The article weaves together in-depth analysis of hard-nosed psychological research with easily recognizable pop culture manifestations of how relentless media coverage conditions female celebrities to objectify themselves in order to illustrate the pervasiveness and the profound psychological consequences of adopting an outsider's perspective on one's own body. This article explains both the widespread problem in pop culture of self-objectification and a promising solution that millions of Americans already engage with on a regular basis.
Is it possible for anyone to escape the tragic ubiquity of Britney Spears’ psychological unraveling? I most certainly have not been able to do so, as her constantly photographed face stares me down in the grocery checkout line, as the various litigious individuals who want a piece of her money make headlines on my laptop’s news feed, as the entertainment newscasters breathlessly update me on how she got her “new” body. In his heartbreaking biopic on Britney for the January 2008 issue of Blender magazine[i], Michael Joseph Gross writes that Britney is the only celebrity in the world under photographers’ 24-hour watch, a surveillance mode usually reserved for prisoners and suicides. Every move that she makes is scrutinized and documented so thoroughly by so many sources that Britney cannot be ignored, even if I wanted to avoid the unfolding consequences of a life too exposed.
Why is Britney’s sad face so prevalent when most people I know think she’s the embodiment of everything that is wrong with American popular culture? The advertisers agree that Britney is not highly regarded by any stretch of the imagination: according Gross’ reporting from Marketing Evaluations, the company that developed the “Q Score,” Britney’s negative Q Score is at 66 — only her ex-husband Kevin Federline has a lower one among all celebrities — meaning two-thirds of the people who know who she is give her a “fair” or “poor” rating. The average for female performers is 30. According to a January 28, 2008, Associated Press article by Jeremy Herron[ii], the never-ending coverage of Britney is not the mystery some might think it to be. As Herron’s article describes, the profitability of the schadenfreude-producing Britney Economy is a clear rationale for the omnipresence of her image: “At a time when advertising spending in traditional media is declining, celebrity gossip titles such as Star, Us Weekly, and In Touch Weekly are growing. That helped overall newsstand sales for magazines edge 1 percent higher, to $2.39 billion, in the first half of 2007.” Herron reported that a newly imported title from across the pond, OK! magazine, put Britney on the cover 54 times in the 103 issues since January 2006, Us Weekly featured her on nearly two-thirds of its covers in the past year including each of the last 14, and People has used her photo on its cover 10 times in the past 15 months. And that competition-driven demand for the most exclusive, revealing image of Britney has made paparazzi photographers and their agencies small fortunes. Herron interviewed Francois Navarre, the founder of the X17, Inc., a celebrity-photo agency notorious for its exhaustive, aggressive coverage of Britney, that made $11 million in sales of photos taken by its stable of paparazzi photographers in 2007 alone[iii]. Navarre said that an exclusive shot of the star would sell for about $10,000 in the U.S. and generate thousands more, in some cases up to $100,000, in residuals. “She’s the most expensive right now,” Navarre said. “For Angelina, for example, you divide by two or even three to get the price.”
Britney learned early on in her career and life that images of her body could make her a lot of money. According to Gross’ article, Britney underwent surgical breast enhancement at age 17 because, she reportedly explained, “I work like a woman, everyone treats me like a woman, but I look like a girl.” When she began dating LFO back-up dancer Federline in 2004, the value of representations of Britney’s body skyrocketed; Gross says that the number of photographers trailing Britney doubled when she and Kevin got together, and the value of a premium shot of her climbed 500 percent. Having become accustomed to others relentlessly inspecting her, Britney grew dependent upon the constant mediation of her body’s image by television and magazines in order to relate to people in her life and to the public. As newlyweds, Britney and Kevin filmed each other and showed America their honeymoon in all of its glory on the UPN reality show, Britney & Kevin: Chaotic. In one of the show’s interview segments, Britney admitted, “I’m not really good with just really being intimate one-on-one, and I think it helped me to have a camera there, instead of it just being me and him.” The camera’s unswerving attention has constructed a glass wall between Britney and the world around her, a situation in which she is always observed like a sea creature in an aquarium tank and can only see people through the glass barrier as they tap on it, trying to get her to do something amusingly terrible.
