Pop culture challenges traditons...

I read a few of the articles, but Adam Sternbergh's "Britney Spears: The Pop Tart in Winter" immediately stood out to me. When many people think of an all-American girl, they think of girls like Britney Spears, Jessica Simpson, Christina Aguilera, etc. All the girls that were a part of the teen pop craze in the late 90's. The record comapnies and managers that represented these girls did what they could to capitalize on this, some with greater success than others. Stenbergh quotes Britney as saying "My prerogative right now is to just chill & let all of the other overexposed blondes on the cover of Us Weekly be your entertainment. GOOD LUCK GIRLS!! ... It's amazing what advisors will push you to do, even if it means taking a naive, young, blonde girl & putting her on the cover of every magazine. (372)" Her handlers, for lack of a better word, were trying to make her put across the image of what the typical, all-American girl should be - skinny, sweet and innocent, a virgin until she was married, and very passionate about her beliefs. However, in reality, Britney was putting up a front and not being who she really was in order to make the public happy and fit into this mold, and as the years went on, this started to become more and more prevalent in everything she did. She would say how she didn't want to be a sex symbol in an interview for a magazine, and on the next page would be a picture of her, half naked. She was battling with herself against how the media would like her to be, as a traditional nice girl with good values, and the rebellious teenager/young adult that she really was. The problem with this was that so many young girls looked up to her, and thus what was acceptable for Britney started to become acceptable for them, no matter how untraditional the low-rise jeans and belly-baring t-shirts were for young girls to wear. Britney did it, so it was okay. Eventually, as I'm sure we all know, she had a huge meltdown because she couldn't keep up the double life. Pop culture continued to change, and now she is much less relevant, but a lot of the boundaries she pushed have continued to change the way that young girls assume they should be.