American Gothic
Britney, The Beckhams and introducing: The Bottom Shelf!
Sad
There have been a lot of takes on the Britney Spears memoir The Woman in Me since it came out last month and I have been reading them all! I want to start by linking three of my favourite essays on the memoir. I’ll also say if you like podcasts or audiobooks, I highly recommend listening to the audiobook of The Woman in Me, read by Michelle Williams. As the style of the book is highly conversational in tone, it works better as an audio piece imo.
spoke about the generational trauma in Spears memoir wrote about Spears identity and struggles as a mother when she was never allowed to be anything but a teenage girl in the public eye
I also liked
discussion of Spears hair as her autonomy and conformity to beauty norms as a condition of her freedom
I keep returning to how gothic The Woman in Me came across as. Spears, trapped for thirteen years in the conservatorship by her father, threatened with loss of access to her children by her father and ex-husband, forced to work to make money to support them, not allowed to make a single creative choice of her own, unable to date or maintain the friendships she wanted to, controlled down to what she ate (her father only let her eat chicken and vegetables for two straight years), not allowed access to her own money to such an extent that her credit cards would be declined, forcibly institutionalised, isolated, forced on lithium by private doctors outside of any kind of hospital system accountability who were working for her father. All while she lives in a big LA mansion, she’s being drained for life by a vampiric family, a prisoner no one can hear scream because the world at large has decided she’s crazy. She was the mad woman locked in the attic while everyone feasted in the halls below, rich off the dowry she provided.
A friend who read the memoir texted me, “I knew her conservatorship was going to be bad, but I didn’t realise it was going to be this bad.” Her father, a person she said she’d trust less with her well being and finances than a stranger off the street, told her, when the conservatorship was enacted, “I’m Britney Spears now.” I mean, if you wrote that into a novel someone would be like, take it out, it’s too on the nose. All of this echos the life of Spears paternal grandmother, Jean, who her grandfather institutionalised and who was also put on lithium. Jean killed herself on the grave of the child she lost shortly before being committed once she was out of the hospital. Her grandfather went on to institutionalise, I believe, three of his other wives.
I don’t remember what I thought of Spears in the aughties independently of what media coverage was conveying. I loved her music (still do— pure cotton candy pop), and was rapt over any developments with her personal life, it was entertaining— wow, how’d she become such a mess??? I quit smoking by rewarding myself at the end of each week with a trashy magazine covering celeb gossip— mostly Britney, Paris, Lindsay Lohan. I wasn’t particularly disturbed by how these women were treated at the time. I thought it was the price of their fame. I didn’t think about how fame harmed Britney Spears, trapped her, made her vulnerable to people in her life who would use her, I was carried along by the narrative that she was wild, immature, out of control, had lost it. “I don’t remember ever agreeing to be seventeen for the rest of my life,” Britney says in her memoir. I look back and the coverage of her seems insane— did we really criticise her for being “fat” when she released Blackout? Why was there such an attachment to her being virginal, Christian, pure, her “corruption” equalling the downfall of all good girls, when she had never purported to be any of these things? In the memoir she relays that she lost her virginity at 14, as well as the fact that she and Justin Timberlake shared a home together in Miami for several years, something that was never reported on. Instead, she and Justin were presented as two squeaky clean kids who were maybe going to lose their virginity to each other on their wedding night. And then, once their relationship ended, Britney was an unfaithful tramp who broke his heart (definitely not what happened! The Justin stuff revealed in her memoir is widely covered elsewhere).
Of the many devastating parts of this memoir, I’ve found myself reflecting often on the period of time when Britney famously shaved her head. I remember when it happened, the breathless coverage of how she’d sadly, simply, gone insane one day. She was a white trash dummy who ruined her chances with perfect Justin, had two babies with low rent sleaze Kevin Federline and now was a mental case. Too bad, so sad. Of her relationship with Kevin, of his appeal, she says that he would hold her for as long as she wanted to be held. When I heard that, I got it. I would marry that man too. She says to go look at their wedding pics, that you could see that she wanted to spend the rest of her life with him, that it is shining out of her face.
But Kevin lost interest in her after locking her down with marriage and kids, interested instead in pursuing his own music career, disappearing for long stretches and becoming impossible to get ahold of. They divorced. Of the criticism towards Kevin post-divorce (she recounts the VMAs that year where they showed Kevin in a coffin thrown overboard a ship) Spears says she did not feel supported by this. “He is still the father of my children,” she says. Kevin wanted more money from her post-divorce and things got ugly, with him threatening to take the kids away, at which point she said she felt she was losing her mind. The paparazzi she describes as a zombie horde waiting for her outside of every door. So. She doesn’t know when she will see her children again, the youngest is not even two years old, and locks herself in a bathroom with them and is forcibly separated when Kevin calls the police. It is at this point, bulldozed by Kevin, the paparazzi, recently divorced, with fear of never seeing her children again, she shaves her head. She recalls another mother recently telling her, “if someone tried to stop me from seeing my kids, I’d burn down a city.” She is 26 years old. Instead of being treated with empathy, instead of those she loves trying to help and support her through this, she’ll spend the next 13 years with the legal autonomy of a toddler, continually threatened with loss of access to her children unless she sings, performs, conforms, stays silent, by those same people who were supposed to love her. Those same people who are selling books about her, doing interviews about her, building careers off her labor.
Spears shaving her head makes so much sense. It was an act of self harm, of making her outsides match her insides, of physically showing the world how she felt, her rage, her impotence, her inability to smile through the awful things she was living through, to be someone she was not. It’s the act of someone who has run out of road. Why did we all just gape? Why did it become a Halloween costume? The loneliness of this woman must be so profound. In the memoir Spears addresses her controversial Instagram which many see as proof of her poor mental health, where she posts nudes, among other things. She says she’s an artist and it’s her place to be “weird.” That she was never allowed social media before and that after so many years of everyone photographing her body, she finds freedom in photographing herself, posting what she thinks looks good. I check her Instagram sometimes and I have to admit, sometimes what I see concerns me. But then I also think, who am I? At what point have any of us ever really been able to see this woman?
Famous
I am not a sports person by any stretch of the imagination but I am interested in fame and culture, so I watched Beckham on Netflix, as no one can deny David Beckham as a cultural force. Also, Posh Spice, who I’ve always loved, was a major draw. I was happy, at first, to see she was so prominently featured in it and then gradually troubled.
Beckham is an interesting docuseries that is accessible for the football illiterate among us, explaining Beckham’s athletic prowess in a way that makes you cheer for him and develop affection for the familial camaraderie of sports teams. Beckham himself is affable and a little weird, there is something almost childlike to him and he comes off as an endearing, even humble, man. He and Victoria are clearly devoted to each other, and I did not realise they’d been together since they were about 21. They both say how they didn’t have many close friends or romantic relationships until finding each other. They are also a bit over each other, in an agreeable way any couple who has been together for a decade+ will be familiar with. They like to sass each other with Victoria at one point ribbing David by saying he’d love to take a bath but the water would probably just part for him.
What bothered me was the docuseries implied culpability of Victoria in every one of Beckham’s professional failures. Just this smirking little undertone that maybe a more docile match might have been better for Beckham. Over and over the ground is trod of “why aren’t you a fan of football, Victoria? Why don’t you care more?” and again and again she replies, “I am not into football, I’m into David. I’d support him no matter what he does but no, I am not willing to make football the centre of my life.” It’s endlessly inferred that if Victoria was a good or typical football girlfriend/wife, a jersey chaser, who would happily devote herself to her man and his team with complete subservience to his/its needs, Beckham might have been…what? Even more successful? Lol. I mean, how successful can one person even be? This man is the genetic lottery winner of all genetic lottery winners.
His greatest professional failing, a World Cup disaster, which led to two years of constant harassment and death threats, is heaped upon her because she told Beckham she was pregnant with their first child the night before the match. The hand wringing! Why O why didn’t you wait, Posh, to tell him until the game was over??? It’s like, uhhhh because it’s their life together, because it’s a big deal and she was happy and wanted to share it with him when she found out as anyone would? Are you kidding? Beckahm’s Manchester United coach dislike of Victoria is oft touched upon, that she wasn’t a “football girlfriend” who was willing to sink into the shadows of Manchester United. Does it matter to the docuseries that Beckham himself says that one of the reasons he loves Victoria is that she’s independent, ambitious and not that into football? Not especially. The implication is that she could have been doing more, by being less, to support him better.
Like Britney Spears, it is hard to recall my opinion of Victoria Beckham outside the media portrayal of her at the height of her fame. I clearly remember hearing she was “too posh to push” and scheduled c-sections for all her kids because she didn’t want to gain weight in the final weeks of pregnancy. What an insane thing to think anyone would really do! But that’s what was believed of her at the time. That’s what was reported. She gets an opportunity to address some of this in the docuseries. Like, of course she wasn’t “too posh to push”, and willing to threaten her unborn children’s lives by getting an unnecessary medical procedure, there were medical reasons she needed to deliver that way.
There is one moment in Beckham that will stick with me for a long time, a really frightening inside look at the horror (trauma?) of fame. It’s footage of David and Victoria from inside a car where they are pulling up to some event. David is driving the car, Victoria is in the back with a toddler age Brooklyn, their eldest son. Against all the windows a sea of people presses against the glass, knocking on windows, flashing cameras, crying out for David and Victoria. David has a frozen smile on his face so that anyone looking in will see him appearing appropriately obsequious to their attentions. Through his smile, he is talking to a distressed Brooklyn who is, understandably, very scared by the throngs pressing on the glass. “You’re ok, honey,” he’s saying, “remember, as long as you’re with me and Mummy you’re safe. Mummy’s got you.” Victoria is also trying to assure him that these crowds are not going to harm him, though the faces outside the car look as though they would happily eat all three of them. The car moves at a snail’s pace. Brooklyn whimpers in fear. The tension in the car is high. Eventually, the car slips through a gate and the crowds disappear, David and Victoria shudder in relief, telling Brooklyn what a good job he did. Watching it, I almost had an impulse to laugh, though it wasn’t funny, it was distressing, because why are things like this? Why is this one of the outcomes of our society? I felt a very deep mistake had been made somewhere along the way.
The Bottom Shelf
As much as I used to enjoy reading what celebs have in their bathroom cabinets, I’ve always been more interested in what my friends and everyday people I see and interact with use on their faces and bodies and why. Who doesn’t want a little peep behind the cabinet mirror, right? The Bottom Shelf seeks to sate this curiosity. It will feature a new person every time, a picture of their bathroom goodies and a short explanation of why they use what they do. If you’d like to be featured on The Bottom Shelf at some point in the future, just reply to this email or message me on Substack.
First up! Kate Horowitz’s bottom shelf.
Kate Horowitz is an essayist, poet, and science writer in Maine. Her work appears in national publications including The Atlantic, bitch magazine, Bright Wall/Dark Room, Rogue Agent, Doubleback Review, and many others. She likes moss and dancing and thunderstorms and little bats with big ears. She lives by the sea.
Find
on Substack where she writes Small Magic, a newsletter about writing, creating, & existing. She’s also online at katehorowitz.net and on Instagram @kate_swriting.
“The 12-step skincare regimen is never going to happen for me. I’m chronically ill and autistic, which (in my case) means that I need products that are easy to use, safe for sensitive skin, and tolerable from a sensory perspective. Most days I wash my face with Cetaphil soap, but sometimes I go wild and actually use the Tatcha Rice Wash that cost so much money. It does feel really nice. In the mornings I use Jack Black Double Duty moisturizer, which is super lightweight and has SPF. Vitamin E oil goes on my various surgery scars when I get out of the shower. I hate the feeling of oil on my skin, but this stuff smells like marzipan, so it gets a pass. On nights when I have the energy to bother, I use micellar water to cleanse my face and then apply the Cerave P.M. lotion. I am fortunate to not have much of an acne issue. When blemishes arise, I can usually get rid of them pretty quickly with either salicylic acid or a dab of benzoyl peroxide. Every so often I’ll try the lactic acid peel (a truly terrible idea for sensitive skin, by the way), but I never stick with it long enough to see a difference.”
I've been waiting for the Sad and Famous Britney memoir issue since the memoir was announced, and this was definitely worth the wait. Loved this, especially the Gothic analysis and your observations about the Beckham documentary's weird misogynist agenda.