Britney’s music videos are like an ever-rotating menu of fantasies, but after 10 years of Britney (“...Baby One More Time” was released in October 1998) our star is running out of fetishes to cop. After seeing Brit as a schoolgirl, chair dancer, flight attendant, spy, and anime character, her new video for “Womanizer” features the only thing left: the Ugly One. Yes, Britney as “office girl” is actually so ugly in a black bob wig, librarian glasses, and bright red lipstick that you can almost hear her saying, “These shoes rule.” Dear Lord, she’s run through so many sexual types that she now must resort to making ugliness itself into a fetish. Oh, and to remind us that she’s actually the hottest minx to ever grace a TV screen, the shots of Ugly Britney cut vigorously back and forth between shots of Britney in a sauna, completely naked—and oh so shiny.
“Womanizer” is an interesting video, however, and not because it has a confusing plot that director Joseph Kahn admits to be a redo of the vid for “Toxic.” It’s interesting because it suggests that if you really want to hurt a guy’s feelings, all you have to do is dance at him, really, really hard.
So maybe dancing can be revenge. But revenge itself is a timeworn plot for a story with a female protagonist (e.g. “Kill Bill”). Similarly, Britney and her music videos are like a comfortable old sock. They feature familiar imagery: the car chase? Any Mitsubishi ad. A man’s chest glistening in a shower? Gillette. Hotel room? Ikea. But that’s why we keep on lovin’ Brit. We can buy or sell her sexuality as a memory that accompanies any shiny car or anime film or spy unitard, and feel warm and fuzzy inside for doing it. From Brit, ‘fetishized,’ ‘sexy,’ and ‘sold’ are three words that mean the same thing. And by pre-crazy Britney ideals anyway, that means we’re all allowed to sell ourselves as really freaking sexy, too—even if we’re actually really freaking ugly.
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