Julieanne Leupold

Do you have Britney on the brain?

I did the unthinkable this weekend.

It was really bad.

Worse than waking up in a trash dumpster wearing someone else’s shoes or unknowingly going skinny dipping in piranha-infested waters.

I think the boogie man would actually have been scared of me.

I dressed up like Britney Spears.

Yuck, I know. I’m sorry.

I donned the Catholic school girl-turned slut uniform complete with high pigtails and knee-high boots to inspire a bunch of Sig Eps to dance around an empty classroom on a Friday night instead of partaking in normal college activities.

I’m not sure what I was thinking. Maybe I can plead temporary insanity due to the stress of Songfest.

Maybe I just got caught up in Britney-mania.

Between the new Britney Spears movie and the Pepsi-through-the-decades commercials and the Herbal Essence shower scene, how could you not have Britney on the brain?

She is always on some TRL/MTV special in which she is hosting, counting down her top-10 videos and promoting her new movie all at the same time.

Even as I write this, she is co-hosting MTV Mardi Gras with Carson Daly trying to be the Louisiana-native expert on the whole crazy scene.

You would think that somewhere in all that cross-genre performing she would be good at something besides taking her clothes off.

Sorry. That was harsh.

I just have trouble with her whole image. Here is the college-aged girl who digitally altered her voice and surgically altered everything else to fit into adolescents’ fantasies to sell more records or meet some unhealthy standard of beauty.

She even documented her daily routine for some TV special starting with her two-hour workout to “get the fat off these abs.”

Can we have a collective ick?

Personally, I don’t feel the need to look like Britney Spears or dance like Britney Spears or undress like her. But I am in the minority.

Even though she doesn’t want to be, little miss Britney is a role model for tons of people of all ages. And she is a glorified, cute idiot.

What kind of message is it sending that this hugely successful just-passed adolescent has made it this far without knowing all 50 states?

Even Pink takes a dig at the poptart in her newly released song.

It has gotten to the point where she isn’t seen as a performer, just a joke. I might even go see “Crossroads” (her new movie, in case you have been TV deprived for the last month of promotions) just to laugh at how bad it is.

Perhaps that is supporting her fame and backward image, but maybe I’ll like her better when she is pretending to be someone else.

February 21, 2002