It was mirrored by steep weight loss, for which I was unduly complimented. It first presented as illness and panic, which Hollywood doctors were all too happy to medicate.
#JEAN AND SPEAR GIRL PROFESSIONAL#
My life started to break down almost 20 years after I stood side-stage with Britney – first quietly, my body and mind disintegrating due to a mix of overwork, outsized control from professional wranglers, and the seething anxiety of being seen and criticised by millions of people I didn’t know. But when a colleague told me, dripping with condescension, that carrying my dog around a television shoot would limit people’s ability to see me as a professional, it triggered a two-year break from walking on to a set. Personally, I was able to tolerate going from “original voice” to “voice of a generation” to scared and stifled in the space of my twenties.
#JEAN AND SPEAR GIRL HOW TO#
You don’t know how to live your life, but someone will do it for you.
Events and Offers Sign up to receive information regarding NS events, subscription offers & product updates.Ĭontrol is an insidious thing, because at first it can feel like safety, like protection. Ideas and Letters A newsletter showcasing the finest writing from the ideas section and the NS archive, covering political ideas, philosophy, criticism and intellectual history - sent every Wednesday. Weekly Highlights A weekly round-up of some of the best articles featured in the most recent issue of the New Statesman, sent each Saturday. The Culture Edit Our weekly culture newsletter – from books and art to pop culture and memes – sent every Friday. Green Times The New Statesman’s weekly environment email on the politics, business and culture of the climate and nature crises - in your inbox every Thursday. The New Statesman Daily The best of the New Statesman, delivered to your inbox every weekday morning. World Review The New Statesman’s global affairs newsletter, every Monday and Friday. The Crash A weekly newsletter helping you fit together the pieces of the global economic slowdown. Morning Call Quick and essential guide to domestic and global politics from the New Statesman's politics team. Sign up for The New Statesman’s newsletters Tick the boxes of the newsletters you would like to receive. (I left mine in, even after it showed signs of infection, and will always have a small ball of scar tissue, a scarlet letter so many of us early Noughties tweens share.) Once, walking across the city with a new training bra in a shopping bag, a man yelled, “Hey, it’s Britney Spears!” and I gleamed with pride for days.
#JEAN AND SPEAR GIRL FULL#
Suddenly, school was full of checked skirts and stripy bleached hair, self-tanned legs and belly-button rings procured with fake IDs. The gig was up.Īnd so Britney Jean Spears, with her easy drawl and cherry-popsicle smile (it’s hard to write about her early iteration without resorting to Lolita-isms), her moves like a ballerina in a bordello and her voice, somewhere between Marilyn Monroe and Minnie Mouse, seemed like the one to mimic. The first time I kissed someone, in a game of truth or dare, I couldn’t stifle a giggle and a spear of snot shot out of my nostril. They called late at night and we whispered for hours about nothing, conversations that would meander into the general area of sex and then dissolve into silence. My hair was highlighted blonde, I clattered around in platforms despite having wobbly knees, and I pretended to be interested in the advances of pimply boys in giant jeans. Having recently switched schools, I was carrying on an exhausting charade of normalcy in an effort to court the interest of the kind of girls who had mocked and excluded me at the last place.
She looked natural and playful, like the most popular girl at camp, and while she clearly wasn’t an adult she had a command of her body that belied her status as a teen. Home from school sick one morning, I distinctly remember putting down my cereal and scooching closer to the television, transfixed, when it had come on. I recognised her from the “… Baby One More Time” music video, a new addition to the MTV rotation. It was before mobile phones and so she looked down, hands in pockets. (Later, I waited in line for a photo and when JT rested his chin on my shoulder, as he must have with a thousand girls that night, I felt his crunchy blond curls on my cheek.) Britney stood in the darkness through the concert, in a denim jacket and crop top.
We were standing side-stage at a concert where her boyfriend Justin Timberlake was playing with his boy band N Sync.
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