Apparently, last week the Australian press caught Britney Spears with a cigarette. Scandal! There goes all of her credibility as a role model! Apparently, Britney has made anti-smoking statements in the past, and now it comes out that she smokes. It's just like that time Carol Brady was on the anti-smoking committee, and Greg got caught with cigarettes. So apparently, now Britney is a hypocrite.
And to that I say: so what? Leave Britney Spears alone. Have you taken a look at her life recently? There is no way in a million years that I would want her life. The poor thing is stuck dating the ugly guy from N'Sync. Okay...you got me. All of the guys in N'Sync are ugly, not just the one that Britney is seeing. But she is by far dating the most foul of the lot. Will Justin Timberlake ever have good hair? I just don't know why he is singled out as the cute one. Gross.
Anyway, being stuck with an ugly guy is the last of Britney's problems. Can you imagine how awful it is to be Britney Spears? She isn't even close to her twenty-first birthday and she has almost reached her teen idol expiration date. There is stuff in my fridge that has a longer career expectancy than Britney Spears at this point. Because Britney is marginally talented at best.
So that is the first problem. She isn't that talented. Wait, you may be telling me. She can sing, she can dance, and she can act and therefore she is an entertainer for the ages. Tell me this: if she can sing so well, why are all of her live performances lip-synched? Why? Because she gets all tired from all the dancing? Then cut out the dancing. Sorry, they can't do that because then she would have to sing. With all of the effects they load onto her voice in the studio, there is no way she can reproduce that sound live. Because it is not a sound that occurs in nature.
And the dancing? I am so tired of videos with mammoth dance routines. I blame Janet Jackson for the popularity of the army-of-dancers style video. In the early days of Madonna videos, yeah sure, she was dancing, with maybe two other people. Then Janet had to come along with What Have You Done For Me Lately? and nothing has ever been the same. Suddenly, you can't be a pop artist unless you have seven hundred people dancing with you. So, fine, Britney can dance, if you think that sort of thing is dancing. Which it is not. Dancing is dancing, being choreographed is being choreographed.
The acting? What has she done? The Mickey Mouse Club plus Saturday Night Live, and a movie that no one saw. Not even I saw it, and I was all excited about it. I love bad ideas, and my number one favorite bad idea is giving teen idols their own movies. (I saw Spiceworld in the theater. Three times. So I know about bad movies starring teen idols.)
My point is, let Britney have a cigarette. It's probably the token highlight of her day. I would lay odds that she is lucky if she gets six hours of sleep a night. She has to learn dance routines. She has to do interviews. She has to do photo sessions. She has a stage mother. She has to be cute, perky, sexy, upbeat, and a role model all at once. And she has to live with the fact that her celebrity clock is ticking and the Hollywood Squares will be calling her long before she is thirty.
Britney Spears does not have the luxury of being able to wake up at noon, decide to watch some television instead of taking a shower, throw on any old clothes that are nearby, put her hair in a ponytail, and go have a beer and smoke a butt with her friends. (Does she even have any friends? ) If she did that, the Enquirer would take note of her appearance and next week the headline would be Troubled Britney Headed For Rehab. The byline, of course, would read, Friends Say She Has Quit Doing Laundry. She lives in a completely manufactured world, and if she is lucky she has saved her money so she can eventually live a normal life. Of course, her normal life will include a trip to the therapist every day. So leave the girl alone and let her have a cigarette.