Britney Spears is out of rehab, yet again, after what the news calls her long stint of "erratic behavior".
Here's what I know without trying, thanks to our culture: Weeks ago, she shaved her head, gained weight, didn't buckle her child in safely to a car seat, and generally acted far-out. Late night host Craig Ferguson even said he wouldn't joke about her anymore, someone so clearly messed up should not be his targets.
Uh, America? Britney was already messed up. Long ago. Healthy women do not kiss Madonna on live national TV. Healthy women do not parade themselves sexually, with a live snake, on MTV's music awards. Healthy women do not sell themselves as sex objects at all. Many, many women find their value in public displays of sexuality, but healthy ones? They just don't.
They call the new Picard 'do a cry for help. I think posing naked on Rolling Stone was a cry for help.
But we like that. So we don't call disorder for what it is, until it rears its shaven head.
Fact is, American pop culture loves dysfunction, provided it's sexual. We applaud it. And that's why, if Britney is a tragedy -- and she is -- everyone who's applauded her, approved her, emulated her, bought her stuff, concocted ludicrous feminist theory celebrating her public sexual expression? All guilty, and no less dysfunctional than she is. (And by the way: Celebrating the destructive disorder of others is not compassion, and refusing to celebrate others' self-destruction is not hatred.)
I see the headlines scrolling by when I'm on the treadmill. Just in the past week: Halle Barry says she tried to commit suicide. Anna Nicole Smith's death was prompted by nine prescription drugs. And Britney's family is officially split, her divorce final, while friends worry she's suicidal. That's last week, and I don't even pay attention to celeb news.
We applaud the publicly sexually-disordered, all the way to their graves, as long as it turns us on. Then we write "Candle in the Wind", and plaintively wonder what went wrong. Who saw that coming?
Britney was messed-up long ago, but we loved it. The real tragedy, to us? She gained weight and cut her hair. Now -- she's crazy.
