My Body(16)

Eventually the guy would succeed, and Sadie would throw herself to the ground, collapsing, legs splayed. I remember her crying then, lying on the cement, wailing. When I got on my knees to comfort her, she’d jolt up abruptly and push past me, frowning and chasing after one of the guys, never so much as glancing my way.

When we arrived at parties together, I knew that, from the outside, we made sense as friends. But when we were alone together, without anyone there to watch us, I was unsure as to what Sadie wanted from me. She seemed to know how to act in any situation, how to be cool with the right people and disregard those of no consequence. She wore the right shoes for any occasion, laughed at jokes that everyone but me understood, and shoplifted like a pro, managing to steal her prom dress from our shared department-store fitting room as I walked dutifully to the cashier to pay for mine. What could I offer her? Other than the occasional emotional drunken fit, which seemed mostly like a simple bid for attention, she appeared solid. She understood the world so much more clearly than I did. She might have been born at seventeen, long-legged and aloof, swerving around town, her car loaded with the Scab Crew. She was a natural at navigating the world of boys. I could only hope to learn from her.



* * *



“Britney went fucking crazy,” Sadie whispered in the middle of our computer class, pulling up the infamous picture on her screen. This was the era of Lindsay Lohan stumbling out of clubs, white powder on her nose, underwear (or the lack of it) peeking out between stick-thin legs; of Amy Winehouse’s tiny hips and bloated midriff and big hair. We were used to these images. But when Britney shaved her head it was something different, something we couldn’t understand. We studied the picture and wrinkled our noses.

“She looks fucking ugly,” Sadie sneered.

I felt angry; Britney was destroying the girl I’d once idolized. As an only child who’d spent an inordinate amount of time with her baby-boomer parents, I missed a lot of the socializing and pop culture that my peers experienced. I remember watching the precocious girls in my fifth-grade class dance to Christina Aguilera’s “Genie in a Bottle,” mesmerized and full of envy and curiosity as they swung their hips in perfect coordination, twelve-year-old girls in matching low-rise black jeans and crop tops, moving together as one organism. I didn’t have a Spice Girls phase and I didn’t know the words to any Backstreet Boys songs. I never saw High School Musical or The Simple Life; my parents refused to let me watch television at home.

But I did have Britney.

One Christmas, I specifically asked for Britney’s debut album, Baby One More Time. I was fascinated by her expression in the video for the eponymous song, the way her eyes looked innocently up into the camera, her face framed by pink pom-poms and pigtails. She was at school, in uniform, and I wanted to know how Britney did it, how she looked so enticing even within the confines of school and all its rules. I played the CD for my mother, wanting to share in my excitement. It was a rainy Christmas, and the clunky CD player was perched on a windowsill. I danced in front of it and sang along. “She’s good, right?” I asked.

My mother made a face, scrunching up her nose. “Not to me. I don’t like it.”

I rolled my eyes and kept dancing, chalking up her disdain to our different tastes and generational divide. I didn’t understand that she might have an objection to songs like “Born to Make You Happy,” in which a seventeen-year-old Britney sings:

I don’t know how to live without your love,

I was born to make you happy.



Maybe my mother hadn’t been aware of the lyrics, though; I don’t know.

When we all learned that Britney had lost her virginity to Justin Timberlake, I was twelve and desperately wanted to ask my parents about it. I wanted to know if that was okay, or whether she had done something really bad, even unforgivable. Were they mad at her for having sex? Had she betrayed her fans, and me, specifically? What would happen to Britney now that she was no longer the same?

Even as Britney transformed and lost her innocent image, one thing remained the same: she was singular. The only women who regularly appeared around her were her backup dancers, placed strategically to draw more attention to the main attraction. Other female pop stars were competitors, neither friends or allies. Gossip magazines made visual diagrams comparing Britney to her antithesis, Christina Aguilera. When they were finally paired together at the MTV Awards, it was only to sexually swap spit with one another and Madonna. The message was clear: when women were together, it was only for the titillation of men.

A year after Britney lost her virginity, I got my first flip phone and made my ringer the instrumental version of “I’m a Slave 4 U.” I knew all the lyrics by heart (“Oh baby, don’t you wanna dance up on me / Are you ready? / Leaving behind my name and age”), and I always had Britney’s face in mind when I listened to her songs: how her puppy-dog eyes would swell curiously as if we’d caught her by surprise, interrupting her and how she would stare at us, even into us, quizzically and earnestly. What do you need? she seemed to be asking.



* * *



By middle school, I’d developed breasts and grown long skinny legs, and strangers began approaching me, often at the grocery store or the mall. They’d stride up, clutching their purses, and lean toward my mother to say, “She should really consider modeling.” As if to say, How could you deny your child such an opportunity? My parents resisted at first—my mother once barked back at a woman, “She’ll be a brain surgeon!”—but softened to the idea after I turned thirteen. My mother told me I could decide if I wanted to begin modeling, that it was up to me. She tells this story often, wondering, How did this all start?