There are two versions of POP Magazine's September 2010 issue both featuring cover star Britney Spears. A collaboration of Todd Cole and Takashi Murakami, I saw the covers and read a review by Miss Tavi Gevinson from thestylerookie.com. Here is my reaction:
The more I look at these pictures, the more complex I realize they are. Aside from making the ambience pure and virginal, the celestial lighting washes several years off of Britney's 28 year-old face. The odd aerial angle from which they're shot distort the proportions of the body making her head seem too large and her body too small and undeveloped. Her allegedly fake breasts are suddenly tiny and early adolescent looking. The curves of her body are subdued making her less shapely; less womanly. There are two cloud-shaped cut outs in one cover decorated with Murakami characters revealing Britney in more complex virgin-bride-fairy princess scenarios which only add to the peepshow aspect of this work with their promise of an even deeper tour of this plastic fantasy world.
As a gay adult man, I look at images like this differently. All the criteria that I have for identifying what is titillating for str8 men - and therefore the entire universe - is learned. Cerebral, analytical and even academic as opposed to instinctual and primal. (Unless were talking about the obvious which is pornography. I get the fact that if I see a close-up of vaginal penetration it's supposed to be sexy without any help of a decoder ring.) I will confess that I go through most of life, through my daily navigations of the world completely oblivious to the huge amount of potentially arousing material I am being taunted with simply because I walk the city streets and take public transportation. Even commercial expressions of sexuality that come from a homo-dominated industry like fashion cater almost exclusively to the tyrannical gaze of the breeder male.
But, you know what the penultimate truth is? I look at Britney and think, "What is wrong with her? This is a nearly 30 year-old woman. Did she get dressed in the dark? She's wearing clothing that is made for a 12 year-old and some dime-store bride costume.I bet she is psycho-sexually arrested at the age when she was a shotgun bride. Fucking retard. How sad." Tavi sites Britney, "…as a prime example of the ways in which culture builds up celebrities only to tear them down." Celebrity can also be built upon vice, controversy and the public's love to hate. Kind of like the way the media treated Courtney Love in the early days of her mainstream career.
Courtney Love - the archetypal Kinderwhore - cannot be compared to Britney for a few reasons. The main one being authenticity. Compare these shots of Britney by Cole to any photo of Courtney when she rocked Mary Janes and babydoll dresses (circa: 1992). It's obvious that now and then - throughout "the Chronicles of Britney" - that Britney is always pretending. Even the shots David LaChappelle did in her childhood room when she was 17, lack realness and somehow still feel synthetic. Courtney (more comparable to Madonna in terms of background) was exposed to a quasi-Bohemian, music-oriented counterculture from the age of 2 (when she appeared on a Grateful Dead album cover). She was a runaway and a teen stripper by the age of 15 already having traveled to the UK, Europe and Asia on her own. Britney, on the other hand, had a role on the Mickey Mouse Club throughout her childhood and was always surrounded by staff and family. Handlers, managers, assistants, etc. She never lived on her own, never had independence, never had any of the kind of character building experiences Courtney had. All Britney's hits are about love, sex and romance sung for years while supposedly holding onto her virginity for marriage. Even before Courtney's marriage, the media - or culture - seemed to have always assumed Courtney to be a sex positive/sexually active woman. Every aspect of Britney Spears life seemingly since birth has been some sort of fiction designed to prevent her from developing an intellect, an identity or an opinion. No wonder she went on a violent rampage that ended with her shaving her own head in a strange salon. Will Britney Spears ever be able to attain worldliness?
Courtney Love in her Los Angeles, CA. bedroom in 1992.
Please read Tavi's post at http://www.thestylerookie.com/
i'm into it!
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