Britney Spears, Fathers, and Womanhood Deferred

Britney Spears

Perhaps the most appalling news from Britney Spears’ testimony against her court-appointed conservatorship this week concerns her IUD. The revelation that her conservators—mainly her dad—are forcing her to consume pharmaceutical lithium against her will, probably says more about her long-term health and the harm being forced upon her. But audiences probably had more gut-level revulsion to learn that she can’t make her own reproductive health decisions.

With the vantage of hindsight, it’s difficult to consider Spears without her semi-rural Southern origins. Born in McComb, Mississippi, and raised in nearby Kentwood, Louisiana, she started in America’s Bible Belt, was baptized Southern Baptist, and first sang publicly in church. Though she left the Bible Belt, aged eight, to pursue her entertainment career, that upbringing cannot help but loom large in considering the tribulations she currently faces.

Reading the transcript of Spears’ testimony, I’m seized most immediately by how explicitly sexual her father’s control is. He makes decisions about her reproductive health, although she’s thirty-nine years old, because he perceives controlling her sexual decisions as an economic instrument. Britney’s body has become a commodity which her father markets, like he’d market her clothing if she designed fashion. Jamie Spears’ management of his daughter’s career is painfully sexual.

This testimony occurred just days after Spears’ family church, the Southern Baptists, shared a cringe-inducing “Modest Is Hottest” music video at a denominational gathering. I’m somewhat more forgiving of singer-songwriter Matthew West, who sings from a father’s viewpoint, because parents do frequently have to make decisions about appropriate wardrobe and comportment for minor children, who by definition can’t make such decisions for themselves. But that forgiveness only goes so far.

My problem is, Matthew West, like Jamie Spears, frames appropriate behavior in terms of being “hot.” That is, while the commercial forces that often dominate American life value women according to their ability to get naked, West values his daughters according to their ability to resist this appeal. Yet he openly frames this resistance in terms of sexual appeal and attractiveness. Like Spears, West dominates and commodifies his daughters’ sexuality.

The Purity Culture of the 1990s, which dominated—and frequently still dominates—Bible Belt Christianity, sees adolescent girls as entirely sexual beings, defined by their ability to tempt and entice men. Britney Spears and Matthew West express the extremes of this definition. From her beginnings, when Britney tied her shirttails above her navel in her “Baby One More Time” video, fresh-faced adolescent sexuality has occupied the core of her message.

Britney with Paris Hilton, ca. 2008

Yet Britney’s sexuality, sure as the West daughters, was controlled by her father and other surrounding adults. Jamie Spears made decisions about how to sell her:, for instance, letting Max Martin pitch her a debut song written for a vocalist ten years older than her. Jamie Spears made marketing and image decisions which were entirely, outwardly sexual. Before she turned eighteen, he made his daughter’s body into a commodity.

This tension between seeing one’s daughter as your little girl, and acknowledging her nascent sexuality, probably plagues fathers worldwide. I can’t imagine what frustration it must cause fathers to give advice and guidance about sex, knowing daughters will ignore some or all advice until it’s too late. Yet 1990s Purity Culture, and the opposite number embodied in Britney’s in-your-face exhibitionism, made girls into completely sexual beings, then entrusted that sexuality to fathers.

Readers old enough, like me, to remember the emergence of “purity balls,” know what I mean. These weird virginity proms spotlighted fathers and daughters in relationship. These girls were presented as already women, but per the arrangement, they consciously abnegated their own sexuality, entrusting it altogether to their fathers. These bizarre, frequently disturbing events turn adolescent girls into childlike dependents and also Jezebels at the same time.

In fairness, discordant events like this aren’t exactly inexplicable. As traditional gender roles have proved unsatisfactory, and have receded, without anything prepared to take their place; as sexual mores have evolved, reflecting the fact that most families don’t need to breed their own workforce anymore, older people feel dislocated. Rapid change, venturing into unknown territory, is scary. Some people seek comfort in extreme forms of nostalgia.

But as Britney’s testimony reveals, an iron paternal grip on youthful sexuality doesn’t prevent dangerous consequences; it just changes one unknown outcome for another. Britney’s expertly managed teenage sexuality and Christian Purity Culture couldn’t have existed without one another. Both saw teenaged girls as essentially sexual, and both entrusted that sexuality to heavy-handed dads. And now we’re paying for both.