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July 03, 2006
Not buying it.
I try very hard not to have an opinion about things that don't really matter at all to me. Things like Barry Bonds' steroid scandal, whether the penny is phased out, and Britney Spears are all low on my list.
Some days, I'm excellent at not caring one whit about these topics. Other times, I'm not very adept at batting these gnats out of my consciousness. I had one of these days recently. People who talk about these things are abuzz over Britney Spears' nude madonna portrait on the cover of Harper's. I think it's meant to evoke the Annie Leibovitz portrait of Demi Moore for the cover of Vanity Fair.
Britney's done this before, for Esquire magazine when she recreated (or retconned) an iconic shoot from the 60s featuring Angie Dickinson. When I showed the original photo to Liz recently, her eyebrows shot way up. "Damn," she said.
But when Britney does it, it's entirely different. Look at her face in this photo, and compare it to the woman she's aping:
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Who seems more self-possessed and aware of her sexual power, Angie Dickinson or Britney Spears? When I showed the former mouseketeer's take to Liz, she just pursed her lips.
Which woman presents her naked, pregnant self in a confident, classical pose, and which squats self-consciously? I know this is unkind, but Ms. Spears' photos look more like parodies than earnest homages, to my eye.
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As I said, I strive not to have an opinion about these things, but sometimes, I just can't believe what we're expected to consume with our popular culture. I'll spare you the creaky, "in my day..." tirade, but I just don't feel today's luminaries really exemplify glamour, beauty or other elusive (and I grant you, contrived) star qualities.
Perhaps we can next look forward to Ashlee Simpson cutting a Nina Simone tribute album.
Posted by Your Protagonist at July 3, 2006 04:25 AM