Ariana Brookes Brookes is a third-year
English student who mourns the loss of flannel and River Pheonix.
E-mail her at abrookes@ucla.edu.
Click Here for more articles by Ariana Brookes
Britney Spears is making 8-year-old girls bulimic. Well, my
friend says so, anyway. We were getting ready to go to sleep one
night when we unfortunately wandered into some dangerous territory,
otherwise known as a conversation. The conversation took an
interesting twist as Sarah, ever a feminist, started bashing
Britney Spears and pop music in general. According to her, the
focus on body image and sexuality in pop music is destroying our
society.
Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t swear by pop music.
If Britney Spears or *NSYNC comes on in the car I will unabashedly
sing along, but when it comes to my favorite bands, they are a lot
closer to Nirvana than Mandy Moore. That is just my personal taste
in music. I won’t sit here and praise the musical genius of
KIIS-FM, but I do think that there is a place for every kind of
music, as long as it serves some sort of purpose. Pop music is fun,
it makes people happy, and that is enough of a purpose for me. So,
I can’t help but get a little annoyed when people start going
off about pop music, pop princesses and their contribution to the
nearing of Armageddon.
Therefore, when Sarah started wildly gesturing to the Ani
DiFranco and P.J. Harvey posters on her wall, and telling me that
these are praiseworthy women of music, while Britney Spears and the
like are ruining our society, I couldn’t help but fight it
out with her. In her opinion, women like Britney Spears and
Christina Aguilera are sending horrible and irresponsible messages
to their young fans. She says that they are teaching girls to be
sexual at too young of an age and even goes so far as to say that
little girls are starving themselves because Britney Spears is too
thin. (Let me just add in here that Britney Spears is not that
thin.)
In her opinion, these young impressionables are looking to
Britney Spears as a role model, with disastrous results. After
arguing with Sarah for about a half an hour and getting nowhere, I
finally resorted to the only option I had left. I broke into a very
loud and very crudely sung 10-minute medley of Britney Spears,
Christina Aguilera, Mandy Moore and Jessica Simpson songs.
 Illustration by RACHEL REILICH/Daily Bruin Now I am
writing an article, however, so I have to be a little bit more
mature. Let’s look at who these women are. Why is it that
they are the target of such animosity? These are young women,
around 20 years of age. My age. They are talented and enthusiastic
performers, if debatably talented musicians. They are young,
beautiful, strong and charismatic pop singers, who bring to mind a
young singer in the ’80s to whom we now all bow down to as
the queen of pop. That’s right, her majesty, Madonna, who was
every bit as scandalous, and definitely more sexual than any of
these new acts are. And, yet, if someone said that Madonna was
ruining our society, they’d be hung. And hey, guess what?
Madonna sleeps in Britney Spears t-shirts.
The latest gossip has been about Britney Spears’
striptease-esque dance at the MTV Music Awards. OK, I’ll
agree, that was delightfully scandalous. And yes, she does dress
sexy most of the time. Who cares? I am the same age and I dress
however I want to. If anyone tried to tell me how to dress or how
to express my sexuality, I’d lose it. Spears is an adult, and
it is her freedom to dress and perform in whatever way she feels
comfortable. People like to deny her this right by saying that she
is supposed to be a role model for pre-teen girls. Why is this so?
Because this is largely what her fan base is composed of.
Pre-teen girls like pop music. Britney Spears makes pop music.
Am I missing something, or when did Britney Spears sign on to be
these girls’ mothers? It is not her job to dress the way a
12-year-old girl should dress. She isn’t 12, she’s 20.
It is the jobs of the girls’ parents to tell their young
daughters how they are allowed to dress. I loved Tiffany when I was
eight, but that doesn’t mean my parents ran out and bought me
a bunch of tacky denim jackets.
In addition, Britney Spears has a great body and I say good for
her for taking care of herself. If that perpetuates the
media’s view of beauty as being thin, well what can you do?
If Britney Spears gains 20 pounds, it won’t solve the
world’s problems or bring an end to anorexia and low self
esteem.
When it gets down to it, in my opinion, if seeing Britney Spears
sing on MTV is enough to make an 8-year-old bulimic, then our
society is suffering from a lot more than just an overload of pop
fantasy. I mean, come on! Where are these kids’ parents? Do
we now just hand over children to be raised by the media? I liked
Tiffany, my parents bought me her tape, and I used to watch her
music videos. I did not, however, think she was God.
My parents did their best to instill in me a little bit of self
worth and individuality. They were the people I saw every day. They
were my strongest influences because they didn’t leave the
television to parent me. As a result, I did not look at Tiffany,
measure up her figure, and decide to stop eating. Sure, she was an
influence; after all, she was cool. Here was this 16-year-old girl
singing in the mall, surrounded by adoring fans. She was not,
however, the dominating influence in my life. If anything, I was
much more influenced by the 15-year-old cheerleader who baby-sat
for me.
My little sister is 12. She is about as typical a young pre-teen
girl as it gets. She is trendy, thinks she is grown up and swears
by pop music. She loves Britney Spears. Yet my parents do not try
and discourage this. And lo and behold, my sister has a healthy
body image. Why? Because my parents did not teach my sister to base
her worth on the image of the latest pop singer. They taught her to
love herself and work from there. And thus my sister is able to
watch TRL every afternoon without gagging in the toilet or
performing stripteases on the cafeteria tables. And it’s not
just my sister. She is not the exception.
In truth, the pop-induced bulimia horror stories are not as
mainstream as people like my friend make them out to be. I am not
saying that the media isn’t a strong influence. It is. What I
am saying is that if children are indeed suffering from such a lack
of self esteem, the media should not be easily targeted as the
scapegoat.
For God’s sake people, take a little responsibility. If
your child is so easily influenced by something like a music video,
something is wrong! Low self esteem is a problem, but the solution
is not to do away with celebrities and beautiful people. The answer
is not for Britney Spears to don baggy jeans and a sweatshirt. The
answer is to teach your child the difference between fantasy and
reality. Oh yeah, and to remind them that they are only 12 years
old.
I am not offering any solutions to the problem of the
media’s influence. I am not even saying that Britney Spears
makes the most responsible choices when it comes to how she
presents herself to her fans. What I am saying is that before you
point a finger at pop singers and try to blame them for the
world’s problems, keep in mind that the issue is not as cut
and dried as it seems. Unless we are willing, as a society, to
completely get rid of celebrities and fashion, there will always be
beautiful and sexual people in the limelight. How you let those
images affect you, however, is up to you.