Oops, she's doing it again!
She's a Mouseketeer trafficking kiddie porn, a school-girl queen selling sex in a leathery cat suit. Does Britney Spears have any idea what she's doing?

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Strawberry Saroyan

May 22, 2000 | This is what she looked like when you first saw her: pigtails, Catholic schoolgirl uniform, Lip Smackers baby-doll pink lips. She was a good girl, but suddenly gone bad, having tied her little white shirt in a knot over her Madonna-influenced midriff. She was a 17-year-old babe --in both senses of the word -- who already knew too much.

She was Britney Spears, and it was 1999, and this was her first video. It was called, sweetly enough, " ... Baby One More Time," in a winking omission of the soon-to-be controversial real lyric, the dot-dot-dot covering up the words "hit me." "Hit me baby one more time," she sang, at once flirtily and beggingly, in a now-you-have-me/now-you-don't cadence over and over again, in that short little skirt, in those be-lockered hallways, the leader of the pack. She was Olivia Newton John's version of Sandy in "Grease" for the '90s: No need for transformation, this girl gave it to you all in one -- the good, the bad and the body.

Print story E-mail story   Backflip this article to find it again

Britney Spears' debut album went on, propelled by that single (which shared its name with that of her album), to sell over 9 million copies in the States alone last year, making her one of the top-selling teen pop stars of all time. And, as with so many other acts, that first year of stardom -- that intervening rocket launcher of a year -- showed her transformation from tentative entrant onto the cultural radar screen (a girl who still clearly had certain strings tied to her "Mickey Mouse Club" past) to full-fledged media persona.

Sure, the do-I-dare sexuality was sort of there in the beginning, but it was an insider's thing that the little girls might not get (although the grown men surely would) as she posed for her first album cover sitting on the floor in a little red shirt and a denim mini. It was a Calvin Klein "oops, my underwear's showing" ad taken one step further and yet seemingly one step back. (Her underwear wasn't showing, but it appeared to be airbrushed out.)

But then, as the year went on, Spears was out there in every sense of the word, coming more and more clearly into focus: Britney, in a so-slick-it-seemed-wet shocking pink tube top, traversing the arena stages of the world with a mike bit around her head, oddly reminiscent of the orthodontic headgear her peers were wearing that same summer; Britney, in a clingy white "cut-out" strapped dress or an all-but-see-through polka-dot top, up for trophy after trophy at awards show after awards show; and, finally, Britney, smack dab on the cover of Rolling Stone in almost nothing but a bra and panties, with a phone pressed to her too-perfect-for-bed head, but which was still snuggled up against the satin pillows photogenically anyway. Spears had arrived. She was doing business in her boudoir. She was the virgin ready to be the whore. But what did it all mean?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

For many teen pop stars, it might not matter. She's just another Tiffany, some might say, recalling the raven-haired mall rat who ascended by playing places like the Beverly Center; or just another Debbie Gibson, who after her initial burn-so-bright-she-burnt-out success resurfaced as a wholesome Broadway staple. But some of us suspect there's something more to Britney's appeal, something hidden amidst the flirty near-nakedness, the vanilla hip-swinging. For Britney Spears is about sex, and she's about sluttiness, but she's also about something more complicated.

Next page | Breast implants?
1, 2, 3, 4

Photograph by Newsmakers.net

Now playing: Read all the recent movie reviews by Salon's critics