Christ, how screwed up is she if freaking K-Fed looks like the better parent? Good luck to her with recovery, but I’m not holding my breath. I really feel sorry for the kids.
Ferguson and rubystreak speak much truth, but there will always be in the back of people’s minds the inevitable comparison with the likes of Christina A., who also did the mouseketeer to jailbait poptart to sex symbol route (going much farther in creating a “trampy” image than Brit ever did)… and then at some junction c. 2004, Aguilera bore left where Spears bore right, and people will wonder why one and not the other seemed able to stop short of the cliff. But ignored in such comparisons is that precisely, all along Britney was the one that all the media focused upon as THE Big Deal (never mind having to deal with the absurd disconnect of several years of having her persona pitched as “hot piece in public, nice virginal girl in private”) and was always being set up as something more and something hotter. Spears got overexposed, overexploited, and burned out too fast.
My thought exactly- she is making that loser look like Mike Brady…
You’re right that she was overexposed and overexploited and that probably led to rehab, but the difference between her and Christina Aguilera is that Christina has REAL talent*.
In Britney’s case, there’s not much you can do with little talent. She wasn’t able to reinvent herself like Christina, so her career had to end. Britney was little more than a passing fad.
*I’m not a fan of her type of music, but I know a great voice when I hear it.
Was she trying to look like her husband? 
I think the difference is that Aguilera, like Madonna, always seemed like she was the one in control. Even when she was doing something shocking, you felt that she had made a conscious decision to do it. Spears, on the other hand, seems more like Lindsay Lohan - somebody who’s lost control (or never had it).
The shutters match the linoleum?
I wouldn’t doubt that she wasn’t quite sober/sane when she shaved her head, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the underlying reason she was considering it was because of the damage. I shaved my head when I was 18 because I wanted to. I shaved it again when I was 28 because my hair was badly damaged and I figured I had nothing to lose–kept it shaved for a year or so for fun, then let it grow back in.
As for the rehab thing… I don’t get that at all. Either go or don’t go.
Been to rehab? I had the “opportunity” to spend “family week” at rehab a year ago. I only saw it from the outside, but that first week is tough and scary. A lot of people who survived that first week were telling there families about how they almost left…and a lot of them do. I get leaving a place like that.
I can get leaving after you go the first time, But she’s back in for, what, the third time in a week? That’s the part I don’t get. Give it a shot and decide it’s not for you, I understand. Go back, leave, go back, leave, go back… not so much.
That’s the problem with voluntarily checking oneself in, one can voluntarily check oneself out too. Is there some way Spears could give a clinic permission to hold her against her will until she completes the program?
Happens all the time to us “regular” people. Somebody goes apeshit, starts beating a car with an umbrella or whatever, screaming and such, the cops take them to the local hospital, and they get at least the “We will hold them for 72 hrs or whatever for being a Danger to themselves or others”.
Of course, most of us can’t or won’t pay $1600 a day for “rehab” in Malibu.
If the police and courts get involved it’s probably not a voluntary confinement.
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Besides the book jackelope mentioned, Madonna also allowed quite a lot of her private life to be filmed. The thing is with her, I don’t get the impression that there’s anything going on with her that she’s ashamed of. I don’t think she’s hiding anything; everything interesting is out there already, and everything she wants kept private is uninteresting anyway.
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Have you read much about Elvis? I have, and the parties he used to give after his divorce…if people had had camera phones back then, and there had been an internet to post videos on, I would now be able to link to proof that Elvis did indeed “hang out with his wang out.” Literally. Some members of his crew have said since that he was (and they were) lucky that in those days, technology worked much more slowly, and there was still a grace period before a damning story could get into print, and no video evidence (except for Elvis’s private videos; he had one of the first VCRs). Specifically, one of them said, “I keep waiting for [certain Polaroids] to turn up in the tabloids. And praying they don’t.”
And even “in those days,” people still did get busted by the media. I’m fuzzy on the details, but Hammer of the Gods mentions an incident in which Led Zeppelin’s manager or somebody called a tabloid, furious because they’d published photos of some of the band members macking on groupies at a club (yes, I know people didn’t say “macking” back then), and now their wives were chewing glass. The response was, “Tell them not to hang around the Rainbow Bar then.” Because the papparazzi congregated where celebs congregate, and that was no less true in the '70s than now.
- I don’t know what’s up with Robert Downey Jr. nowadays, but I recall his statement in court where he said, effectively, that he was addicted to being addicted, and he didn’t see himself stopping until he was dead. He’s still with us, though, so perhaps he’s gotten a handle on himself. But he has been in and out of rehab many times, even though he’s completed treatment each time. It’s the “each” that I’m on about.
mlees, are you in L.A.? If you are, and you don’t think it’s been cold this week, I guess we just have different thresholds of cold. I know that’s a laugher to those of you in the midwest and northeast right now, but to Angelenos, it’s cold. It’s California, but it’s still February. If I was outside late at night (it was late, remember) and I had only become bald five minutes earlier, I’d have put my hood up too.
cruel butterfly: I don’t think they can be summed up neatly either. I think Ferguson may be viewing this through his own lens, and alcoholism may not be Britney’s primary issue. It may be a nervous breakdown, or post-partum depression, or an emergence of a disorder that was always there but dormant until recently. But his main point is correct: this can no longer be regarded as a joke. This is not like Michael Jackson, about whom I’ve said for years that the reason he pulls the stunts he does is because every time he does, he gets free publicity. Something’s bad wrong with Britney, and she won’t be shamed into changing or stopping, because it seems she can’t. At this point, mocking her is like mocking a handicapped person.
People might make fun of Promises because of it’s location or flashy clients, but I haven’t heard that it’s a shit place to get sober, or a rip-off, or anything.
Personally, my rehab was in a hospital, but it still cost about $800 per day… that was almost 16 years ago, though.
“Won’t” pay $1600 a day for rehab? I would pay $1600 a day to cure my cancer, and my alcoholism was killing me faster, so I guess I would pay it.
Of course, plenty of people never see the inside of a rehab center and still stay sober… as has been said, free help is as close as the phone book.
The only rehab/sobriety programs that work are the ones that are voluntary, IMHO. If the person is being forced against their will, it will never stick.