Britney Spears: Media Trainwreck, or Role Model?

Britney Spears has seen the covers of more tabloids, magazines, and newspapers than any other musician I can name. Considering her youth, Britney Spears has been astonishingly influential character in recent years. Though current buzz about Britney regarding her children, weight, and personal life is generally exaggerated, controversial, and unkind, I prefer to think of the old Britney, the Britney my friends and I would sing along with in the car, the Britney who was young and happy, and who set the standards of beauty, fashion, and music when I was younger.

To give you a time and age reference, Britney's early hit, Hit Me Baby One More Time, came out when I was eight years old. I remember singing along to it with my friends, and though we all knew every single word by heart, none of us knew what they meant. Looking back, Britney's songs were always sexually charged, and she has always pushed the limits of what is acceptable in fashion, social decorum, and musical subject matter. In 1998, when contemporaries like the Backstreet Boys, N*SYNC, and the Spice Girls were all doing the same thing, Britney didn't stand out as such a renegade, and actually seemed like the 'good girl' of the bunch.

What, then, made Britney rise above the others in fame and gossip? Why, after all these years, is Britney still just as famous, while many of the other past teen popstars have faded into obscurity? I don't mean to be cruel, but when you look at the boy-bands of the past, who have largely disbanded and moved on, and the Spice Girls, with their (mostly) respectable families and slowly re-emerging careers, it seems that the answer isn't what Britney did that separates her from the rest, but what she didn't do. Despite a massive fortune, an explosive career, a marriage, two kids, and a divorce, Britney never grew up.