Musings of an Inappropriate Woman

Britney Spears and why it’s painful to be beautiful

I saw her on Thursday night.

A lot has been said in Australia about the quality of her performance, most of it centred around the fact that she doesn’t actually sing. To those people, I say, “who goes to a Britney Spears concert expecting her to sing?” We established 10 years ago that it wasn’t her forte. Back then I was pretty pissed off about it too (being a self-righteous teenager at the time - and one who sang at that), but these days she’s more a symbol than she is a singer. And her show is more a Circus-with-a-capital-C than a concert.

Even on that level, it had its failings, though. It was much like one of her albums, in that there were some incredible high points (multi-media, Perez Hilton, the first three songs and the last two or three), and a whole lot of filler in the middle. And she spent way too much time off stage. I paid [ridiculous amount of money] to see Britney Spears, not her dancers.

But five-song lulls mean time for thinking, and I spent most of it thinking about just how much the success of Britney Spears - and even her mental health - is measured and predicated on the way she looks. As I’ve written before: Britney with fat on her body is read as ”off the rails”; skinny, toned Britney means “she’s baaaaack” - as much so as the quality of her albums or songs.

She looked fantastic on Thursday night, absolutely beautiful. But looking at her made me feel sad, because it reminded me of how much work - and probably anguish - goes into keeping her looking like that.

Two and a half years ago, she shaved her head. Now her hair is long, blonde and half-way down her back, but you could see quite clearly where her real hair ended and the extensions began. Her body was perfectly proportioned and toned - but we’ve all seen enough photos to know that she doesn’t look like she did when she was 20 anymore without a lot of work. (And even then I recall reading that she did 1000 sit ups each day. And possibly had bulimia.)

Recently, I wrote a feature article about the lives of the ridiculously beautiful. One of the things that came out of it was that even for the proms queens of this world - the kind of women who get approached on the street by legitimate modelling agencies and put on their books - being “the beautiful girl” takes work.

And that even if you naturally possess all the qualities that make a woman considered beautiful by the majority of people, it’s still something you can turn up and down, even on and off, at will - through clothing, hairstyle, make up, high heels, etc. So much of what we think of as beautiful is really about performing femininity, regardless of your body shape or bone structure.

For the story, I spoke to Dr Meredith Jones, a researcher from UTS. She told me that contrary to the “ugly duckling” stereotype, conventionally attractive people were actually more likely to get cosmetic surgery than less attractive people. They knew the feeling that comes from being loved and appreciated from their looks, and were terrified of it going away. Or, you know, wanted to give that “love” a little boost. 

And so we see Britney Spears. A woman who has - I think, at least - all the gifts of conventional beauty, who gets shit lumped on her whenever she dares to gain five kilos, get a pimple or not blow dry her hair. And who gets showered with financial and emotional rewards whenever she follows the script.

‘Everything’s cool as long as I’m getting thinner’: how Karl de-fanged Lily Allen

I felt strangely sad when I read about Lily Allen’s big debut onto the fashion scene, performing at the Chanel show in Paris last week.

Strange because, well, she certainly seemed happy about. She’s ‘one of them’ now: friends with Kate Moss, one of Karl Lagerfeld’s British darlings. I wouldn’t call it ‘selling out’, because it’s not like it has affected her music - or like she ever wasn’t a mainstream pop star to begin with. And yes, she does look pretty fabulous in the photo above.

But I’m wondering if this newfound ‘fabulousness’ comes at too high a price - namely, her shrinking body. In this week’s Grazia, Maxine Frith writes:

After the show, Karl gave Lily a massive bunch of roses and told her she was a Chanel girl now. Her appearance came after months of dieting and exercise to ensure she looked her best.

“She and Karl had been talking for ages about what she should do for the show,” says an inside source. “Lily’s really slimmed down but she’s never going to be a size zero so she didn’t want to walk the runway and be compared to the models.

Now, Grazia is the classiest of the weekly magazines, but I’d be silly if I didn’t consider that the above was probably at least a bit made up - like most celebrity gossip stories. But the overall narrative strikes me as true. Allen has dropped a dress size or two over the past year or so.

And, well, ew. It’s not like she’s alone in her body shrinking as her fame grows (the same could be said of almost any female celebrity), but there’s something particularly uncomfortable about it in her case, because she’s always been so open about her insecurities - in her lyrics, her blog posts and her comments to the media.

I wish my life was a little less seedy
Why am I always so greedy?
Wish I looked just like Cheryl Tweedy
I know I never will

One thing some people seem to miss about Lily Allen’s lyrics (I’m thinking all those people who hate the song 22 here) is that they tend to be three things at once: part facetious comment on society, part facetious comment on her own shortcomings, and part painfully honest admission of her insecurities.

So in the case of 22, when she says of a woman in her late-20s “it’s sad but it’s true that society says her life is already over”, I don’t think she’s saying that she, Lily Allen, thinks that women are “past it” once they hit 30. I think she’s saying that certain segments of society imply this is the case, and that if you’re the kind of woman who believes that her value resides entirely in her looks, ‘it girl’ qualities and ability to attract a man, there’s an element of truth to it.

Similarly, when she sings “I’m not a saint, and I’m not a sinner, now everything’s cool as long as I’m getting thinner”, she’s a making a social comment, yes, but it’s a comment that works because it’s something a lot of women actually think, if only secretly. Including, I’m willing to bet, Lily Allen.

Which is why the Karl Lagerfeld connection is so off-putting. Because it hinges on her meeting his ridiculous body standards. And because it backs up what her lyrics suggest she has long believed, at least on an emotional level - that social acceptance and affirmation come from being as thin as possible.