Britney Spears’ performance Sunday night at the MTV Video Music Awards show was abysmal and that is putting it nicely. I’ve seen more professional dancing and singing in a Karaoke bar. I’ve read a number of reviews that say she looked like she was on drugs or this performance was in the wake of 3 days of hard partying. They say she looked bleary-eyed, sleepy, in a haze. I’ve seen the word zombie bandied about in a few places with reference to her behavior. The fact is that her profession is mainstream musical entertainer and in her latest gig, she was more unprofessional than this chick: Example

Those who criticize Spears for her terrible parenting, “The former Mouseketeer put her cartoon-like reasoning skills on display by driving off from a Malibu Starbucks with her four-month-old in her lap and one hand on the wheel, a display frowned upon even in Hollywood…Britney Spears is now officially under investigation for child abuse of her two young children by the L.A. Department of Children and Families. This is all after allegations of Britney attempting to whiten her children’s rotten teeth. Rotten you say? But the kids aren’t even two years old! Well this is what happens when you put soda in a bottle for your babies,” in light of just these two examples is also justified.

Spears doesn’t need me to defend her. She has lawyers and sycophants for that. However, one criticism that seems to be haunting Spears’ unprofessional performance at the 2007 VMA’s is that she looked fat.

”No one disputes that the troubled pop princess royally mangled her much-heralded comeback. But what about the nastiest comments of all — those about her body? “Lard and Clear,” read Monday’s headline in the New York Post. “The bulging belly she was flaunting was SO not hot,” wrote E! Online. And so on.”

Let us be clear, this is what people are debating constitutes as fat:
Example Example

Now I realize that much of this is based on the belief that female entertainers, especially in the pop realm are supposed to be rail thin. Spears was a lot of things at the VMA’s but rail thin was not one of them. However, if she is fat by any definition then most average females waddling about the malls of America are beyond morbidly obese.

That might actually be a true estimation but it is still not something I’m comfortable with. Spears’ terrible performance and the subsequent criticisms for her alleged portly shape brings us to a contradictory place in the endeavor to improve the self-image and esteem of average young women across the globe.

”EIGHT-year-old girls are being admitted to hospital suffering anorexia nervosa. One in 100 adolescent girls develop the disorder — the third most common chronic illness for adolescent girls, causing more deaths than any other psychiatric disorder…Research shows that many young women feel disgusted by their bodies. Saying they have low self-esteem is putting it mildly – they hate themselves.

Women’s Forum Australia has just published Faking It: The Female Image in Young Women’s Magazines, which explores these issues. A five-year study found that reading dieting advice in magazines was associated with skipping meals, smoking, vomiting and using laxatives in teenage girls.

Thin, sexualised and digitally enhanced images of women are linked with women’s experiences of poor body image, depression, anxiety and eating disorders. The images contribute to self-harming behaviours and performing worse at school.

A recent survey found a quarter of Australian teenage girls would get plastic surgery if they could and 2 per cent already had. The study of 4000 girls aged 11 to 18 found most were unhappy with their bodies. They are aspiring to unattainable, sexualised, digitally enhanced images of celebrities.” See this article for more.

So let me get this straight; poor self-image based on unrealistic visages of celebrities is partially causing girls to become anorexic at the tender age of 8 and instead of trying to recognize the problem so as to bring it under control, we instead lambaste this girl Example for being too big.

There isn’t a guy alive who digs chicks that would throw Brittney Spears out of the bed for eating crackers looking as she does now. There is not a girl or woman I know in my personal life who wouldn’t trade their current figure for Spears’ current condition in a heartbeat. In real life, nobody would call Spears fat unless they had a self-image mental health disorder themselves or were just trying to manipulate someone for domestic violence purposes.

The outpouring of malice and ill-intent directed at Spears may illicit laughs from those who love their celebrity gossip but this crap ricochets and hits innocent girls far and wide. No matter how many times parents, teachers and counselor’s tell girls in school that a healthy body is not one that looks emaciated but one with some weight, muscle and tone on it, none of these folks can measure up to the disabling power of an image of Britney Spears as she looks now with a headline that reads, “Lard and Clear.”

My question is this, does our need to tear down celebrities no matter what the context may be outweigh our duty to protect the most defenseless amongst us? Which is more important, killing Britney or saving countless young women from a life of negative consequences caused by poor self-image? I will tell you that it would appear now that we seem to care more about causing harm to people like Spears than we do care about our own. An exhibition like the one we are witnessing now with respect to Spears and her current shape will have a lasting on effect on young girls for years to come. It’s not tantamount to a traumatic assault but in a way it is more far reaching. By calling Spears fat and such and publishing this lie, and it is a lie because again, no girl who likes she does is fat per se, you damage millions of girls who live and die by the opinions of the mass media.

Spears can blame herself for the criticism she gets when her behavior elucidates it. However, despite those that think celebrities don’t owe their fans a certain amount of decorum and grace, when your fans are kids, you do owe it to them to conduct yourself with some common sense and dignity, for their own sake. They are paying your bills so it would be nice if you gave a damn about their health and well-being. By the same token, it would also be of huge benefit to population at large if people gave even the slightest consideration for children anyway. Bill Maher is wrong, it is all about the children. If you don’t like it, bring back adult only establishments that children aren’t exposed to.

As I’ve said many times on my show, America and probably the rest of world loves their sex, drugs, and cheap tabloids more than their children. Let’s face it, if this episode with Spears is any indication, America Hates Kids.

You can hear more about this and more this Sunday at 10:00 AM only on PC Live

Be Sociable, Share!