This is how much I love Britney Spears: In 1998, my infant sister cooed her first words from the back seat of my mom's Ford, and they were, "Bee Spears ... Bee Spears..."
Where did she pick that up? That would be from me, gyrating in the living room to "Baby One More Time" while wearing a shirt tied above my belly button. I was 5 years old. If there was a time before Britney Spears existed as the princess of pop, I can't remember it. So when I heard that my friend Rachel Goldberg — the only person I knew who loves Britney more than I do — was hosting workshops analyzing Britney Spears as a feminist icon out of her apartment in Brooklyn, I had to go.
"Britney Spears 101: From Humble Beginnings to Pop Icon" was offered through Sidetour, the event-booking company for which Rachel and her fellow Britney scholar Suri Ratnatunga both work. (You can now purchase tickets for upcoming workshops here.) The description read:
Sequin-spangled genius; tabloid-featured hack; feminist icon — the world has a lot of opinions on Britney Spears ... Over the course of 90 minutes, you'll enjoy a themed presentation as Rachel and Suri put Britney's career into a broader social context, training an incisive eye on the trajectory, cultural reverberations, and infamous red jumpsuits of the Princess of Pop.
I purchased a $20 ticket to attend on a Saturday afternoon.
Because I am not one for subtlety, I arrived in a white button-down tied above my pierced navel, a pleated schoolgirl skirt, and braided pigtails. I was pleased to see that a couple of the 10 other twentysomething women in attendance were also wearing Britney-themed T-shirts. (Sadly, no one showed up in a red pleather jumpsuit.) The hosts offered beer, vodka, and song-themed snacks — "Gimme S'mores" cookies, "Don't Let Me Be the Last to Nachos," and a "Hold It Against Meat" veggie platter.
Before the lecture began, we each introduced ourselves and shared our favorite memory of Britney. Suri told a story about bonding with an Italian exchange student over their mutually beloved pop star despite a total language barrier. One woman explained that she wanted to be Britney ... until she realized she was a lesbian and just wanted to date her. Then Rachel and Suri launched into a breathless timeline of Britney's life, reeling off her birthday and hometown faster than they could probably say their own.
The class was jammed with fascinating tidbits that will probably come in handy the next time you're at bar trivia. Did you know that the music video "Baby One More Time" was filmed on the same set as Grease's Rydell High, and that the love interest was actually played by Britney's first cousin? (Ew.) Did you know that she wrote a (ridiculously good) album in 2005, but her label denies its existence? Did you know that Britney is the empress of a fragrance empire that sells a bottle of perfume every 15 seconds, raking in $1.5 billion to date?
I was totally enraptured. Rachel and Suri weren't glossing over the tough stuff either. They don't deny that Britney probably cheated on Justin Timberlake. They accept that she let Kevin Federline's groomsmen walk down the aisle wearing white tracksuits emblazoned with the word "pimp" on the back. They played a clip of her cringeworthy performance at the 2007 VMAs and gave an in-depth analysis of the head-shaving incident. Being a Britney fan — or a "Britnatic," as they call it — means embracing that your icon isn't always perfect.
On the surface, it can be hard to see how Britney can be a feminist icon. She's been marketed as little more than a sex symbol. Thanks to court-ordered conservatorship, her father controls all of her financial decisions (and he receives a yearly salary for doing so). She's never spoken publicly about women's issues or her political beliefs. Rachel and Suri do a thorough job of presenting their theories on why Britney is a true feminist icon nonetheless, the crux of them being that Britney never passively accepted the world's obsession with her sexuality, she capitalized on it.
But whether you agree with their ideas or not is almost besides the point. What was clear as I sat through this seminar is that women care about Britney. Some care a lot. And a select few care enough to pay for the privilege of theorizing about her life and career nearly two decades after she first emerged as a pop goddess.
Sitting in Rachel's living room, I felt like these women got me. They didn't think my obsession with a celebrity was juvenile or silly or made me a "bad" feminist. They just wanted to discuss the reasons why she was so fascinating — from that rumor that Britney made out with Ryan Gosling during a game of spin the bottle back in the mid-'90s to the madonna/whore complex apparent in her "Baby One More Time" music video. Most important, they took me seriously... which, sadly, isn't all too common when you're a woman who's enthusiastic about pop culture. This was a space in which women's interests weren't just tolerated, but encouraged, analyzed, and celebrated.
If you're a woman, you understand what it feels like to be Britney. OK, you probably don't have hundreds of millions of dollars or firsthand knowledge of what Justin Timberlake looks like naked. But you do understand what it's like to feel pressured to look or act a certain way. You've probably felt judged at one point or another. And at the end of the day, you, too, probably want nothing more than to slurp down a Frappuccino while wearing a pair of Uggs.
When I was 10 years old, I snapped my Oops! ... I Did It Again CD in half. I called Britney stupid. I was jealous that she was the image of blonde perfection while I was a brunette and a terrible dancer and an even worse singer. Eleven years later, I've come to realize that she may not be college educated or perfect or without a rocky history, but she's far from stupid — she's an unstoppable woman who wants to live an unapologetic life on her own terms. There's nothing ~toxic~ about that at all. In fact, that's pretty empowering.
All images by Elyssa Goodman, except for the one directly above.
![lola premiere arrivals](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/victoria-beckham-and-nicola-peltz-at-the-premiere-of-lola-news-photo-1713882572.jpg?crop=1.00xw:0.716xh;0,0.0607xh&resize=360:* ""Lola" Premiere - Arrivals")
