an old-time Hollywood actress.
Along with this slow and gradual evolution came an unwillingness to be associated with “work”. It was as if simply BEING “The Britney” was, in her eyes, enough and there would be no desperate plugging of product or ass-kissing of influential figures to sell albums or gain movie roles. She was a public figure, yet strangely elusive and uncommunicative.
We’re now at the point where an interview with Britney is a great deal harder to obtain than an audience with the Pope and the world of showbiz and celebrity is desperate to hear what SHE has to say about the last couple of years. Bland platitudes? Psychobabble? Spiritual journey, maaan? Or will she turn out to be lucid and capable of articulating her thoughts and feelings? Whatever may be the case, she's now in a position where she can change people's perceptions of her as much as she wants, just by talking.
The homespun virgin, the glamorous blonde vixen and the trashy reality-Britney are in the distant past. She’s in the middle of a process of profound and genuine reconstruction. But the scene is set for her to emerge from her chrysalis and step into yet another New Age of Britney. Unless Sam somehow gets his hands on her again, I expect to see her in a few months’ time with another evolution to her look, loads of new plans, ready for interviews and radiating positivity. The fact that the conservatorship has been extended to July 2008 provides the opportunity for that to happen.
But don’t expect a fairytale Britney. She won’t be another Beyonce - in whose life everything is good; or another Avril, in whose life everything is ordinary. Britney’s entire career has been about conflicted expectations and perceptions and we can expect plenty more of those.
But what if Sam DOES get his hands on her again? What if she manages to break free from her father's conservatorship within the next few weeks and return to her old, self-destructive lifestyle? Clearly all bets are off concerning her career or anything positive she may do, but I still think she will look quite different from now, and from anything we have seen in the past. We just have to hope the new image is an attractive one.
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I liked this article and I've noticed these things myself. I would've touched on why she dyes her hair blonde whenever she "gets back to business" as in for the VMAs, the Piece of Me video. The stuff she seems to want to do. I don't think she liked Gimme More as a song that much which is why she made a sub-par video and was reported to be leaving clubs when the DJ played it.
I've also realised that right now an interview would be the best thing for her public image. But also right now the main priority is keeping her life normal and getting her head straight. And we all know the furor (good or bad) that will come if she speaks out finally.
Also I wouldn't say Beyonce's life/career is all "good". Sure, she keeps her public appearance clean but plenty of people despise her, her 2nd album didn't fare well, she was overshadowed in Dreamgirls by an American Idol reject, she fell down while performing (heck, even Britney didn't fall at the VMAs