I have two snapshots of Britney Spears stuck in my brain.
The first is from the late 1990s. I was living in Atlanta and had started attending a cool new church. It was a church "unplugged" - the pastor was young and sat on a stool and talked about Jesus and U2 and Quentin Tarantino. "Worship" was performed by a band. No one wore suits. It was so much fun there were mid-week worship services.
Early one evening I walked in and sat down and worshipped and listened to the sermon and was getting up to leave when I caught up to the non-Jesus buzz in the room. "Britney is here " I heard whispered as I saw a hulking man and a small girl bustle out a side door. Apparently it wasn't a terribly uncommon experience. Whenever she was in town for a concert or for meetings, she stopped by the church. I hadn't heard of pop stars going to church. It never made me a fan but it made me believe that her 'virgin talk' was far more than some marketing ploy.
The other Britney snapshot was from 2002. The NFL opened its season on a Thursday night in Washington, DC and there was a concert on the mall to celebrate. My wife Kim and I had been given backstage passes. A host of stars passed before us on their way to perform. Steven Tyler of Aerosmith strutted by, Mary J. Blige held court, Aretha Franklin deigned to be there. Most memorable, however, was the very small Britney Spears. She looked timid, comforted by the big jacket she was wearing, looking like a little girl lost in a glittered world. As her stage time approached, she looked around and shed the jacket to reveal a very tight little outfit. She fidgeted. Her dancers moved in closer and so did her bodyguards. She walked out on stage and lipsynched a new song, grinding and moving and stripping down further to reveal pants well below her navel and a top that covered not much at all. After the performance she ran offstage and back into the clothes. The empress needed her clothes.
Those two moments have colored my perception of Britney. I couldn't buy the image of her as a sexual diva, a slithering temptress. It seemed an image that old men and young boys wanted but not one based in reality. During the past several years as her music became coarser and her sexuality even more overt I couldn't buy it. It felt faker than people said her virginity talk ever was. The toll it took on her own soul, however, was real.
