Sorry for the delay folks – work, illness, work, problems signing in here, work, etc. – you know how it is.
I have also been weighing the Britney and Anna Nicole situations. Tragic is the word that comes to mind for both situations.
But, not in the way you may think. While I would not wish ill will toward either woman, I am also a firm believer in “you reap what you sow”, in other words, karma.
The true tragedy is that these two women’s lives, and in one case a death, are microcosms of what is going on with many of our young women in our society of late.
Both Brit and Anna Nicole started their careers out using their “innocent but sexy” qualities each had. Brit became a household name when she flitted around in her provocative Catholic school girl uniform in the music video for “… Baby One More Time”. Girls as young as seven were eating up what Brit had to offer, dancing along to her music videos on MTV with Brit-matching midriff shirts and micro miniskirts. She was a self-proclaimed virgin, having fun growing up – nothing too dirty, slutty, or hair-raising.
Anna Nicole, nee Vickie Lynn Hogan, began her career as Playboy model, claiming she wanted to be the “next Marilyn Monroe”. The former Red Lobster waitress parlayed her 1993 Playmate of the Year moniker into a series of respectable modeling contracts. Despite getting her start at Playboy (which, by the way, is the only classy gentleman’s nude magazine), Anna had great aspirations and she was nothing to be ashamed of at the time.
Both women started out with good intentions, wanting to display their sexuality in a strong fashion like their WWB idols Madonna and Marilyn Monroe respectively. They courted the public and paparazzi’s attention and love to help nourish and further their careers. But a funny thing happened on the way to the pop culture stratosphere…
The thing is, dear readers, is that 1) you have to be careful what you wish for and 2) how you obtain said dream. Both women, as their lives and careers went on, has to go to further lengths in order to keep the public’s adoration and center stage in the media. Why? Because both women here did not possess the talent that their idol does/did.
No one helped Madonna become the icon she is today. Yes, she has a manager, etc. now. But, before she was a legend, she hustled the streets of NYC for every break she could. She was and is involved in every decision in her career. As she pushed the envelope while her career grew, she did it in a provocative way that was a character, not what her private persona is/was. She experimented, trying to demonstrate what a WWB (see previous post) is – intelligently discovering her sexuality and place in the world, saying that what she did was not necessarily right for everyone.
Marilyn, like Ms. Smith, began her career at Playboy. She wanted to become more than the stereotypical dumb blonde, so she sought out Lee Strasburg, one of the premiere acting coaches. Marilyn left Hollywood to learn to be better at her craft. She also developed her own production company, something very few Hollywood women had in the 1960’s. She also was a WWB.
Now, both Brit and Anna Nicole went off the road somewhere in the recent past to make them the ludicrous media stories they are today. Britney pushed the sexual envelope, but she pushed it with pre-pubescent girls in her audience (no one ever saw a 7 year old at a Madonna concert, at least not that I am aware of). She pushed sex for the sake of it because T&A sells records, products, etc. People tuned in to see what Britney would do or how little she was wearing, not for her singing or thought provoking lyrics.
Anna Nicole married a man more than twice her age for money. Making her the butt of many jokes. She made films, but instead of honing her craft, she produced and starred in anything that came her way. Quick! Can you name one Anna Nicole film? See, it isn’t easy…. She spent more time in court than anything.
Brit and Anna’s big misstep was their reality shows, Britney and Kevin: Chaotic and The Anna Nicole Show respectively. They erased the line between public and private personas. They literally let it all hang out on television; the “innocent but sexy” morphed into “straight raunchy and rude”. Because of this, many naive and/or uneducated people felt it was cool to be doing these things because celebrities are cool, these two women are celebrities, and therefore, it must be okay and cool.
With these shows, young girls felt it was okay to display sexual behavior of a 25+ year old. If you don’t believe me, read Middle School Girls Gone Wild editorial and see for yourself.
Brit and Anna were clearly crying out for help at this point. Yes, it is too late for Anna, but Brit needs a serious session or too with Dr. Joyce Brothers or someone. These women pushed and pushed things in the media that now, for the same level of attention, they needed to do these shows. Now, it has come out that both have/had to have sex in order to feel loved and when they don’t, they feel worthless, lonely, and anxious.
I see this in teenage girls. They cling tightly to a relationship, doing anything to make it “WOW!” as the media blitz of celebrities is everyday. They bend themselves in any direction to please their “man”, including having sex, oral and otherwise, in various public places such as school auditoriums and buses. And yes, this is sadly true. Some young girls are defiling themselves as Brit and Anna do/did to numb the pain, whether it be with drugs, alcohol, meaningless sex, tattoos, etc. Some follow Anna Nicole into a death too early all because they couldn’t live up to the hype.
Our society needs to begin to take a hard look inward and figure out where our young women are heading. Tragedy is where my friends. Because if we don’t do something soon, your local mall, the Mecca of teens, may begin to resemble a shady strip club from the Vegas strip.
Food for thought…
Peace
