House Editorial: It takes a village to raise a star
We all share some responsibility in the slow disintegration of Britney Spears
Posted on February 26, 2007

It’s your fault that Britney Spears is slowly losing her mind. The former-pop-turned-tabloid-regular checked herself into rehab this week for the third time, giving paparazzi and crazed consumers even more reason to watch for her next outburst. Among the classics: Driving with her son, Sean Preston, riding unbuckled in her lap; appearing in public sans undergarments but with Paris Hilton; taking the razor into her own hands to shave her head (which she immediately celebrated by getting two ill-placed tattoos).

In our culture, any Hollywood scandal is prime dinner-table conversation. Anna Nicole’s fortune is going to her 4-month-old daughter? Fascinating! “Grey’s Anatomy” star Isaiah Washington is a homophobe? How interesting. Britney Spears has shaved her head and been in and out of rehab for the past week-and-a-half? Perfect — pass the peas.

However, Britney is doing this because we’re making it so easy for her to get away with it. The more you tell a child not to do something, the more she thinks she’s missing out on something really fabulous.

Whether it be post-partum depression, the emotional fallout from her (two) divorces or her impending custody battle with ex-husband and father of four, Kevin Federline, Britney needs help — and not from Promises, a Malibu facility with gourmet meals, sandy beaches and 500-thread-count sheets. If she’s going to do it, she needs to go all the way — and we need to help her.

Britney grew up in the public eye. So, in a way, we’re responsible for how she turns out. Our eyes grew huge when she danced with a python on stage at the MTV Music Awards and, two years later locked lips with Madonna to outdo her previous performance.

We’ve unintentionally created a culture of one-upping, in which celebrities are forced to surpass their previous antics, or even the antics of other celebrities (again, Isaiah Washington’s public display of disaffection for homosexuals versus Michael Richards’ rant against an African-American at the Laugh Factory) in order to survive. And, because Britney feeds off our obsession with her, she’s outshining even her own shenanigans, and forcing us into a world of hypocrisy — we create the perfect pop star, give her more money when she does crazy things for us, and then condemn her when her actions start to get out of hand.

In our culture, where it takes a tabloid-wielding consumer to raise a pop princess, we need to realize that Britney’s not a girl, and not yet a woman — and that’s our own fault.