HIT ME BABY ONE MORE TIME

Miriam Kongstad 1 Can you handle my truth?

Britney Spears casually plays around with a new camera, occasionally focusing on others, but largely keeping the lens on herself.

2 An animal is born in the wild. Andrew Wallet are appointed conservators. The conservatorship extends Britney Spears is born in 1981 in McComb, Mississippi and raised in past managing Britney Spears’ estate to approving any minor purchase or 1 Kentwood, Louisiana, in a low-income household. driving a car. In 2020 the conservatorship is still in effect.

The animal is studied by scientists. The animal lives under increased surveillance and complies with expectations to prevent conflict. From early childhood Britney Spears receives singing and dancing lessons with a professional career in sight. Britney Spears releases five further solo albums, including Black Out which is released shortly after her infamous shaving. On the cover she appears with long black hair. In 2013, Spears takes up a four year long residency in The animal is caught. Las Vegas and performs the show Britney: Piece of Me over 250 times. In 1993 at the age of 11, old Britney Spears becomes a member of The All- Despite the show's major commercial success, it is still described to be New Mickey Mouse Club, a children’s variety show which aired on the looking backwards rather than forwards.2 Disney Channel, with a cast of mostly teen performers. Activists protest against animal captivity. The animal is displayed in a zoo. The #freebritney movement is formed by journalist and comedian Tess Britney Spears is recognised as an auspicious pop star. Barker and Barbara Gray in 2017. In addition to running a weekly podcast series scrutinising Spears’ life and activities on social media, they organise a The animal becomes a main attraction and gets its own enclosure in the zoo. number of protests and demonstrations against Spear' conservatorship.3 Britney Spears declines to perform in the girl band Innosense and aspires to a solo career. In 1999 she releases her first solo album. The animal suffers from depression and extra precautions must be taken in order to make it perform again. The animal escapes. In 2019, Britney Spears is caught by paparazzis whilst driving a car After releasing four solo albums, giving birth to two children and filing for unlawfully. Shortly after she is coerced by her conservators to re-enter a divorce in 2007, Britney Spears shaves off her hair and attacks a paparazzi psychiatric ward. The same year Jamie Spears is accused of abusing and his car with an umbrella. The events become world news and Britney Spears’ children. A court case which concerns ending the speculations arise about Spears suffering from mental illness. conservatorship begins and remains in process in 2020. 4

The animal is caught and restored. In 2007 Britney Spears is also kept in a psychiatric ward, loses custody her children; is declared legally incompetent and is eventually placed under court approved conservatorship. Her father Jamie Spears and the lawyer

3 Scared to love you

Britney Spears’ relationship to her career has progressed to the point where Spears reveals that she loves it. However, after criticism is provoked, Spears closes up somewhat about her feelings and returns to the cameras as comfort.

4 Let’s start by zooming into the mind and bedroom of a teenage dream because here is to be found a synthetic portrait illuminating a long-lived scheme

one that leaves me with both fascination fears and tears

it’s a form of erected desire - it’s the face of Britney Spears a component in the motor oil greasing the gears

of a spectacular machine with a nauseating smell of honey seducing me to spend that pocket money

listen! the pop song holds a tune that ties a grip a form of involuntary companionship

which every day squirts out thousands of repeated messages defining all of those premises

that we do not look young enough slim, white and willing enough messages that come to us

carried by the boiling steam pumping out of the spectacular machine bearing no reprieve5

5 Sink your teeth deep into that blazed blondie’s face taste the flesh of a woman about to fall from grace

and even if you might think to yourself

that her image ain't gonna burn a heart out you’ll see that this bonfire is devout

let’s imagine for a moment the machinery would pause from its grind and if so I would ask you to slip deep inside that very eye of your mind to see what you then find

when you’re there do remember that the Young-Girl is not always young she just hacked the hourglass the day she embraced to get stung

resenting ageing as a crime of disgrace6 she wears the mask of her face7

and through her enveloping whole she becomes a form of educational patrol

when she giggles she’s working8 feeding not merely the paparazzi behind a tree lurking

emblematic as a business not a soul felt by many yet often laborious to unroll

but don’t look back in anger, don’t you look back in anger I heard you say9

with a whipping tone of positivity in the moment when I am brushed off as an angry woman yet again

6 The potency of the erupted icon is a form of autopilot dialysis

fulfilling a predetermined role she seems to arrive packaged with reflexive extol

and all of a sudden she wasn’t merely hanging on a wall as a poster but imperceptibly shaping the very eye of the mind

from the get-go Britney compressed a narrative which is

you can be like me and I guarantee it will make you happy and loved and attractive

while roaring like a Pavlovian Dog10 turning the mechanic steam into fragranced smog

her visual appeal to the sensation of desire is a trick worthwhile to admire

as the memory of her body alone is able to generate a drooling sensation within a single tone

If a nice dress is the promise of a beautiful body Britney is the promise of a beautiful life.11

7 I wish as a teenager I had thought lucky that my lips not only mumble lucky that my hips are spare and fumble lucky that my breasts are small and humble so you don’t confuse them with mountains12

‘cuz I don’t wanna be that pretty faced girl on the poster squeezed in between flocks of men lying tightly under a boaster flesh without sensation like a cheaply sold roaster for Friday night’s family dinner

but oh I did not

I was blissfully unaware that the beautiful is always bizarre on un-reality TV if not I would have understood that just be natural and carefree didn’t really mean what it seemed to be

in due time I could have reached for the command key and modified my recognition in this blond front figure leading a form of vanilla warfare backed up by fitness as today’s natural healthcare and scuffed at a smile is the best makeup any girl can wear13

when I was told to behave

8 I am the reason they exist15

but I know it might be born out of fear of ending on a blacklist the dread of being the one who ain’t ever getting kissed

it is indeed a violent passage to grow through girlhood this has to be underlined I can’t afford to be misunderstood

yet the hardest part is

that those patterns are passed on through a stream of love transmitted through the breast milk like a protecting boxing glove I came to understand the celebrity as the consumer and the producer above all a major seducer mothers wishing daughters the best of life the consumer of producers which often boils down to becoming someone’s wife as well as the producer of consumers14 what needs to be reproved and reprogrammed so who is it then employing all of those rumours? is how the internal voice is damned which undoubtedly is the hardest job of all the answer is women voluntarily making your own bloody flesh crawl

women are the ones who buy them but take those smokey Torches of Freedom and swallow them with your quinsy self-affirmation through somebody else’s mayhem throat16 to test if that sales strategy gratifies the gloom of your guts or if it might denote women are the ones these narratives are aimed at an effect which is merely skin-deep a way to clean feet on our own doormat

9 It’s full on, it’s right on it, it flashes like strobe lights, enough to make anyone get an Following the pale figure with rapid steps, trying to get close, trying to get up front. It’s epileptic attack. Pine trees lit by flashes. It’s pitch black otherwise, so the focus is a residential area, that’s clear now. A long, typical evergreen hedge. Cars honking clear and sharp when flashes are shut out in the dim night. A head with no face intensely, big dogs barking around. The handbag dog remains quiet. Is it trained so? emerges. It’s grim. A pale figure with no face in the darkness, approaching frontally. Is it even alive? The sound is deafening but local, like the inside of a beehive, There’s a white hat, a greyish sweater with a hood and some long black hair. The pale approximating like an ominous storm. From below the edge of the flashlight figure turns their head slightly. Cherry red lips appear. Dark eyeliner under eyes. illuminated hat, there’s now a glimpse of a pair of eyes. The pale figure turns around a Maybe no eyes, just shadows. Still a plain, white no-face walking in the streets in corner of the hedge. Walks towards a metal fence. A gloomy establishment arises darkness punctuated by strobe lights. A dog appears under their arm. It’s one of behind. A black car. Dogs barking louder now. Some fairy lights. The pale figure reels, those small handbag dogs. The kind of creature which is a teddy bear with a beating, almost tilting. Black stilettos clicking. living heart. Sometimes their eyes pop out. Traumatic Proptosis it’s called. Eyelids become trapped behind eyeballs and spasms prevent retraction. It’s a kind of dog for OOPS! lonely people, those who don’t particularly like dogs, but long for love and someone to be dependent on them. That kind of dog. So there’s a pale no-face, long black hair, - someone squeals. A curved back. Seen from the side, it looks like a hunchback. a white hat, cherry red lips, dark eyeliner and a handbag dog under an arm, roaming The pale figure is almost dragging their shoulder bag now. Heavy down-going energy in darkness under constant strobe lights, directed away from pine trees, approaching while turning around a pillar of the fence. The figure sits down. Bare legs, dog on lap. frontally. It’s like a Gothic portrait, looking at this pale, black haired figure through the dark fence. Flashes like thunder, heavy clicking resembling rain. Are you gonna go for a walk? You look nice, where are you going? Please go away!

Wonder how the pale figure is able to walk towards the flashing strobe light without The pale figure looks up, eyes visible now. And then it appears - two pairs of eyes in eye protection. It seems unnatural. Unnatural to walk directly towards blindness. one. The heavy, wet eyes of Mary Wollstonecraft glaring out through black eye Perhaps the pale figure really doesn’t have eyes. Or perhaps the pale figure is just sockets of the pale figure. The grandmother of Frankenstein, incarnated as a pale, used to it. Maybe the pale figure suffers from Traumatic Proptosis - if so, increasingly eerie figure, sitting behind a dark metal fence, with hands, hat and hair covering the blinded by the light. A U-turn takes place. A stiff stone face right before the turn. Even face, while bathed in flashing light.17 An amalgamation of vibrations between two without a face, that’s visible. A no face stone face. There’s something utterly figures across centuries, shamed for breaking the expectations of womanhood. Both mechanical about the turn. It’s a stonefaced turn. Almost demonstratively too sexual whilst not contained and feminine enough. Both turned into public choreographed. Like a catwalk on a dystopian red carpet. allegations of why female containment is necessary. The cherry red lips part. Small words start to form, with a low, hoarse voice. I love your hat! Please go away. My life was very short. Shorter than most other lives, as I gave my mortal frame to my newborn daughter when I died of childbed fever. I was scared to love my little girl, fearful of the world she had been born into. But parting with this world made me hopeful too.

10 Because it happens to be so, that at times the cause of a fight gains vigour when the Awwww, why don’t you get out and get some love? Why are you crying so much? author withers. I was hopeful. I was hopeful until I witnessed that even after my death I would be butchered. When my husband published my memoir, exposing my outbursts The pale figure crouches, then curls their body around the handbag dog to the point of anger; my love affairs; my diaries; my sex life and my suicide notes, the world wasn’t of near suffocation. There’s now only a greyish hunchback left, black hair and an ready for such exposure. I was ahead of my time. And as the memoir went out, down illuminated hat behind a fence. It’s Britney, bitch.19 went my credibility, reputation and work.

The perspective is flickering from side to side, like a bird flapping its wings. It’s chaotic. It’s nauseating. The sound of a thousand dry leafs crushing simultaneously.

Why are you crying? Why are you speaking to yourself? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWBaBUbip_Q You should go home. Do you need someone to talk to?

The pale figure turns their head away. The chin rests on the forehead of the handbag dog on the lap. The crouching hunchback turns into a steep hill behind the metal fence. The hoarse voice returns.

I became a scapegoat. A horror scenario and the hardest judges of my life and work, were other women involved with feminist movements.18 Not only was my reputation tainted, but my whole feminist cause decayed. No wonder my daughter became the Godmother of Gothic horror fiction, she was born out of one herself. And now, looking out through the stiff, black eyes of this pale figure, I see that times have not changed. And so, the horror continues on this haunted night.

The pale figure looks up again. Their stiff gaze penetrates sharply whilst the tinge of their eyes transform. The sound of cracking eggshells all around. An echo of a tremendous flock of buzzing insects everywhere. The pale figure opens their mouth widely, as if about to yawn. Then yells.

I’m sitting for once and having a nice time with my dog.

Voices intensify and blend with the barking of dogs in the background. Questions in race, stumbling on top of each other. The white figure stiffens like a wax sculpture at Madame Tussauds.

11

12 13 (Non)veil of secrecy

Spears’ photo shooting family arrive at what they thought was just another night duty in the paparazzi world, only to find out that they were going to attend a news- breaking, soft porn suicide attempt.

14 Hair is a body armour resting lengthy on a shoulder once hulled it unveils the vulnerability of beauty is in the eye of the beholder20

15 If men dream of women and women dream of themselves being dreamt of whilst men look at women and women watch themselves being looked at21

and if those are algorithms of desire and those are set in stone then that must be wiped off like nail polish and acetone

because frankly what that means is that I’m simply just a clone yet those structures are fully functional and known

remember what happened when Britney shaved her head an act which could hardly be misread

a rejection of her whole fabricated construct a deed degraded as plain disorderly conduct

and as a result she was blown off the throne

but

thou who desires but acts not breeds pestilence22

16 As an unaware legionnaire my obsession as a child was cutting off the hair

of my many barbie dolls a single cut and trouble evolved

creating a miniature army of bald-headed mega breasts denied entry to all conventional beauty contests

similarly when Britney cut off her mane it was tainted with shame

brutalized sweetness hits like heavy bleakness

as the echo of a longhaired breeding cow in the feedlot transforms by the speed of a slow trot

please cut the Gordian Knot

give me a shaved Rapunzel that is my proposal

‘cuz if the manly short haired fashion was reinforced by war I think there’s potential for a new feminine commander to adore

and snip snap they were cut off and the lovely braids lay on the ground23

17 burn that lad make them sad slap my dad uuh that would make me real real glad

as a virgin on fire got so much time to conspire

the plaits had to go off and here came the scoff

apparently an invitation to yell all I could think was fuck off to hell

a lesbian, whore or diseased on the streets they were displeased

from one tag to another once so cute now looking like somebody’s brother Now adolescence hits fiercely indeed I wasn’t silenced like Britney and compliments pierce dearly it was pure social alignment that hit me

and so I ruminated for a while longing is fine until a bald Britney turned up shocking and hostile but please keep in line

and in that moment I concluded that oh shame on us

I am sweet B indeed and me and I am paying for it so I wanna be bad

I wanna make them evil guys real mad to need release uncontrollably24 tear down that ad because all men hate the wretched25

18 the sexiness of the female body seems to disappear hand in hand with her fertility

a shape appears beautiful if it conforms to a norm and ugly if it altogether deviates from it26

when Britney sheared her locks

she was with one single act able to counterattack the archetype she was in fact epitomising herself

it was a moment where she humanised and gained sympathy When Britney Spears shaved yet caused her image asymmetry and went untamed through a desexing contradicting her perfecting she exposed a larger phenomenon which throws a gloomy light on and just like Victor Frankenstein who had created a being he could not entirely control Britney showed that she too could not entirely be controlled a gender bias which tie us but

to the association of the bald man as experienced and credible by virtue of his as a reaction to her misbehaving natural balding with age she was doomed for her general madness exemplified in the shaving the bald woman on the contrary generally belongs to an associative world of the punished she converted from a Pavlovian Dog the ugly into a test animal of Skinner and the diseased who developed ways to readjust a sinner27

whereas the archetypical male throughout life keeps his in short a form of associative learning or conditioning virility used as a method of finishing unwanted behaviour through punishment

19 It’s complete chaos, inside and out of a shop. Backwards out of a door. figure. Squeaking sounds and a turbulent view. People walking around restlessly. A loud honk and the sign of Ester’s Hair Studio 705-8155. The black t-shirt moves Back up guys, back up, back up, back up. aside and the face of the woman becomes visible. Yet, it’s not Ester. It’s Sinéad O'Connor, speaking to the hooded figure through the mirror. And then it appears. A hooded figure, a hood pulled all the way down, no face. Escorted by guys in black t-shirts. Two chunks of hair falling out from below the Look, shaving off your hair is only radical because it opposes everything you’ve ever narrow opening of the hood. Entering a car. It’s all black, the car, the t-shirts, the hair, embodied. Since you were a child you’ve followed the advice of the industry as straight the outside. Shrilling sounds of cameras in concert with dry clicking and the regular as the crow flies. Are your legs steady enough or is someone going to pull a wig off your light show. Itching the top of their nose, eyes gazing up from a lowered head. head tomorrow? Are you doing disgrace for the sake of attention? Are you giving them what they want? Don’t forget that the buzz cut originates from the military. You’ll be She’s exploding, she wanna go out. starting a war against yourself. Is that what you need just now? You are your image and that comes with responsibility. You can’t make a U-turn if you don’t stand by it The hooded figure is escorted to the car one more time, repeated with the intensity of afterwards. And what you’ll meet afterwards is out of your control. You'll be silenced. a time lapse. The short flashes of light, again and again, without intermezzo. The You'll be crazed. Called a mad woman. Is that what you want to parade? To show the same words redoing themselves. The same Red Bull held in the hands of the hooded world once again that a bald woman is a mad woman? figure. They drive away. The hooded figure exits the car, only to make a turn and head back in. First stop unsuccessful. Reflections of reflections in multiple mirrors. A dense atmosphere. The heavy lightning behind the glass door stands as a sharp contrast to the gloomy surroundings Eyyy what about the rehab? Hey it’s closed, it’s closed. outside, like the fourth wall of a theatre. The hooded figure and Sinéad O’Connor stand stiffly in front of the mirror, multiplied by the reflections in the salon. Eyes looking Driving away. Moving forward with staggering but rapid steps. Running people into eyes looking into eyes - dressed in black approaching. The hooded figure reappears. Face fully visible now, still a Red Bull on the side. A whole swarm of running people from all sides joining in, Looking into your eyes I see you’re angry. You and I are made of the same flesh in that like a choreographed parade of ice skaters. A movement in two directions - the manner. So let me tell you - the hardest part of giving up, is realising what a real give-up hooded figure in frontal motion, while newcomers slide in from front to back bathed in is. We tend to seek quick solutions, do things by way of consolation. For a woman to cut strobe light. Cars honking heavily in distance, front and back lights blending in with off her hair means something. What does it mean to you? cameras exposing the scene. A glass door being opened. Tense and restless. Almost shaking. The hooded figure sips the Red Bull. Then places Hey, how are you? He’s a bodyguard also. it back down whilst responding in a mumbling, lowered voice.

The glass door is clicking, locked from the inside. The hooded figure appears in a Yes, your mom will be pissed! She would want to protect you. Your blond locks are a mirror. A slim smile, gestures with a hand moving from the forehead to the back of the trademark. It’s a dusty symbol of fertility, so no hair on your blond head will be read as a neck across the scalp. Strip lights in the ceiling, bathing the room in cold, pale light. sign of illness. I tell you, yes, it works like that. It’s banal indeed, but people are very One of the black t-shirts stands in front of a woman who’s talking to the hooded banal. Why do soldiers keep their hair short? Because it’s practical. A man is supposed

20 to be practical. Ready to fight. A woman is taught to be impractical so she can be Nothing happens for a moment. The crowd outside seems restless. Holding their conquered. It’s as simple as that. A practical woman is a threat to that belief. We have breath. One of the black t-shirt guys walks towards the room in the back whilst pulling very simple minds, no doubt about that. But if you shave, then shave with pride. Don’t off his t-shirt. No return. shave with shame. Don’t let them turn you into a mad woman because you’re angry. It’s the women who aren’t angry who should be wronged. But there’s a day tomorrow, don’t What happened to the hair? It’s all going on the floor ya? ha ha aah come on, we all saw forget. A moment where you have to face your own disgrace and what you choose to do that. with it. The hooded figure is back in the flashing strobe light, outdoors. Intense yelling, The hooded figure leaves the room for the back. Sinéad O’Connor follows. The two shooting cameras all over. A sinister atmosphere proliferates. Sinéad O'Connor is on black t-shirt guys approach the glass door, look out, turn around. In the room at the the backseat of a car, wearing the guy’s black t-shirt. The hooded figure is crawling back, the hooded figure grabs a tool on a shelf in front of another mirror. Plugs it in. around inside the car. Stepping over the gearbox, settling in on the driver’s seat. Holds it firmly. Fingers turning white from tension. Wow is she gonna drive? You might be holding a shaver to your head just now, but it’s pretty much the same as cutting a razor blade through your throat. I am reaching a hand out now, pass me the The car exits the dazzling light. The hooded figure drives through the horde. The car buzzer. Listen, pass the buzzer to me. disappears. Back on the street, the hood is pulled all the way down again. While passing by shop windows, Sinéad O'Connor in disguise as one of the guys in black t- Fuck off, who are you? shirts, is roaming around the hooded figure. Keeping the flocking crowd at distance. A silver hexagram around the neck of the hooded figure appears on their chest. Listen, if you shave your head, trust me you’ll wake up reincarnated as yourself tomorrow. Don’t give them what they want. To be silenced is to be murdered alive. Let us pass, let us pass, let us pass please.

Back in the main room Sinéad O'Connor points at the two guys in black t-shirts as if The escort of the hooded figure repeats. This time closer up front. Up is down while giving a command. The sound of an electric shaver cuts her off. She turns around right and left obscures. The hooded figure walks straight into the constantly moving abruptly, runs back to the hooded figure. crowd. Like a local thunderstorm steadily moving across the street. Entering a tattoo studio. Hands folded in prayer position, a smile of excitement. Pillows wrapped in Your silencing won’t be a faded tune, ok? It will be a short circuit, a boom. Because plastic foil. The hooded figure sits down. A slim, buzzing sound of tattoo equipment that’s the sound of a stigma. If you’re firing up that blade, you’ll be denounced as crazy emerges unnaturally loud, synced with the indoors equipment in action. and mentally ill, and for that you’ll be cornered, because we mock women with mental illness. We don’t say “your cancerous idiot” we say “you crazy, angry woman”. In this Why does she still have a hood on? world we use crazy as a form of abuse. She doesn’t like the pain.

The two black t-shirts speak indistinctly. Looking confused, undecided. One points Sinéad O'Connor offers her hand. A gesture of pain relief. his finger to his head whilst seeming to laugh, then pulls at his t-shirt a few times.

21 I think the most radical thing you could do, would be to retreat. To take responsibility for groundbreaking world news. The exit of the tattoo studio repeats twice. The Red Bull your own doing. For yourself. For the children you brought into life. For all the mind’s eyes is picked up. Passing through the screaming crowd of people. Lights flickering you’ve been shaping. You have a choice, tell them you said no.28 They called you a bad intensely. mother because they wanted you to be a bad mother. They’ll call you ugly now because they’ll want you to be ugly, and they’ll call you unsuccessful if you retreat because they Goodnight Britney, we still love you even though you’re bald. would want you to be unsuccessful. One of the black t-shirts pulls at the sleeve of the hooded figure. Face fully covered The hooded figure pulls up their shirt. Belly skin exposed. Jeans pulled down from the again. Full on strobe light. Approaching the black car. A police officer in the front row front. Skin disinfected. Small hairs shaven off. Plastic foil rolled out again. The buzzing looking indifferently at the scene. He’s seen worse than a shaved scalp perhaps. The sound is back, but this time there is no equipment in action. The hooded figure lies car is covered in waves of stretched arms with cameras. Clicking, buzzing, honking, down on a leather plank bed. Turning their head. Facing frontal. Eye contact. The flashing. I was born to make you happy.29 hooded figure pulls off the hood.

SHE’S BALD OH MY GOD! Ha ha ha, she is completely bald man, I’m bringing them a shot of a bald woman, except the fact that it doesn’t look like a real woman anymore, poor her. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vh0oMAIkVzA Hands crossed peacefully, two heads in quiet motion. The tattooist is only visible from the back. A man with a buzz cut. Exposed overarms with black tattoos. In a half turn we see the hooded figure. A gentle face with red lips and heavy black eye lashes. The contours of cheekbones. The mouth opens widely for a moment. The Scream. A white pearl necklace is tight to the throat. The hooded figure makes contact with Sinéad O'Connor in the black t-shirt, by gently touching her lower back. Hysterical laughter outside. Sinéad O'Connor looks down at the hooded figure.

I got my first record contract when I was 17. Young like you. Back then they wanted me to grow my hair long and wear skirts. They wanted me to be like you. Branding me on my sexuality. But that’s violence. It’s not only exploitation, it’s violence. So when they told me to grow my hair long, I went straight to the barber and shaved the rest of my hair off. I always felt I had to protect myself by making myself as unattractive as I could. I’m a protest singer, You’re an illusionist singer, you’re a pleaser.

The hood is back on. Exposed skin is being cleaned. The hooded figure embraces the tattooist. Two shaved heads meet. One is nothing out of the ordinary, the other is

22

23 24 Magic happens

After a few days in the underworld, Spears realizes that the music industry is ‘the one’ for her. The courtship is eventually consummated in Las Vegas, where she marries her own image dressed in a pair of shackles.

25 Envision the revival of Britney as a return to a time where capitalistic structures weren’t much of a of a concern

an age where less reflection was accepted unaware that we were directed we dressed up sang along and got sincerely affected

it got to all of us even me who was overprotected an ideal a queen an identification erected I had no clue that was called objected

expanding from posters to music videos and covers into home footage of her and her lovers30

extending into paparazzi hunts the internet and social media but before that came the dating the misbehaving and finally the shaving

that no one suspected

yet it took only a minute then Britney was corrected declared incapable but rebounded to embodying the seemingly perfected

why is the image of this corrupted body still today so simultaneously degraded and respected?

26 I’m puzzled by a fascination amongst friends of mine people who wouldn’t otherwise want to preserve a woman in brine

a feminist deeply obsessed with Britney Spears is a type I’ve met ever so often over the years

how come I still today fall for the blond slim next-door girl at the ball?

despite all my current awareness I nevertheless swallow such unfairness

perhaps irony plays a crucial role it allows space to let go of control

irony creates a form of distance which allows approximation and coexistence with something which would otherwise be met with resistance

apparently the work it requires to build up new idols, images and ideals is designated to the court of appeal(s)

it seems more exhausting to build up new than sticking to the one convenient but harmful to you

it reminds me of a similar despair found in a typical everyday affair

where Western women end up complicit in exploitation rather than confronting our brothers with the domestic work now outsourced to others31

we’re making a knot around an unequal spell which is just as questionable as the blonde bombshell

27 is merely a pact

yet still I’m shamelessly amazed

and as research now shows that the emotion of guilt increases pleasure32 is that then too an accepted form of leisure?

perhaps that explains the joy in keeping Britney as a fossilised icon a steady star on an otherwise dark horizon

if every generation feels nostalgic for their lost youth an irreversible time a feeling arising to soothe?

then New Nostalgia must be a need to be an escapee

a nostalgic feeling of the present which only exists by virtue of the mythologized legend

New Nostalgia oh new oh new and where I fuelled by desire you are the one in lieu spoil myself with deliberate repression of that truth being a liar

of a simple romanticism of the past and thereby yet again the one I know that crashed indulge in the past and current illusionary item the new in you it’s the moment where I face is unabashed my own disgrace

and you’re a form of current engagement realize the point of saturation has been reached the same but in a different arrangement but in the need to feel released I cannot resist well aware of the fact that what once felt like the truest act because I wanna both blow and keep the flour in my mouth33

28 Britney There’s a distinct tune in the voice of Britney Spears on top of so tiny and pinching Britney filling in the thinness with quantity36 sharpened over the years it is clear that Britney forever sixteen a buffered baby cry ad nauseam is a body celebrated for extreme fictional pristine a handbag dog with popped eyes hissing amen and as a response it is only natural that her voice never broke roughly equals Oops! I did it again34 not only is Britney Spears a body aspiring to stay youthful she is even legally declared underage it sounds mechanic and inhuman pornographic and predestined like the show starring Truman35 so when did the sound of the word feminism become her sound too?

a highly compressed squeal is the Britney scream the tone of a female body claiming space? the sound of hyper sexualised, innocent Young-Girl aesthetics and if so does claiming space equal turning the volume up?

Britney is surely no barking gun dog like Sinéad O'Connor if women today have become louder surely no longhaired Greyhound like Celine Dion either then the question is if that’s rather an effect of everybody becoming louder?

her pitch is so nasal only the nose of a super-bred mini dog could produce it and if women really have become louder who’s then now doing all the silent work these women used to do? a voice teacher once stated that Britney uses unnatural and precarious forceful closure of the pharynx or is the voice of Britney Spears rather a chemically constructed lip-synced cry for with corresponding raised larynx help? and tongue root landing between sexy baby voice and major vocal fry a scream operating under a regime It’s a way to compensate for what isn’t a naturally lovely voice in a society where pain is only real when you get other people to believe in it and if no one else believes in it but you she isn’t just auto-tuned she’s multi-multi-layered your pain is called madness or hysteria or your own unfeminine inadequacy37 what we hear is Britney if truth is based on science while science is systematically executed more frequently on top of on the male body than the female Britney it is then logically harder for a woman to get other people to believe in her pain on top of left aside why that pain even arose in the first place38

29 So I want you to refuse the delicacy of roses because we say this rose is beautiful and when this rose is destroyed this rose is ugly or this rose is clumsy we say39

30 It’s loud. It’s extremely loud again. Long, loud, dragging sounds. Sounds so sensation of movement to the voice. Maybe they left the car? Increasing rapidly in saturated, as if someone was vacuum cleaning the inside of your head. And it’s dark. pitch black, a gibberish, obscure sentence is thrown out into the nightly setting from A dark, dank ambience. A swallowing gloom punctuated by stinging lights. A the brown haired person. mayhem. Yet, what it really is, is a silver car drifting next to a busy road after twilight. The car stops by a fuel tank and a brown haired person in men’s clothes leaves the Yi-gotja n’shojt-tja driver’s seat. They’re running. The atmosphere is hectic, but they transition from B to A in an obscurely determined manner. The car door slams behind them. Unrealistically A curse in Latin maybe, or a revengeful spell? Or perhaps the brown haired person is smooth. They’re in a hurry. There’s something ominous about the whole scene. As if simply speaking in tongues. they’re already ahead of themselves. As if the car door slammed before their exit. The car shines like nacre. Reflections on the windscreen sparkle like stars on a night sky. I am Louise Augustine Gleizes - better known as Augustine or A. You have surely never And then it appears - a bald figure. Left inside the car. A grey shirt, a hand placed on heard my lips part before, but you all know of me, even without knowing so. Because I a forehead. An exposed scalp. The bald figure looks up, the white of their eyes inhabit 75% of all women, as I have become the defining example of hysteria. 40 It is, I glistens. Then the thunder returns. Intense flashing light. One click at the time, believe, what you today would call psychosomatics. In 1880 I escaped the Salpêtrière building up, intensifying. Hospital in Paris, obscured as a man, and since then I have never been seen. Yet, I have thus now returned, to speak those words left unspoken. Unlike mine, the words of my How are you feeling, are you feeling okay? We’re concerned about you though. doctor, Jean-Martin Charcot, have become a defining character of your present world. He became one of the world’s leading neurologists. In fact, his student Sigmund Freud Fingers sliding from side to side of a forehead, covering eyes. The rest of the body called him “Napoleon of the neuroses” - and what he concurred was me. I was publicly remains stiff and silent. Head tiling to the side abruptly. The brown haired person has hypnotised on several occasions to display improper female thoughts. My flesh is an returned in an instant, now wearing a statement t-shirt saying, I’m Au-GUST-ine fuck emblem of what not only founded modern medicine, but likewise what constitutes the me over and I’ll bite. The bald figure has an unamused gaze, an expression barely social construct of abnormal behaviour. The angry woman. The deviant. But do not use seen outside the face of a teenager. The car disappears. The sounds lower, then the past to escape the present. Think not only twice, think a thousand times and start expand again rapidly. It’s murky and disorienting, hard to tell where we are. Whether from within. If a woman is angry, if a body is wretched in pain, do not look at the tainted it’s time or place which has shifted. The silver car is turning, turning many times, body. Look at what birthed the rage, what caused the body its strain. turning and turning as if on ice. Turning to the point of nausea. The driver is barely visible, while the bare skin of the bald figure stands out as a point of fixation. The car The brown haired person is muted by a painfully distinct, hollow, audible vibration. Still speeds up followed by a few blazing flashes. Then eventually congeals into pitch black, the sound penetrates sharply and is double-edged. First the deep hollow blackness. sound hitting right in the guts. There’s something unreal about it, somewhat too effective and painful. A deep exhale with a vocal intonation, comparable to Serena Get back into your cars, please guys. Williams in a tennis match, is layered below the hollow sound. But rather than a sound of strength and triumph, this sound seems to originate from pain and anger. The voice of the brown haired person sounds from the blackout. A desperate tone, The voice of the brown haired person returns. begging, as if predicting an affliction. Up and down, right and left blends together. The voice is heightened, it’s beyond desperation now. Distress and agony. There’s a

31 You say she looks like a man now? I blame her nothing for that desire. Don’t you see socks on bare skin sharpen the visibility of the gait in the dim setting. The bald figure every man of her type celebrated as a mad genius? To step on earth as a manly kind makes its way back into the silver car. The car door slams. The view oscillates to must certainly be a lighter affair, yet I would have imagined the 21st century to be more another car. A car window in particular. A crack in the glass of the car. Some bent advanced. You never stopped exhibiting mad women. You just moved the show, from metal curves. hospitals to the grocery-store checkout line. If anything, it’s easier than ever to spectate the freak show.41 A bad mother? The biggest crime a woman can commit - apart from Rehab! not becoming a mother at all. However, what you fail to see is that you’re looking in the Wooahhahahah daamn that’s where she gotcha umbrella yeah. wrong direction. It is because what has been created is a ‘burn out society.’ And within that, achievement and perfection is what counts. You need corrupted bodies. Corrupted A finger points at a dent on the side of the car, moving back to the crack in the car bodies to tower above, corrupted bodies to teach what is wrong and what is right. And window. A car alarm bleeps loudly, whilst a smoking man pulls up his t-shirt from those corrupted bodies display what will come upon the one who defies. And I shiver by behind. Head bent down, hidden behind his torso. Two hands and a cigarette hold the thought of what I know is yet to come upon this baldheaded figurine. By breaking the the t-shirt up. Red light-circles appear psychedelically on the bare skin, while a small rules of femininity, she confirms that femininity is a necessary containment structure. That red line across the back turns visible. Hit me, baby, one more time. 42 if you took the chains off, women like me and her would run amok. Yes, to have a rule, you need rule-breakers. So here you have us in flesh and in spirit.

The air turns caustic as a hard winter night. A piercing screech arises from the depth of resentment, like an animal crashing its cage as to break out of imprisonment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-ekVoiu190 Ally, do it for me, because I have no muscle strength left in this wrecked body. Blow a sword for me, for why should I not answer to the violence and injustice put upon me? If a man is aggressive it is only natural. Our time to be loud and punch has come. Do it for me at least and it will set me free from my captivity.

A sharp, metallic sound cuts through the air. Crisp and shattering. A flashlight momentarily reveals the bald figure beside a car. Shouting. Everything returns to darkness. Chaotic movements. A sign with red letters spelling Jiffy Lube Motor Oil reveals the contour of the bald figure crossing in front of the sign.

Fuck you, fuck yourself.

Moving further into the illumination from Jiffy Lube, the bald figure’s peculiar gait becomes visible. For every step, the figure stretches out the front of the foot, like the pace of a dressage-trained horse. Feet slightly hovering above the ground. White

32

33 34 Endnotes

1 Coscarelli, Joe & Kovaleski, Serge F. Is Britney Spears Ready To Stand On Her Own?. New York Times.

2 Schillaci, Sophie. Britney Spears Pours On Cheese (And Glitter) For ‘Piece of Me’ Las Vegas Kickoff. MTV News.

3 Spanos, Brittany. #FreeBritney: Understanding the Fan-led Britney Spears Movement. Rolling Stones.

4 Coscarelli, Joe & Kovaleski, Serge F. Is Britney Spears Ready To Stand On Her Own?. New York Times.

5 Penny, Laurie. Meat Market: Female Flesh Under Capitalism. Introduction Branded Bodies, ebook. Original quote: Whatever our age, race, physiotype and social status, women’s bodies are punished and policed. We are bombarded every day with countless thousands of messages informing us that we do not look young enough, slim enough, white enough and willing enough, messages that come to us subtly and not so subtly, through film, television, advertising, print media and casual acquaintance, messages from which there is no reprieve.

6 Tiqqun. A preliminary theory of the Young-Girl. p. 41. Original quote: The Young-Girl does not perceive the passage of time any more than she is moved by its “consequences." Otherwise, how else could she speak of ageing with such indignation, as though it were a crime committed against her?

7 Tiqqun. A preliminary theory of the Young-Girl. p. 36. Original quote: The Young-Girl wears the mask of her face.

8 Tiqqun. A preliminary theory of the Young-Girl. p. 63. Original quote: Seduction is an aspect of social labor: that of the Young-Girl. The Young-Girl's impotence or frigidity concretely manifest that her own erotic power is detached from her and autonomized to the point of dominating her. When the Young-Girl giggles, she's working.

9 Oasis. Don’t Look Back In Anger. 1996, refrain. Original quote: So Sally can wait / She knows it's too late as she's walking on by / My soul slides away / But don't look back in anger / Don't look back in anger / I heard you say.

10 Pavlovian Dog refers to Pavlovian or classical conditioning, which is a learning procedure in which a biologically potent stimulus (e.g. food) is paired with a previously neutral stimulus (e.g. a bell). It also refers to the learning process that results from this pairing, through which the neutral stimulus comes to elicit a response (e.g. salivation) that is usually similar to the one elicited by the potent stimulus. In Pavlov’s initial experiments, dogs were fed immediately following the sound of a ringing bell. Over time the dogs were conditioned to salivate at the sound of the bell despite the absence of the food. (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_conditioning)

35 11 Perniola, Mario. The Sex Appeal of the Inorganic: Philosophies of Desire in the Modern World. p. 45. Original quote: A nice dress seems, in any case, the promise if a beautiful body. The fact that the promise is kept or not, that the dress anticipates or hides, is secondary with respect to the false evidence of a connection between beauty and sexuality.

12 Shakira. Whenever, wherever. 2001, third verse. Original quote: Lucky that my lips not only mumble / They spill kisses like a fountain / Lucky that my breasts are small and humble / So you don't confuse them with mountains.

13 Quote by Marilyn Monroe, undated.

14 Tiqqun. A preliminary theory of the Young-Girl. p. 65. Original quote: The Young-Girl is both production and factor of production, that is, she is the consumer, the producer, the consumer of producers, and the producer of consumers.

15 Doyle, Sady. Trainwreck - The Women We Love To Hate, Mock And Fear … And Why. p. 79. Original quote: The degrading, degraded female images are really aimed at you: Yes, you, the nice, normal girl trying to figure out how to behave in public. We give you a constant stream of images and a whole lot of very good reasons to play by the rules and never, ever let the act slip.

16 Torches of Freedom is a term coined by psychoanalyst A. A. Brill when describing the natural desire for women to smoke. The term was later used by Edward Bernays (1891-1995) who was an Austrian-American pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda, highly influenced by the theories of his uncle Sigmund Freud. In 1929 Bernays launched a campaign to encourage women to smoke in public despite social taboos. Bernays hired women to march while smoking their torches of freedom in the Easter Sunday Parade of 1929, using cigarettes as a symbol of emancipation and equality with men. The event caused major press attention and led to a significant increase in smoking amongst women. (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays)

17 Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) was an English writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights, who died of childbed fever after giving birth to her daughter Marry Shelley. Wollstonecraft is best known for her book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack education. She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason. (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Wollstonecraft)

18 An example of the critique Mary Wollstonecraft received from other politically engaged women at her time, can be found in Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: A Sourcebook by Adriana Craciun. On p. 56 the journalist and political economist Harriet Martineau is quoted: Mary Wollstonecraft was, with all her powers, a poor victim of passion, with no control over her own peace, and no calmness or content except when the needs of her individual nature were satisfies.

19 Spears, Britney. Gimme More. 2007, opening line.

20 Quote by Margaret Wolfe Hungerford, 1878.

36 21 Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. chapter 3, ebook. Original quote: Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object – and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.

22 Blake, William. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. p. 7.

23 Grimm, Jacob & Wilhelm. Rapunzel. p. 85. Original quote: In her anger she clutched Rapunzel’s beautiful tresses, wrapped them twice around her left hand, seized a pair of scissors with the right, and snip, snap, they were cut off, and the lovely braids lay on the ground.

24 Spears, Britney. I Wanna Go. 2011, refrain. Original quote: Shame on me / To need release / Uncontrollably.

25 Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. p. 113. Original quote: All men hate the wretched; how, then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things!

26 Kant, Immanuel. Critique of the Power of Judgment. quoted in: Han, Byung-Chul. Saving Beauty. chapter 8 The Ideal of Beauty, ebook. Original quote: The moral surplus value of beauty also accounts for the ‘ideal of beauty’2 which Kant distinguishes from the ‘normal idea of beauty’. The normal idea of beauty is a species-specific norm.3 A shape appears beautiful if it conforms to this norm, and ugly if it altogether deviates from it.

27 B. F. Skinner (1904 –1990) was an American psychologist, behaviourist, author, inventor, and social philosopher, who developed the basic principals of operant conditioning, which is a type of associative learning process through which the strength of a behaviour is modified by reinforcement or punishment. (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._F._Skinner)

28 Reference to the book Tell Them I Said No (2016) by Martin Herbert, in which the author considers various artists who have withdrawn from the art world or adopted an antagonistic position toward its mechanisms.

29 Spears, Britney. Born To Make You Happy. 1999, refrain.

30 In 2005 the American reality TV show Britney and Kevin: Chaotic aired on UPN. The show starring Britney Spears and her then-husband Kevin Federline, chronicles the relationship between the two. Heavily criticised by critics, the series was considered too explicit and a career suicide for Spears. All chapter titles and introduction lines refer to an episode of the reality show. (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britney_and_Kevin:_Chaotic)

31 Penny, Laurie. Meat Market: Female Flesh Under Capitalism. chapter 4 Dirty Work, ebook. Original quote: Sadly, the trench warfare that currently has men terrified into refusing housework and women longing to rid themselves of it is pernicious enough that very many women would rather be complicit in the exploitation of other, poorer women than confront their own partners.

37 32 Robson, David. Psychology: Why Does Guilt Increase Pleasure?. BBC Future.

33 Direct translation of the Danish idiom at blæse og have mel i munden equating to the English you cannot have it both ways.

34 Spears, Britney. Oops!…I Did It Again. 2000, refrain. Original quote: Oops, I did it again / I played with your heart, got lost in the game / Oh baby, baby / Oops, you think I'm in love / That I'm sent from above / I'm not that innocent.

35 The Truman Show is a 1998 American science fiction comedy about the fictional character Truman Burbank who is adopted and raised by a corporation inside a simulated television show revolving around his life.

36 Brodesser-Akner, Taffy. How Britney Spears went to Vegas and became a feminist role model. Medium.

37 Wolf, Naomi. The Beauty Myth - How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women. p. 254. Original quote: Pain is real when you can get other people to believe in it. If no one believes it but you, your pain is madness or hysteria or your own unfeminine inadequacy. Women have learned to submit to pain by hearing authority figures—doctors, priests, psychiatrists—tell us that what we feel is not pain.

38 In a 2014 report, researchers at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston concludes that despite progress during the past 20 years, women still have not achieved equity in biomedical and health outcomes investigations.

39 Stein, Gertrude. Sacred Emily. 1913. Original quote: Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.

40 Doyle, Sady. Trainwreck - The Women We Love To Hate, Mock And Fear … And Why. p. 72.

41 Doyle, Sady. Trainwreck - The Women We Love To Hate, Mock And Fear … And Why. p. 77. Original quote: We never stopped exhibiting these women; we just moved the show, from the hospitals to the grocery-store checkout line. If anything, it’s easier than ever to attend. You had to pay a penny to visit Bedlam, but you can visit Perez Hilton for free.

42 Spears, Britney. …Baby One More Time. 1998, refrain.

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