The Jekyll and Hyde legacy of Britney Spears : Bollywood News

The Jekyll and Hyde legacy of Britney Spears

Mumbai, Nov 16 : Britney Spears is one of the very few pop performers who can be liked by both a little girl and her father - for completely opposite reasons.

To the little girl, Spears’ image presents emancipation and wanting to become a more aware young woman. To the older man, she is the innocent girl who is unaware that she is turning him on.

Spears has played on this ambiguous persona in her very short career, but in the more recent past she seems to have completely lost the game plan.

She married her childhood friend Jason Alexander and got it annulled after just 55 hours. She then married her back up dancer Kevin Federline, had two kids with him in two years, and just recently announced they were separating.

A few months ago, before going on a show, she threw a tantrum at her entourage and got herself ready but ended up wearing the most atrocious outfit, chewed gum while interviewed and got derided by the press thereafter.

Things got worse when child safety advocates slammed her for securing her infant child unsafely in the car seat as she sped away to avoid the paparazzi. Then there was that kiss with Madonna, ok, maybe that didn’t hurt her.

It seems everything Spears has done has been one huge fling of a spear into her dwindling career.

More recent reports state that Spears is staging a comeback - both musically and image wise. Whatever trajectory her comeback will take, it definitely marks the end of one phase of her life. Even if she never sang another song, Spears has a legacy. She will forever be remembered for marketing the virgin-whore image in mainstream pop culture.

Spears is all about sex. Her genius lies is the fact that to a large extent she made it look so innocent that she got away with it.

Her first popular image was when she burst on to the scene in pigtails, a catholic schoolgirl uniform and a hint of innocent pink shade on her lips. She was supposedly a 17-year-old girl who had always been good girl but was now becoming bad.

In one of her most controversial and suggestive songs she purrs, “Hit me baby one more time.” That loaded statement carried a sense of flirtation, slight begging and playing a hard to get tease. And oh, she was wearing a very short skirt.

She soon sold around nine million copies in the States alone and was now slowly becoming a huge cultural phenomenon. Her sexuality was there for all too see but many little girls were still not aware enough to pick up on that whereas grown men surely could.

On her first album cover, she sits on the floor wearing a little red shirt in a denim mini skirt and suggestively revealing more of the underneath. As her fame propelled her more into the mainstream, she subtly began to morph.

In concerts she pranced around in what seemed to be a very wet pink shirt, or a strapped white dress or even a see through top. And then to top it all, as if to say she had come to the end of the metamorphosis, she posed on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine in nothing but a bra and panties.

But even here she wasn’t an all out sexual being. She was instead cuddling and holding a silk pillow.

She became a very public poster girl for virginity saying she would have sex only with her husband. She supposedly even had a “Bible Book”.

In her interview with Rolling Stone, she gave some sort of indication that she was aware of the strange dichotomy of her image along age lines and said, “I don’t think about it. I don’t want to be part of someone’s Lolita thing. It kind of freaks me out.”

It seems like she doesn’t want to face the reality of people’s perceptions of her. She is more comfortable just being herself without knowing the full impact of what she is presenting of herself.

But young girls, who are unaware of the complexity of the Spears’ image, still have an opinion and some range to the more innocent like comments on her physical image.

Jagruti Santra, a 16-year-old student appreciates her work ethic. She says: “I think Spears is genetically meant to be fat, but she must be working out really hard to stay thin especially after she gave birth twice in two years.”

So, the world now waits Spears’ comeback. It’s a bit like turning to a new page. We can only guess what Spears 2.0 will look like, even as we acknowledge the short legacy she has built.

She is innocent but knows it all. Does it all, but doesn’t know what exactly she is doing.