Episode Transcript
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FDIC. I'm
1:19
Claire Fallon and I'm Emma Gray. And
1:22
this is Love to See It, an
1:24
obsessively detailed recap podcast about reality dating
1:26
shows like The Bachelor and other pop
1:28
culture that makes us laugh, cry, and
1:31
curse the patriarchy. We can't live with
1:33
these shows and we can't live without
1:35
them. But we can break down every
1:37
juicy moment and unpack all the weird
1:40
messages these shows send us about love,
1:42
sex, and dating. Welcome
1:53
to Love to See It, a podcast about
1:55
teen pop stars who rise together in double
1:57
denim and then crash into the sky. and
2:00
burn separately. She's
2:02
not a girl, not yet a woman, and
2:05
he's crying a full river. The
2:07
prince and princess of pop. Yes,
2:10
we're talking about the iconic early
2:12
Aughts power couple, the Barbie and
2:14
Ken of the millennial generation, Britney
2:17
Spears and Justin Timberlake. Later,
2:19
we'll be joined by bona fide
2:22
Britney expert Tess Barker, co-host
2:24
of Britney's Gram and Toxic,
2:26
the Britney Spears story, to
2:28
dive further into the cultural
2:30
impact of Britney Spears and
2:32
Justin Timberlake's relationship. And
2:34
in honor of this week, I
2:36
have, like Britney Spears, somehow
2:39
made my voice extra raspy for
2:41
that extra interesting sex appeal. She
2:44
is my icon. It's your message. That's
2:46
why I did this. It's not because my
2:48
son gave me a mysterious daycare cold,
2:50
of which this is the only
2:53
symptom today. It's
2:55
always fun over here. So
2:57
let's talk about what we're going to do
2:59
today. This is the second in a new
3:01
type of episode that we are working
3:04
on on Love to See It
3:06
Lately. It's about iconic public relationships.
3:08
And in this bonus episode type,
3:11
this bonus series, we're going to
3:13
be dissecting the on-screen relationships that
3:15
have gripped our attention and defined
3:17
cultural eras. Our first
3:19
episode of this series, we covered Taylor
3:22
Swift and Travis Kelsey. So if you
3:24
haven't listened to that one, we had
3:26
such a great time talking about Taylor
3:28
and Travis Mania with Amy Kaufman. Go
3:30
back. Check that out if you missed
3:32
it. We are going to be talking
3:35
celebrity couples, like Justin and Britney and
3:37
Tay and Trav. But we will
3:39
also be branching out. We'll be talking about
3:41
fictional couples in the future. We'll be talking
3:43
about royal couples, all kinds
3:45
of prominent power couples. In
3:47
each bonus episode, we're going to have
3:50
a little entry-level seminar on the duo
3:52
in question. We'll brush up
3:54
on their meet cute and their relationship
3:57
history. We'll discuss their cultural impact in
3:59
residence. And we'll map out
4:01
some of the different romance tropes
4:03
that the relationship kind of exemplifies.
4:05
We'll even leave you with some
4:07
suggested further research, AKA movies, TV
4:09
shows, and books that you might
4:11
enjoy. If you're interested in
4:13
this couple, maybe if you find them
4:15
romantic despite their flaws and failures, maybe
4:18
some more idealized versions that you can
4:20
check out in fictional form. And
4:23
of course, we'll be inviting on an array
4:26
of really cool experts on
4:28
these relationships to provide additional
4:30
insight. So welcome to Brittany
4:32
and Justin 101. So
4:35
let's get into it because today we'll
4:37
be discussing the relationship of two
4:39
pop stars who frankly, are
4:42
very iconic for our age
4:45
group specifically. As we've
4:47
been saying, Justin Timberlake and Britney
4:49
Spears, not only did this pairing
4:52
absolutely dominate the tabloids and pop
4:54
culture throughout the late 90s and
4:56
early 2000s, but they're
4:58
still making headlines as recently as
5:00
like last week. Yeah,
5:03
I mean, we are right in
5:05
the resurgence of Y2K fashion right
5:07
now. They are Y2K
5:09
fashion. Whenever I think of Y2K
5:11
fashion, I think of Britney Spears
5:13
and Justin Timberlake on the red
5:15
carpet. They really like embodied that
5:17
era, that brief, glorious era of
5:19
like low rise jeans and
5:22
like butterflies and crystals
5:24
and all of that. That
5:27
was Britney and Justin. At
5:29
the time, Emma, were you interested
5:32
in Britney and Justin respectively or together?
5:34
Like were you invested in their relationship?
5:36
Were you a fan? I
5:39
wouldn't say that I was a fan
5:41
of Britney's. I
5:43
also was not an NSYNC superfan. I
5:45
was a Backstreet Boys girly and they
5:47
got there first. So I was very
5:49
loyal, but of course I enjoyed myself
5:52
some NSYNC, but I didn't have like
5:54
a deep crush on Justin
5:56
in his younger years. Britney was
5:58
someone that was complicated. to me.
6:00
Like I listened to
6:02
her music. I have very
6:04
distinct memories of when Baby,
6:07
one more time, came out
6:09
dancing in my best friend's
6:11
bedroom. She got the CD, were
6:13
like choreographing dances, doing little like
6:16
sexy hip moves or whatever. And
6:19
so she was a very present figure,
6:21
but also someone that I
6:23
felt kind of resentful towards. Yeah, I
6:25
felt pandered to by her image. And
6:27
it felt so unattainable to me that
6:30
I started, I think as I got
6:32
older, sort of
6:34
defining myself in
6:36
opposition to her. Like I wasn't dumb,
6:39
like those kind of girls. Like
6:41
I'm smart. Yeah, I might not be hot, but
6:43
I was smart. So obviously Brittany's
6:45
not smart because you can only be
6:47
one. You can only be one. And so I
6:49
think I was sort of primed to buy
6:52
into some of the more misogynist narratives
6:54
that ended up cropping up about her.
6:57
And it took me a
6:59
really long time to understand what I understand
7:01
now, which is that Justin
7:03
Timberlake kind of fucking sucks, despite the
7:06
fact that he was really
7:08
charming on SNL a hand. That
7:12
was a long winded answer. But what about you? Yeah,
7:15
I think that we were similar in
7:17
that respect. Like upfront, guys, we are
7:20
not the Brittany super fan podcast. I
7:22
was not a Brittany super fan. Growing
7:24
up, I was very much I
7:26
saw them as Sydney and
7:28
Justin, almost as like the cool kid, the
7:30
popular kids at my school. And I was
7:33
like, I'm not like them. I
7:35
don't feel accepted by them. And you know what,
7:37
I don't want to be like them. I want
7:39
to be different. And that was sort of how
7:41
I reacted to the pop stars of the era
7:43
at the time. And I
7:46
went right from like listening to the
7:48
Beatles with my my parents old like
7:50
record collection to like Avril Lavigne, you
7:53
know, so edgy, so alternative, because that
7:55
was how I set myself apart in
7:57
my eyes. And yeah, I had
8:00
some of the same reactions to Britney Spears, like, oh,
8:02
am I supposed to be this sexual? Am I supposed
8:04
to be this hot? Am I supposed to have this
8:06
flat of a tummy to be worthy? And
8:09
so there are these ways in which as millennial
8:11
women, we are looking back and
8:14
like reevaluating how much we projected
8:16
onto the young women who were
8:18
held up to us
8:20
as examples of how to be
8:22
sexual and adults and desirable, and
8:25
how much we blame that on those women
8:27
instead of on the whole like toxic sludge
8:30
of culture that was around them at the time.
8:33
Yeah, we really did a number on
8:35
them and kind of erased the machines
8:38
that were that were building up the
8:40
images of these literal children. And that's
8:42
why I think that to be fair,
8:44
we were also literal children. Yes,
8:47
yes. Yeah, no, I actually don't blame
8:49
us at all for the fact that
8:51
we bought into certain cultural narratives. We
8:54
were we were also young
8:56
and being, yeah, being
8:58
targeted directly by these narratives in a way
9:00
that I think we didn't really have the
9:02
ability to sort through at the
9:04
time with information that we had. Yeah. But
9:07
given where we are now, that's why
9:09
I found it quite fascinating in in
9:11
this kind of deep dive we did
9:13
into the timeline of Justin and Britney's
9:16
relationship. None of the information that
9:18
I found out
9:20
during this research was necessarily
9:22
new, but a lot of it was
9:25
stuff that I hadn't watched
9:27
in full. I hadn't seen in
9:29
a long time. And
9:31
it also really drove home for me just
9:34
how young the two of them were. Yeah,
9:36
when all of this started. So
9:38
let's start from the beginning. Justin
9:41
and Britney met in 1992 when they
9:44
were both cast as mouse cathears on
9:46
the children's variety show, the all new
9:48
Mickey Mouse Club, also known
9:50
as just the Mickey Mouse Club, but it was
9:52
it was a reboot. They
9:55
were 11 at the time and they
9:57
worked with other future stars like Keri
9:59
Russell. Ryan Gosling, Jaycee,
10:01
Shazzeh, and Christina Aguilera. Like,
10:04
this was a really
10:07
iconic cast, and they were all
10:10
literal babies. Yeah. It's
10:12
always so random to me when it's like, Keri Russell
10:14
is there, too. It's so
10:17
funny. We actually have a little
10:19
clip of Justin and Brittany singing
10:21
a duet on one of the episodes. Feelin'
10:24
that I've got for you
10:26
baby, make me
10:28
wanna sing, I feel
10:31
for you. I
10:35
think I love you. This
10:37
is classic. My God, the classic Disney thing,
10:40
too, of like, these children are so pure
10:42
and not sexual, and we will also have
10:44
them enacting adults' romantic relationship
10:46
feelings in front of the world
10:49
for your entertainment. And
10:51
it was essentially love at first
10:54
sight for them. Justin told GQ
10:56
in 2006, quote, I was
10:58
infatuated with her from the moment I saw
11:00
her. Brittany and Justin
11:02
both came from working class families in
11:04
the South, so they had some similarities,
11:07
some things to connect on. And Brittany
11:09
really quickly developed a massive crush on
11:11
him. Brittany has since
11:13
said that Justin was actually her first
11:15
kiss during this time period during a
11:17
game of truth or dare. And
11:20
they developed a little showman. Yeah,
11:23
yeah. It was like a very, apparently
11:26
there were like love triangles, love squares,
11:28
the Mickey Mouse Club, all these like
11:30
11-year-olds having crutches on each other. I
11:33
mean, imagine all of these tweens just
11:35
like discovering their burgeoning sexuality and their
11:37
hottest and most together. Gifted and swaggy-est
11:40
like 11-year-olds, you know. In
11:43
1995, the Mickey Mouse Club was
11:45
canceled. And later that
11:47
year, Justin and J.C. joined the Lou
11:49
Pearlman Revt boy band NSYNC. And
11:52
Brittany just went home back to her
11:54
hometown and lived normal
11:56
life for a couple of years. In
11:58
1997, she saw a picture of a woman with dive
12:00
records and that's when she really reentered
12:02
the entertainment industry. And Justin
12:04
and Brittany crossed paths again in November
12:06
1998 when Brittany
12:09
was invited by Justin to join as
12:11
the opener for a leg of NSYNC's
12:13
in concert tour just ahead
12:15
of the January 1999 release of
12:18
her debut album, Baby One More
12:20
Time. In the
12:23
wake of the album's success, the
12:25
press basically immediately began speculating that
12:27
Brittany and Justin were dating, which
12:29
they were but not publicly. In
12:33
April 1999, we get the famous
12:35
Rolling Stone cover of Brittany Spears,
12:39
posed co-catishly in girly lingerie
12:41
on a pink silk-shaded bed
12:43
holding a plush chaletubby and
12:46
a pink corded phone and the cover line read, inside
12:49
the heart, mind, and bedroom of a
12:51
teen dream. I have read
12:53
this interview so many times written by
12:55
Stephen Daly and it is just... Unsettling?
12:59
So unsettling. In
13:01
it, Brittany does wave off rumors that she's dating
13:03
Justin. She's like, overseas they
13:05
say it's Nick Carter of Backstreet Boys.
13:08
Right now, she prefers
13:11
to concentrate on her work rather than
13:13
romance. I have, she says, no feelings
13:15
at all. But, iconic
13:19
quote, I have no feelings at all. But
13:23
something that really stood out to
13:25
me in rereading this interview is
13:27
kind of the tone that it
13:29
sets about the way that the
13:31
adult world is going to contend
13:33
with and frame and consume Brittany
13:35
Spears as an artist. The
13:38
beginning of the piece reads, Brittany Spears
13:40
extends a honeyed thigh across the length
13:42
of the sofa, keeping one foot on
13:44
the floor as she does so. Her
13:48
blonde streaked hair is piled high, exposing
13:50
two little diamond earrings on each earlobe.
13:53
Her face is fully made up, down
13:56
to carefully applied lip liner. The
13:58
baby fat logo of the series. Sears's
14:00
pink t-shirt is descended by
14:02
her ample chest, and
14:05
her silky white shorts with dark blue
14:07
piping cling snugly to
14:09
her hips. She cocks
14:11
her head and smiles receptively.
14:15
This is a grown man
14:17
writing about... I
14:19
think she was 17 at the time. Yeah,
14:23
maybe she had just turned 18. It's
14:26
disgusting. I
14:29
think that we, you know, there
14:31
have been many reevaluations of this moment, and I
14:33
think that is where many of us have settled,
14:35
that this is a disgusting way for an adult
14:37
man, especially, to write about a teenager. But
14:41
it does kind of encapsulate a lot
14:43
of Whitney's branding and appeal. She
14:45
is sexy,
14:48
but she is not sexual herself. I
14:50
mean, what a quote to drive this
14:52
home. I have no feelings at all,
14:54
right? Like she's a doll almost,
14:57
for men to desire and,
14:59
you know, use in their own ways,
15:01
but she doesn't have any desires
15:03
of her own. In
15:06
her own words that she's quoted
15:08
as saying, she's just a perfect
15:10
sexual object. Exactly. So after
15:12
this profile, Justin and Brittany make
15:16
their first public appearance as a couple in
15:18
September 2000 at the VMAs. This was the
15:23
early-else equivalent, would you say, Emma, of a
15:25
soft launch? Yes, because they
15:27
didn't walk the red carpet together, but they
15:29
did sit next to each other and were
15:32
photographed together, but not, they
15:34
weren't being super touchy in any
15:36
of the photos. They're just leaning in. They
15:38
weren't doing like the red carpet
15:40
official prom photo. They're not
15:42
debuting the relationship. They're winking at
15:44
it. Yeah. N'Thinks
15:47
album No Strings Attached came out in March of
15:49
the same year. It debuted at
15:51
number one and it really launched the band fully
15:54
into a list-level celebrity
15:57
dub, especially Justin and J.C. who
15:59
were Truly the hot
16:01
sexy front man. Yeah of
16:04
the band. Every
16:06
boy band had one or two. Yeah especially
16:10
NSYNC which had quite
16:12
an interesting lineup. Looking
16:15
back. Yeah, yeah go look at some
16:17
photos guys. It's really
16:19
nice to think. So something
16:21
that we didn't know at the
16:24
time but that Brittany revealed in
16:26
her memoir which was released last
16:28
year is that during this
16:31
time pretty early into into their relationship
16:33
when they were both 19 she got
16:37
pregnant and ended up having an
16:39
abortion predominantly
16:42
because Justin did not want to be
16:44
a father and something
16:46
that she describes in her memoir
16:48
is the lengths that they went
16:50
to avoid detection in the media
16:53
because obviously they were both very
16:55
anxious about this being exposed and
16:57
that included her forgoing
17:00
any medical supervision
17:02
during her medication abortion and she
17:05
says that she was in pretty bad pain
17:07
without the ability to reach out to a
17:09
doctor. We have a clip from
17:11
her audiobook. And
17:13
just a heads up this clip is a little
17:15
intense so if it's not for you feel free
17:17
to skip ahead 45 seconds. This
17:20
is Michelle Williams narrating Brittany's audiobook
17:22
where she discusses her at-home medication
17:24
abortion and Justin attempting to comfort
17:27
her by playing guitar. When
17:31
I tell you it was painful I
17:33
can't begin to describe it. The
17:35
pain was unbelievable. I
17:38
went down to the ground on my knees holding the
17:40
toilet for a long time I couldn't move. To
17:43
this day it's one of the most agonizing things
17:45
I have ever experienced in my life. Still
17:50
they didn't take me to the hospital. Justin
17:53
came into the bathroom and lay on the floor with
17:55
me. At
17:57
some point he thought maybe music would help. so
18:00
he got his guitar and he laid there with me
18:02
strumming it. I
18:04
kept crying and sobbing until it was all over.
18:09
It is an excruciating clip and
18:13
an excruciating passage in the book to
18:15
read. And
18:20
yeah, I think something that struck me reading
18:22
this is just how much
18:25
already at 19 their
18:28
position as famous people was controlling
18:30
the decisions that they made, including
18:33
the decisions about Brittany and her body.
18:35
And as she makes clear in her memoir,
18:38
it was really in her
18:40
view, Justin, that really was
18:43
putting that above the concerns about
18:46
her health and comfort and her desire to
18:48
maybe continue the pregnancy. He was very insistent
18:51
that he not become a father. He was
18:53
very insistent that no one find out that
18:55
she went to the hospital for this reason.
18:58
And so she was asked to
19:00
endure something incredibly painful and traumatic
19:03
at a young age without the support that she needed
19:06
and instead received from
19:08
him some precious guitar strums.
19:13
It's not funny and yet it is
19:15
so darkly funny. That
19:17
was his contribution. Who among us has not
19:19
been sitting on the quad freshman year listening
19:21
to the guy down the hall strom on
19:23
his guitar and thought, yeah, I would take
19:25
this in lieu of anesthesia for a
19:27
severe medical procedure. This
19:30
is better than Vicodin. Oh
19:33
my God. So early
19:36
the next year in January, 2001, Brittany
19:40
and Justin make their big
19:43
public red carpet debut at
19:45
the AMAs. And this
19:48
is the iconic red
19:50
carpet all-denna moment. As
19:53
a millennial, this is the
19:55
moment, I recall, understanding that
19:57
Brittany and Justin were basically
19:59
American royalty. we have
20:01
a clip of Michelle Williams narrating Brittany's
20:03
thoughts in her memoir. I still
20:06
can't believe that Justin was going to wear denim
20:08
and I said, we should match.
20:10
Let's do denim on denim. At
20:13
first, honestly, I thought it was a joke. I
20:16
didn't think my stylist was actually going to do it
20:18
and I never thought Justin was going to do it
20:20
with me, but they both went
20:22
all in. The
20:24
stylist brought Justin's all denim outfit, which
20:27
included a denim hat to match his denim jacket and
20:29
denim pants. When
20:31
he put it on, I thought, whoa,
20:34
I guess we're really doing this. Claire,
20:37
can you describe the red carpet
20:39
photo, the iconic red carpet photo of the
20:41
two of them? Yeah, honestly, I had memory
20:44
hold this. It's incredible. He is
20:46
wearing like an oversized sort
20:48
of stonewashed denim
20:52
jacket and pants and
20:55
a denim fedora. Brittany
20:58
is next to him wearing a
21:00
strapless, like sweetheart cut, very
21:04
fitted bodice denim down.
21:08
It's floor length. She
21:10
has a very big
21:13
crystal necklace on. She
21:15
has a crystal studded belt
21:19
around her waist. She has a
21:21
denim bag, like a little clutch
21:24
purse that she's holding by the
21:26
handle. It's
21:29
a lot. It's truly a look. It's
21:32
a lot of look, but it's
21:34
iconic for a reason. You're like, yeah,
21:36
these are two kids that were like, wouldn't this be fun?
21:38
Let's match. It's
21:40
the perfect image to symbolize, like, oh,
21:42
these are like the all American couple.
21:47
They are glamour. They are denim.
21:49
They are blue jeans. And
21:53
they also performed together that year during
21:56
the Super Bowl halftime show alongside the
21:58
rest of N'Sync as well as Elle.
22:00
Smith, Nellie, and Mary J. Blige. 2001
22:02
though was really their golden
22:05
year. Like they had come out
22:07
publicly as a couple and they were
22:09
both at the peak of their fame
22:12
and success. It's kind of hard to
22:14
even overstate how
22:17
well matched they were, how big
22:19
they were, how successful they were,
22:22
and how their relationship kind of fueled
22:24
their fame and vice versa. You
22:27
can really hear the media excitement
22:29
over their relationship in this interview.
22:31
You need to try and remember when was
22:33
the first time you are quickening out. I
22:35
don't think there was an official
22:38
first, like an official time where I really asked
22:40
her out. It was kind of like, I don't
22:42
know. Okay, what about the restaurant then? What sort
22:44
of food was the first food? He's
22:47
hating me. He's hating me right now. He's hating me
22:49
thinking, I don't remember the
22:51
food. I just remember her. Oh, slick
22:54
answer, Justin. I
22:56
just remember her. I mean, they were
22:58
it. They were the teen
23:00
dreams. Kids were obsessed with
23:02
them and so were adults.
23:05
And this was the year that
23:08
N-Sync's celebrity and Britney's self-titled album,
23:10
Britney came out as
23:12
well as the year that Britney
23:14
filmed the movie Crossroads, famously
23:17
written by a young Shonda Rhimes,
23:20
an icon in the making. And
23:22
this was also, and for me, this
23:24
is like maybe Britney's most iconic
23:27
moment that I personally remember
23:29
from this time, her
23:32
VMA's performance of I'm a
23:34
Slave for You, which
23:36
she does with a giant
23:38
snake around her neck. In
23:42
her memoir, Britney reflected on this period in
23:44
their relationship and the very different ways that
23:46
the media was approaching the two of them.
23:48
We do have a clip. I
23:51
couldn't help but notice that the questions he
23:53
got asked by talk show hosts were different
23:55
from the ones they asked me. Everyone
23:58
kept making strange comments about about my
24:00
breasts, wanting to know whether or
24:02
not I'd had plastic surgery. I
24:04
mean, the important questions people want to know
24:07
about one of the biggest musical artists in
24:09
the country, has she had plastic surgery?
24:12
That is really what matters. Has this
24:14
19 year old
24:16
had breast implants? I mean, my God, I
24:19
was more focused personally on the fact
24:21
that she could do an entire very
24:23
complex dance routine while holding a giant
24:25
snake. Yeah. I mean, true. Ask her
24:28
about that, please. Look, I highly recommend
24:30
anyone who hasn't watched that performance in
24:32
a while, go watch it because it
24:34
is fabulous. So by the
24:37
end of 2001, Brittany and Justin had
24:39
moved in together in Los Angeles. And
24:41
then they both relocated together to Orlando.
24:45
In February of 2002, Brittany hosted SNL. And
24:49
this is also when Crossroads, which
24:51
yes, I did see in theaters, premiered.
24:55
Justin made a little cameo during
24:57
her opening monologue on SNL and
25:00
also accompanied Brittany on the red
25:02
carpet at the Crossroads premiere.
25:04
And this actually ended up being one of
25:07
their final two red carpet appearances as a
25:09
couple, because they broke up shortly
25:11
after. On
25:13
that note, we're going to take a quick break. And
25:15
when we get back, we will talk through the rest
25:17
of the time. This
25:26
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tryfirstleaf.com slash
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LTSI. And
29:38
we're back. So what? Time
29:40
to talk about the breakup. Yeah. I
29:43
mean, most of this relationship happened
29:45
after the breakup. So Brittany
29:47
confirmed their breakup in March 2002 during
29:50
her Crossroads Press Tour in London, saying
29:52
she was single right now during
29:55
an interview for Big Breakfast. In
29:58
her memoir, she wrote that Justin had been
30:00
the one to initiate the end of the
30:02
relationship and that he did it over text
30:05
while she was shooting a music video. These
30:07
pop singer texts are always dumping their pop
30:09
singer girlfriends over text. I guess it's because
30:11
they're not together that much, but that starts
30:13
to seem like an excuse. Yeah,
30:16
read Jessica Simpson's memoir. Yeah,
30:18
I mean, Taylor and Joe
30:20
Jonas, come on. She
30:24
says that she realized later that he was
30:26
distancing himself and ultimately breaking up with her
30:28
because he had decided to use her, quote,
30:31
as ammunition for his record. At
30:34
that time, he was in the middle of making
30:36
his first solo album, Justified, which was a
30:38
big career transition to try to catapult
30:41
from being in a boy band
30:43
to being a solo star. Many, many boy
30:45
banders have failed in the attempt and
30:47
he- Most of them. Most of
30:50
them. He's pretty much the most
30:52
successful. Yeah, he figured out
30:54
the formula. Throw your hot pop star
30:56
girlfriend under the bus. And
30:58
she makes it very clear in her memoir how hard
31:00
she took the split. She describes herself as clinically
31:03
in shock. She says she basically didn't
31:05
speak for months. She
31:08
went home to her family and
31:10
was so unresponsive that eventually she
31:12
says Justin flew down to Louisiana
31:14
to see her and brought her
31:17
a framed goodbye letter that he
31:19
had written for her. I'm
31:22
like, what does this even mean? I need to see
31:24
this artifact. Imagine
31:26
being like, I know what will cheer her up.
31:29
A framed reminder of the love that we
31:31
had that we no longer have because I
31:33
ended it. Yeah, that will- She's gonna put
31:35
this on her wall. Yeah.
31:38
She writes that strangely enough, this
31:40
did nothing to snap her out
31:43
of her stupor or depression. I'm
31:45
shocked, personally. I mean, yeah,
31:47
I could see it maybe rousing her
31:49
to enough rage to throw it at
31:51
his head, but in this case
31:54
now she just couldn't even be bothered, which I
31:56
think is also a fair reaction. In
31:59
November, 2019, 2002,
32:01
Justified was released. It was extremely
32:03
successful and Justin went on like
32:05
a massive press tour where
32:07
he repeatedly discussed his breakup
32:10
with Britney. In
32:12
an interview with Barbara Walters, he
32:15
doesn't say that Britney cheated
32:17
on him, but he also
32:20
doesn't deny that she cheated on
32:22
him. We have a clip from this interview. You've
32:25
been quoted as saying something very bad
32:27
happened. You can just clear up this.
32:29
The impression is that Britney
32:31
did something very bad that hurt
32:33
you. She had a relationship with
32:36
somebody else. Why is there an
32:38
incident? Honestly, I mean, you
32:40
know, we're not perfect. I don't
32:42
judge anybody. I think
32:47
that it's just
32:49
a situation of it's just young love. It's
32:53
a very intense relationship, that's for sure.
32:55
And what you hear is him beginning to play a
32:57
song called
33:00
Horrible Woman, which
33:03
strongly implies that at least Britney gave him
33:05
another song about a horrible woman to write,
33:08
although he denies that the songs are
33:10
specifically about Britney, the implication, especially
33:13
through their placement in the interview is
33:16
very clear. And then, you know,
33:18
after he's sort of dancing around
33:20
the implication that Britney did something
33:22
bad, the video
33:24
for Cry Me a River drops. And that
33:28
implication is made explicit in
33:30
the text of this music
33:32
video. This video is super
33:35
disturbing upon rewatch. It
33:37
features a heartbroken Dustin
33:40
literally stalking a Britney
33:43
lookalike around their shared
33:45
home and filming himself
33:47
hooking up with a different woman
33:49
so that fake Britney can find
33:51
the footage all while he is
33:54
singing about infidelity. The
33:56
lyrics of this song for anyone who
33:58
has forgotten include lines like should
34:01
have picked honesty then you may not
34:03
have blown it. You don't
34:05
have to say what you did. I
34:07
already know I found out
34:09
from him and told
34:12
me you loved me. Why did you
34:14
leave me all alone? So this
34:17
seems to suggest that if
34:20
one person did
34:22
the hurting and the leaving in the
34:24
relationship, it was Britney. Yes,
34:28
this was a huge turning point
34:30
even more so than his press
34:33
tour. It created a very clear
34:35
sense that Britney was the villain
34:37
and it drove this chasm between
34:39
their images. Justin and his team
34:41
had really come out hard and
34:43
fast to control the split up
34:45
narrative. He was beloved and sympathetic.
34:47
He was firming himself as sort
34:49
of this guy who really loved
34:52
Britney and who was devastated and
34:54
heartbroken and just trying to pick up the pieces.
34:57
Meanwhile, he doesn't judge. He's just doing
34:59
his best to get through it. You
35:01
know, he's giving interviews with his mom
35:03
there talking about how sad he was, you
35:05
know, and she
35:08
was just the slut who broke his heart
35:10
and cheated on him. And
35:12
in her memoir, she writes about being booed
35:14
by crowds in public whenever she went anywhere
35:17
during this time and being just
35:19
torn apart in the media. I
35:22
believe we have a clip of her reflecting
35:24
on this time in her memoir. In
35:26
the news media, I was described as a
35:28
harlot who'd broken the heart of America's golden
35:30
boy. The truth? I
35:34
was comatose in Louisiana and he was
35:36
happily running around Hollywood. So
35:38
dark. She also claims in
35:41
her memoir that Justin was
35:43
the one who repeatedly cheated in
35:45
their relationship. She does admit to
35:48
cheating on him one time with dancer
35:50
and choreographer Wade Robson, which she
35:52
says she told Justin and they
35:54
agreed to stay together through it. Around
35:57
this time, Justin went on a radio. show
36:00
and publicly stated that he
36:02
and Britney who had been
36:04
framed and marketed publicly as
36:06
a very virginal Baptist who's waiting
36:09
until marriage he said that
36:11
they had had a sexual relationship we have a
36:13
clip of this Justin Timberlake is
36:15
in the house and I just want to ask
36:17
you one question did you Britney Spears yes
36:22
or no oh man come on
36:24
okay I did it no these
36:27
like drive time like shop job radio shows
36:29
have so much to answer for our society
36:31
I mean just like
36:33
a group of adult
36:36
men cheering this
36:38
talking about Britney Spears
36:40
as if she is this like hunk
36:43
of meat that Justin like stuck it
36:45
in to I just yeah it it
36:47
really it's shocking that
36:49
any millennial women made it out
36:51
alive from this time something
36:54
that struck me is that in her
36:56
memoir Britney actually said that in a
36:58
way she was thrilled that Justin had
37:00
spoken publicly about their sexual relationship because
37:03
she had been sexually active since she
37:05
was 14 and the virginal
37:07
image was something that had kind of been foiced
37:09
upon her by her team and
37:11
that she had been pushed to participate in
37:14
so while she was angry at him she
37:16
also was relieved in a way
37:18
to be released from that yeah
37:20
there is this way in which like that
37:22
virginal image is a dead end for a teenage
37:25
female pop star especially you have
37:28
to break out of it at some point and
37:30
in the crudest and most selfish way
37:32
possible that is what he did in
37:35
November 2003 Britney released every
37:38
time as a single from the album in
37:40
the zone and at the time the public
37:42
really interpreted this as an admission of guilt
37:44
and an admission of guilt and
37:47
an apology to Justin you know there are
37:49
lyrics such as please forgive me my weakness
37:51
caused you pain and the songs my sorry
37:53
what I
37:55
found really interesting is that the video for
37:58
this end doesn't show anything like that
38:00
in the way that Crimea
38:02
River is very literal about
38:04
accusing her of cheating. It really shows
38:06
her being chased by paparazzi, being spoken
38:09
to viciously by her boyfriend
38:11
who's with her, and ends with her
38:13
sad alone in the bath, discovering a
38:15
head wound, like slipping under the water
38:18
in the bathtub, being rushed to the
38:20
hospital after he finds her. And
38:23
at the same time, in another hospital room, a baby
38:26
is being born. So it's interesting
38:28
to look at that now. Post-memoir, a lot
38:30
of fans have wondered if this song was
38:33
actually about her abortion and not about
38:35
like, oh, I'm sorry, Justin. And
38:37
this is a song that she wrote
38:39
herself. So to me,
38:42
that explanation, that interpretation makes
38:44
more sense, frankly. Yeah.
38:47
Yeah. I mean, it literally,
38:49
the chorus repeats, I guess I need you,
38:51
baby. And you can read that both ways.
38:54
But you can read that quite differently when
38:57
you consider what she went through. And
38:59
I also think it's notable that at the
39:01
time she demurred when people
39:04
asked her to explain what it was about.
39:06
Yeah. I think at one point
39:08
she said, first love. But again, she was always
39:10
vague about what this song was about.
39:14
Also that month, Britney sat
39:16
down with Diane Sawyer for
39:18
a wide ranging and
39:20
frankly, fairly contentious
39:22
interview. In
39:25
part of this interview, they discussed her breakup
39:27
with Justin. We have a clip of part
39:29
of that conversation. He has gone
39:31
on television and pretty much said,
39:34
you broke his heart. You
39:37
did something that caused him
39:40
so much pain, so
39:42
much suffering. What did
39:45
you do? I was upset. I
39:48
was upset for a while. We
39:50
both. I think we're both really young and it was
39:55
kind of waiting to happen. And
40:00
I will always, once
40:03
again, always have a special place in my heart. He is
40:05
such a great person. But you said,
40:07
I've only slept with one person in my
40:09
whole life, two years into my relationship with
40:11
Justin. And yet he's
40:14
left the impression that you weren't faithful,
40:18
that you betrayed the
40:20
relationship. I
40:23
think everyone has a side of their
40:25
story and makes them feel a
40:27
certain way. And makes them feel,
40:30
you know, and
40:32
I'm not technically saying he's wrong, but
40:34
I'm not technically saying he's right either.
40:37
Wow. I know. I
40:40
know. And Brittany has since reflected and
40:42
said that because Justin
40:44
got so ahead of the narrative, it
40:47
just like didn't really behoove her to get
40:49
into it in the press. What are we
40:52
even supposed to say to a question like, what
40:54
did you do to him? The answer is nothing
40:56
really. There's also a
40:58
lot of focus on her body in this interview. There
41:02
was a supercut of her abdomen calling
41:04
her belly button the most valuable square
41:06
interview mistake in the entertainment universe. And
41:09
Diane Sawyer asked Brittany, what happened to
41:11
your clothes as she holds up magazine
41:13
covers where Brittany is posing partially nude.
41:17
You know, it's extremely misogynistic,
41:19
to put it lightly. In
41:21
her memoir, Brittany later wrote that this interview
41:24
was a breaking point. I mean, she was
41:26
already just trying to claw her way back from
41:28
the depression of the breakup
41:30
and the public hatred. And this really
41:32
snowed her right back under. And it's
41:35
so telling to me the difference between
41:37
the tone of the Barbara Walters interview
41:39
and then the tone of the Diane
41:41
Sawyer interview. And the Diane Sawyer interview
41:44
is just very, very accusatory
41:46
over and over again. Yeah.
41:48
Their paths really continue to diverge
41:50
from there. Of course, Justin continued
41:52
to be very well respected, famous,
41:54
beloved by fans and in the
41:57
industry. In February 2004, of course, he
41:59
had the Super Bowl halftime show
42:01
with Janet Jackson, which led to the infamous
42:04
wardrobe malfunction, which I think we all
42:06
remember during the line, I'ma have you
42:08
naked by the end of this song.
42:10
He ripped off part of her bustier,
42:12
which was supposed to reveal a lace
42:14
bra. It detached. Her breast was briefly
42:16
exposed, only covered by like a nipple
42:18
cover. And this resulted in
42:20
Janet being blacklisted by Les Moonves.
42:22
But Justin groveled
42:24
and was easily forgiven and his profile
42:27
only rose. He went on to host
42:29
SNL five times. He took on movie
42:31
roles. He won 10 Grammys, was
42:34
nominated 39 times. He
42:36
even got another shot at the Super
42:38
Bowl halftime show in 2018. Crazy
42:41
to reflect that he has literally
42:43
10 times as many Grammys as
42:45
Brittany, which is unconscionable. He's
42:49
pretty wild. Yeah, he
42:52
also started dating and then
42:54
married actress Jessica Beale in 2012. They
42:56
have two children and are still married.
42:58
So really solidifying his spot
43:01
in like Hollywood royalty by marrying
43:03
a high profile actor. Brittany,
43:05
on the other hand, was just
43:07
branded over and over again as
43:09
an out of control train wreck,
43:11
a mess. She continued to work
43:13
quite successfully, but her public image
43:16
was seen as trashy and crazy,
43:18
particularly with regards to her personal
43:20
life. In January 2004,
43:22
she married her childhood friend in
43:24
Vegas kind of on a whim.
43:26
That marriage lasted just 55 hours
43:29
and was annulled. And in the
43:31
petition to the court, it
43:33
stated that Brittany quote lacked understanding
43:35
of her actions. Later
43:38
that year in July 2004, Brittany got engaged
43:41
to her backup dancer, Kevin
43:43
Federline, better known as K
43:46
fed. And
43:48
this became wild tabloid fodder,
43:50
especially because not only
43:52
had they just met three months prior, but Federline's
43:57
ex shard. Jackson was pregnant
44:00
with their second child. K-FED
44:03
and Britney got married in fall 2004
44:07
and pretty soon after Britney gave
44:09
birth to her son Sean in
44:11
2005 and Jaden in September
44:15
2006. Yeah they
44:17
were literally one year apart like yeah
44:19
I cannot emphasize enough how insane it
44:21
is to have babies that back-to-back for
44:23
your body and like your mental health
44:26
it's very challenging. And
44:28
she has since said which we didn't know
44:30
at the time that she suffered from pretty
44:32
rough post cardam depression with
44:35
both of her pregnancies. In
44:37
February 2006 Britney was photographed
44:40
driving with her baby son
44:42
Sean Preston in her lap
44:45
which led to a massive public outcry
44:47
and charges that she was a bad
44:49
mother. Claire we have a
44:51
photo can you describe? Yeah it's
44:54
through the window of her car she is
44:57
has her hand on
45:00
the steering wheel and there you can see
45:02
her baby's head facing forward on her lap
45:04
like he's sitting on her lap. She
45:07
has sunglasses on and there seems to be a man
45:09
in the passenger seat just
45:12
a classic paparazzi snap of the
45:15
era. At the
45:17
time she said that she was trying
45:19
to just get away from the
45:22
paparazzi who had been hounding her
45:24
relentlessly quote I instinctively took measures to
45:26
get my baby and me out of harm's way but
45:28
the paparazzi continued to stalk us. In
45:32
November 2006 Britney
45:34
filed for divorce from Kevin
45:36
Federline. After filing for divorce
45:38
she was photographed going out with Lindsay Lohan and
45:40
Paris Hilton famously the New York Post ran the
45:43
photo on the front page with the headline Bimbo
45:46
Summit which was I mean
45:49
if you look back at the
45:51
three-page spread now it is viciously
45:53
misogynistic and nasty about all the
45:55
women. Truly despicable and I
45:57
can't believe that I mean I can believe
46:00
but that this is what was kind of passed off
46:02
as comedic. It is
46:04
these women are framed as
46:07
complete jokes and also as
46:09
objects who are actually
46:12
inviting all of this vicious
46:14
criticism and attention. Like the
46:16
charges, these three women want the
46:18
attention. They want the paparazzi to stalk
46:21
them. They are not wearing
46:23
underwear because they want to be
46:26
upskirt photographed and have those
46:28
photos splashed everywhere. And like,
46:31
yeah, that was kind of the assumption that
46:33
everything that was happening was what
46:36
Britney had brought upon herself. Despite
46:40
this really awful
46:42
press, she released her fifth
46:45
studio album, Blackout, in October 2007 and
46:49
became the only female artist at the
46:51
time to have her first five studio
46:53
albums debut at number one or number
46:55
two on the US Billboard 200. But
46:58
she was about to enter a pretty dark period
47:00
personally. So 2007 was a very rough year for
47:02
her. In
47:06
January, her beloved aunt died after a
47:08
battle with ovarian cancer. In February, she
47:10
checked into a rehab facility in Antigua
47:12
for less than a full day. The
47:15
very next day, she walked into a salon,
47:19
Esther's Hair Salon in Tarzana, California, and
47:21
asked to have them shave her head.
47:23
And the stylist refused, which I would
47:26
probably also be freaked out by this.
47:28
It's like the most famous woman in the world came in and asked
47:30
me to cut off her famous hair. But
47:33
Britney was like, it's my hair. So
47:35
she grabbed the clippers and did it
47:37
herself. The paparazzi photographed the whole incident
47:40
and it was front of
47:43
tabloid news everywhere. Just
47:45
everywhere. I remember these photos like it
47:47
was yesterday. ABC News
47:49
referred to this whole incident
47:52
as Britney's quote downward spiral.
47:55
And in her memoir, Britney reflects on why
47:57
she chose to shave her head. She
47:59
writes, I'd been eyeballed so much
48:01
growing up. I'd been looked up and down,
48:03
had people telling me what they thought of
48:05
my body since I was a teenager, shaving
48:07
my head and acting out were my ways
48:09
of pushing back. She was also,
48:12
of course, in the middle of a
48:14
divorce and also struggling with postpartum depression.
48:17
And the custody battle was really, really
48:19
difficult for her. She went really long stretches
48:21
without being able to see her sons while
48:23
they were with their dad. A
48:26
few days after the head shaving incident, there
48:28
was another major tabloid incident where
48:30
Brittany took an umbrella to a
48:32
paparazzo's car. This, after
48:35
they followed her to Federline's house
48:37
where she was just pleading to
48:39
see her sons. And this, of
48:41
course, set off just another round
48:44
of wildly hand wringing headlines, magazine
48:46
covers and just framing
48:48
her as like completely deranged. Yeah.
48:51
In January, 2008, there was another incident.
48:54
Brittany refused to give her sons back
48:56
to Kevin Federline after her time with
48:58
them. They had shared custody at the
49:00
time. And the police
49:03
were called when she refused to relinquish
49:05
custody. This led to her being hospitalized.
49:08
And within days, full custody of
49:10
the kids was given to K-Fed
49:12
and Brittany was very quickly put
49:14
into a conservatorship under her father,
49:16
Jamie Spears. She
49:19
said in her memoir, under the conservatorship, I
49:21
was made to understand that those days, those
49:24
days of having her head shaved were now over. I
49:26
had to grow my hair out and get back into
49:28
shape. I had to go to bed early and take
49:30
whatever medication they told me to take. So
49:33
right away, it's framed as Brittany
49:36
is there to work. And she's there to work
49:39
for the people around her, specifically the men
49:41
around her, specifically her father. She
49:43
was under that conservatorship, as we all know, now
49:45
for 13 years. And
49:49
while she was under conservatorship, she continued
49:51
to work a lot. Here is a
49:53
limited list of just some of the
49:55
things she did while she was
49:57
under conservatorship. Guests start on how I met your
49:59
mother. the Virgin and Glee,
50:01
opened the VMAs, designed a
50:03
line of clothing for candies,
50:05
judged the X Factor, released
50:07
four studio albums, went on
50:10
tour four times, and did
50:12
a Vegas residency for four
50:14
years straight. From her
50:16
memoir, she says, I think back now
50:18
on my father and his associates having
50:20
control over my body and my money for that
50:22
long and it makes me sick. Yeah,
50:26
as she points out, you know, lots of
50:28
male artists gamble away their money, they do
50:30
crazy things to their appearance, they have substance
50:32
abuse issues, they have mental health issues, and
50:35
that does not result in them losing control
50:37
over their bodies and money. There's something that
50:39
is seen as so much more deviant for
50:41
a woman to do these things when you're
50:44
supposed to fit into a much more narrow
50:46
box in order to have worth to society.
50:49
And in her memoir, she reflects
50:51
on how she can see that
50:53
she didn't really deserve to have that
50:55
all taken away from her just because
50:57
she was going through a difficult time
50:59
or made some unusual decisions. And
51:02
this brings us kind of to the modern era. In
51:05
January 2019,
51:07
an indefinite hiatus of Brittany's Vegas
51:09
residency was announced after Jamie Spears,
51:11
her father was hospitalized. And
51:13
in early April, Brittany checked
51:16
into a psychiatric facility, and
51:18
the press was told it was because of
51:20
quote, stress from her father's illness. Later
51:23
that month, a podcast called
51:25
Brittany's Graham, our
51:27
guest Tess's pod, who we will be
51:29
speaking to shortly, posted an
51:32
emergency episode that included a voicemail
51:34
from an anonymous source, allegedly a
51:36
former member of Brittany's legal team,
51:38
who said that Brittany was being
51:41
held against her will at the
51:43
psychiatric facility. This source also claimed
51:45
that the conservatorship was originally supposed
51:47
to end back in
51:50
2009, and now was just an indefinite
51:52
thing. Tess and her
51:54
co host Barbara also posted a
51:56
pink graphic with white text that said
51:58
hashtag free break. And this
52:01
of course is the hashtag that took off
52:03
among the fandom and then the wider
52:06
internet. Yeah, there
52:08
was a lot of media coverage around
52:10
this movement. There were some pre-Britney
52:12
protests and at the time,
52:14
Spears stated that people should
52:16
not believe everything you read
52:18
and hear. It
52:21
all brought new attention to what was going
52:24
on and increasingly people were not content to
52:26
just let it lie. They wanted to ask
52:28
questions. Why was this woman who is capable
52:30
of working and having a busy career for
52:32
over a decade? Why
52:34
had she had her person controlled? Why had
52:36
she had her assets controlled for so long?
52:40
And in February 21, in response
52:43
to the New York Times, printing Britney
52:45
Spears' doc, which really dug into
52:47
the questions around this conservatorship, Justin
52:49
Timberlake had to put out a little
52:52
statement and even show some remorse or
52:54
have his publicist show some remorse for
52:56
how things went down and how
52:59
he contributed to the negative public narrative
53:01
about Britney and Janet Jackson. His
53:04
statement on Instagram said, I am deeply sorry
53:06
for the times in my life where my
53:08
actions contributed to the problem where I spoke
53:10
out of turn or did not speak for
53:12
what was right. I understand that I fell
53:14
short in those moments or in these moments
53:16
and in many others and benefited from a
53:18
system that condones misogyny and racism. I specifically
53:20
want to apologize to Britney Spears and Janet
53:23
Jackson both individually because I care for and
53:25
respect these women and I know I failed.
53:28
I've not been perfect in navigating all of this
53:30
throughout my career. I know this apology is the
53:32
first step and doesn't absolve the past. I want
53:34
to take accountability for my own missteps in all
53:36
of this. I feel that we
53:38
should note this. Pin that for
53:40
later. Pin that for a
53:42
little bit later. So on
53:44
June 22, 2021, the New York
53:46
Times obtained evidence that Britney had
53:49
actually privately been pushing to end
53:51
her conservatorship for years. And
53:54
the next day, Britney spoke in court giving
53:56
a 24 minute statement,
53:58
which was not sealed. public
54:00
was able to to hear what
54:02
she said. She called during the
54:04
statement she called the conservatorship abusive,
54:07
said that she had been kind of forced to
54:09
lie to the world about how she was feeling
54:11
about it, and said that her father quote loved
54:15
the control to hurt his own
54:17
daughter. She also revealed that her
54:19
conservators had refused to let her
54:21
take out her IUD even though
54:23
she wanted to have another child. She
54:26
said quote it's been 13 years
54:28
and it's enough. After
54:31
this, Justin got out there
54:33
tweeting again, his support
54:36
for Brittany, he tweeted after
54:38
what we saw today we should all be
54:40
supporting Brittany at this time. Regardless
54:42
of our past, good and bad, and no
54:44
matter how long ago it was, what's happening
54:47
to her is just not right. No woman
54:49
should ever be restricted from making decisions about
54:51
her own body. No one should ever be
54:53
held against their will or ever have to
54:56
ask permission to access everything they've worked so
54:58
hard for. Jess, Jessica Beale,
55:00
and I send our love and our absolute
55:02
support to Brittany during this time. We
55:04
hope the courts and her family make this
55:07
right and let her live however she wants
55:09
to live. On November 12th, 2021, after all of
55:11
this public
55:14
outcry and activism, Brittany's
55:16
conservatorship was officially terminated.
55:18
And I attribute that mostly
55:20
to Justin's tweet personally. Well, it's so nice
55:23
that he was able to. His impact. His
55:25
impact is huge. It is so nice. He's
55:27
just like, Claire, he's just like a
55:29
really good boyfriend even years later. Even years later,
55:32
good and bad, no matter how long it
55:34
was ago, he's still the best.
55:37
In January 2024, Justin released
55:39
the single Selfish ahead of his upcoming
55:41
album, Everything I Thought It Was, which
55:43
drops March 15th. And on
55:46
January 28th, Brittany shared an Instagram post, which
55:48
appeared to be sort of an olive branch.
55:50
And as she said, I want to apologize for some
55:52
of the things I wrote about in my book. If
55:54
I offended any of the people I genuinely care about,
55:57
I am deeply sorry. I also wanted
55:59
to say, I'm I'm in love with Justin
56:01
Timberlake's new song, Selfish. It is so good.
56:03
What a funny way to write that, by
56:05
the way. I'm in love with Justin Timberlake's
56:07
new song. Well,
56:10
we all know her name is chaotic
56:12
on the gram. She takes you on
56:14
a ride. But just
56:17
days later, this post
56:19
was deleted after Justin got
56:21
on stage to perform in New York
56:24
City and said the
56:26
following, we have a clip. It
56:30
is so hot in there. It
56:32
is so hot in there. It is so hot in there. Absolutely,
56:36
nobody. Nobody.
56:39
In case you couldn't hear, he said he wanted
56:42
to take the opportunity to quote, apologize
56:45
to absolutely fucking nobody.
56:48
And this was, notably,
56:50
during a performance of Crimea River.
56:54
What a dick. What a fucking dick.
56:56
Like, just say nothing. My most generous interpretation
56:58
of this is that he was like, I'm just here with
57:00
this crowd and we're all vibing and
57:02
I'm going to say something that's going to
57:04
get everyone, like, worked up and
57:06
forgot that it could be on camera and people would see
57:08
it. I'm going to say I
57:10
think that's too generous of an interpretation and
57:13
also what a dick thing to say. Britney
57:16
then responded via Instagram, it
57:18
seems. Someone
57:21
told me someone was talking shit about me
57:23
on the streets. Re-esclamation
57:25
point. Do you want to bring it
57:27
to the court or will you go home crying to your mom like you
57:30
did last time? Three question marks. She said
57:32
something about how, like, what they used to play one-on-one, she
57:34
would beat him and then he would cry. I
57:37
love that. I love that. It really does.
57:40
She then, of course, as Britney does,
57:42
later deleted this post. And
57:44
this just kind of reignited drama
57:46
between Britney and Justin and their
57:49
fans and fans ended up rushing
57:51
to stream Britney's 2011 song, which
57:54
was also the first time I
57:56
saw Britney doing selfish in order to, like, dethrone Justin's
57:58
selfish on the iTunes charts, hilarious and
58:00
petty and I love it. And
58:02
that is kind of where we are
58:05
at today. So wow. What a ride. What
58:07
a journey. What a wild ride. On that
58:09
note, we're gonna take a quick break. And
58:11
when we come back, that's
58:14
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we are back. And now we are
59:52
so happy to be joined by
59:54
Britney Spears, expert and co-host of
59:56
Britney's Gram and Toxic the Britney
59:58
Spears story, Tess Bark. Tess,
1:00:00
thank you so much for joining us. Thanks
1:00:02
for having me. Oh, we are so excited
1:00:04
to have you here. To start
1:00:06
us off, tell us, were you
1:00:09
a Britney or Justin fan or a
1:00:11
fan of both of them at the
1:00:13
time of their relationship? Like, what was
1:00:15
your level of investment in their love
1:00:17
story when it was happening? It was
1:00:19
pretty high. And I mean, first and
1:00:21
foremost, I've always been Team Britney. Like
1:00:23
when I was in high school, I
1:00:25
was in high school in the peak
1:00:27
TRL of it all. Between
1:00:30
the boy bands, I was more BSB than
1:00:32
in sync. So
1:00:36
I really only liked or
1:00:38
cared about Justin in terms of him
1:00:40
being an accessory for Britney and
1:00:43
to Britney. And so I was
1:00:46
very much invested because at the time it
1:00:48
seemed like he, she had accomplished like every
1:00:50
girl's dream, which is like having a boy
1:00:52
that will just do whatever you want.
1:00:55
And I loved that. I was obsessed
1:00:57
with the matching outfits. I was
1:00:59
just obsessed with the
1:01:02
cheerleader football player kind of dynamic that
1:01:04
was going on there. And I loved
1:01:06
it. But as soon as the breakup
1:01:08
happened, like there was like sin for
1:01:10
Guta, Team Britney. So you
1:01:12
were ahead of the curve on that.
1:01:14
I love that. What
1:01:17
do you think? I mean, there was
1:01:19
so much in your answer already about the appeal
1:01:21
of Britney and Justin to you. But
1:01:23
what else do you think made them such
1:01:26
an iconic couple that like, even though they
1:01:28
only dated publicly for this very short period
1:01:30
of time, it seems like
1:01:32
their relationship still looms very large in the
1:01:34
public imagination. It made such a splash. Like
1:01:36
what do you think set them apart? Honestly,
1:01:40
like a lot of I mean, I think the
1:01:42
thing that we all go back to time and
1:01:44
time again, of course, is the matching denim outfits.
1:01:46
I mean, I think that I
1:01:48
don't know. That's our moon landing. Right. Like
1:01:51
I, it really is a Roman Empire.
1:01:54
Yeah, I mean, yeah, I do. I do think
1:01:56
about it as much as men think about the
1:01:58
Roman Empire. That's so true. But they
1:02:00
thought outfit superseded the importance of that
1:02:03
event because it was like So
1:02:06
much was going on there because number one
1:02:08
it was clear that like they there was
1:02:10
no stylist in charge there We all knew
1:02:12
that was an idea that came straight from
1:02:14
the brain of Britney Spears And
1:02:18
again, it was just so nice to see a
1:02:20
man Clearly going along with whatever
1:02:22
was gonna make his girlfriend happy, you know
1:02:25
and in committing to it 12 out of
1:02:27
10 And I
1:02:29
think that's what I like so much about them as a couple. I
1:02:31
also remember There I loved
1:02:33
how they had like they're matching basketball jerseys
1:02:35
their little nicknames So
1:02:38
they kind of just leaned in to being like
1:02:40
a corny couple together
1:02:43
And it was you know, it's pre 9-11
1:02:45
like the world was a simpler time It
1:02:47
just felt like this time when like couples
1:02:49
were matching outfits and everything, you know You
1:02:51
have like the number one pop star and
1:02:53
the lead singer of the number one boy
1:02:55
band together and I just loved it They
1:02:58
were they were so well matched
1:03:01
the economy was thriving what could
1:03:03
go wrong exactly for Britney or
1:03:05
any of They were literally and
1:03:07
figuratively very well matched and yeah
1:03:09
their nickname stinky and pinky I
1:03:11
mean it is very like credible.
1:03:13
They won cutest couple in their
1:03:16
high school yearbook survey Like that
1:03:18
was that was the vibe I
1:03:21
mean looking back on this relationship It
1:03:24
didn't end up being in a certain sense the
1:03:27
the most Impactful
1:03:29
relationship in Britney's life. I mean she went
1:03:31
on to marry Kevin Fetterline and have her
1:03:33
kids and that breakup was very traumatic
1:03:36
But do you think that this relationship really changed
1:03:38
the trajectory of their careers or what did it
1:03:41
just happen at a time? when
1:03:44
Men's careers would tend to take
1:03:46
off and mature while women's especially
1:03:48
at that time did not Was
1:03:52
the relationship at play and how their
1:03:54
faith kind of diverged in your opinion?
1:03:56
a 1000% I mean I I
1:04:01
think just across like pop star metaphors,
1:04:04
like when Brittany listens to Cardigan, she's
1:04:06
thinking about Justin. You know? Yeah.
1:04:11
This is the one that got away. I
1:04:13
mean, you saw it in her memoir that
1:04:15
she recently came out with. She talked quite
1:04:18
a bit about Justin. I
1:04:20
know just from like my reporting on the
1:04:22
story, reporting on her life, like
1:04:24
she still has like items
1:04:26
from that relationship that she keeps with her.
1:04:30
You see her still talk quite a bit about Justin on
1:04:32
Instagram and stuff like that. I mean, this was a very,
1:04:35
very important relationship in her life.
1:04:37
And I think the
1:04:39
biggest thing about it is they
1:04:42
got to get famous together.
1:04:44
So no matter what ultimately like happened
1:04:47
later on in their life, like they're the only,
1:04:49
because you also have to remember like, this isn't
1:04:51
like a relationship that started when
1:04:53
they were in their late teens, early 20s. Like
1:04:55
they were kids together. This
1:04:58
is like a childhood friend of hers. And so
1:05:00
they just have this understanding of what the other
1:05:02
person has been through in a way that no
1:05:04
one I don't think ever has or
1:05:07
ever will. And like I
1:05:09
said, I think that Justin knows so much
1:05:11
of his success and the fact that no
1:05:13
one gives a shit about Nick from Backstreet
1:05:15
Boys because he didn't date Christina Aguilera. And
1:05:19
he likes to sit here and take so much
1:05:21
credit for being Justin Timberlake, but we only really
1:05:23
gave a shit about Justin Timberlake
1:05:25
because he was dating the princess of
1:05:27
America. Yeah. And
1:05:30
that's something that struck me so
1:05:32
much going back into the media
1:05:35
of that time. And obviously like
1:05:37
the Crimea River music video. And
1:05:40
you're like, wow, so
1:05:42
much of his rise
1:05:44
hinged on being a
1:05:47
sympathetic figure within the context
1:05:49
of this relationship ending. And like,
1:05:52
yeah, you really can't talk about Justin
1:05:55
as a successful pop star without
1:05:57
talking about Britney Spears. Not at
1:05:59
all. Exactly. And I think, I mean,
1:06:02
really to me, in a very sad
1:06:04
way, like, Crimea River kind of set
1:06:06
Brittany off in the trajectory that she
1:06:08
ended up in. You know, she was
1:06:11
so maligned and slut shamed and
1:06:13
given so much heat over that breakup because of,
1:06:15
you know, I think the whiny and shitty
1:06:18
way that, can you tell I'm not a fan of
1:06:20
just the river? Fair.
1:06:24
Yeah, I'm seeing turns after reviewing a lot
1:06:26
of the footage, I'm feeling the same way.
1:06:29
Yeah, we're not feeling great about
1:06:31
JT. But
1:06:34
I mean, I think when we think about
1:06:36
Britney Spears, when we look at Britney Spears,
1:06:38
her experience of being a famous person has
1:06:40
been so central to
1:06:43
what she represents as a person and
1:06:45
the way that she was treated by
1:06:47
our society and our culture. And so
1:06:50
with that breakup, she lost that
1:06:53
one person that could have made fame a
1:06:55
less alienating experience for her. And
1:06:58
then on top of that, she lost this person
1:07:00
that was like a really long time friend and
1:07:02
a family friend. I mean, the Timberlake family, like
1:07:05
helps the Spears family get Britney to auditions when
1:07:07
she was a kid. And they had this really
1:07:09
deep history. So I think she really
1:07:11
lost the opportunity. I still think that one of
1:07:13
the things that makes me most sad about Britney
1:07:15
Spears is that she doesn't have enough famous friends.
1:07:17
She doesn't have enough people that
1:07:19
sort of understand what it's like to have lived
1:07:22
through what she's lived through. And I think that's
1:07:24
what she lost in that breakup and really never
1:07:26
got back. Yeah,
1:07:28
that's such an interesting point. I never really
1:07:30
thought about it that way. But yeah,
1:07:32
like how do you how do you live
1:07:34
in this world of fame when there's no
1:07:37
one else like navigating it alongside you and
1:07:39
like being a partner and that
1:07:42
with you? I also think
1:07:45
it's really like, it's
1:07:47
really interesting to me that Britney
1:07:49
isn't the only person that this
1:07:51
sort of has happened to. We also
1:07:53
saw it, I think, with Jessica Simpson and
1:07:55
Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson and John Mayer
1:07:58
and John Mayer and Jessica Simpson and and
1:08:00
Tony Romo, where you're in this
1:08:02
pop princess and a power couple,
1:08:04
and then the relationship ends,
1:08:06
and it sort of fuels the
1:08:08
reputation of the man who left
1:08:10
her behind, because he's showing that
1:08:12
he has graduated beyond her. He's
1:08:14
too serious for her. He's
1:08:17
got too much to offer to waste his time
1:08:19
with someone who's really beautiful and
1:08:21
cute, but ultimately kind of childlike
1:08:24
in her innocence. It
1:08:27
starts to read more as like, oh, maybe
1:08:29
she's actually not childlike in sleep. Maybe she's
1:08:31
childlike in Dom. And we see
1:08:33
that that trajectory for Justin and Brittany,
1:08:35
where he graduates from the relationship and
1:08:37
becomes like a full adult and
1:08:40
a bigger star than ever. And Brittany, we are
1:08:42
like, oh, everything we loved about you and
1:08:45
loved about you in this relationship is
1:08:47
now framed in a much more negative way,
1:08:49
like you were something that he had to
1:08:51
cast off in order to grow. And
1:08:54
I think it speaks to also, I mean, I
1:08:56
think the reason a lot of, I think, especially
1:08:58
with millennial women, have this really emotional connection to
1:09:00
Britney Spears is I think we, she
1:09:03
experienced obviously in a much more extreme way, but
1:09:05
I think a lot of the way that a
1:09:07
lot of the treatment towards Britney was things that
1:09:10
women do experience in our own lives. I think
1:09:12
that when you have a breakup like that, that
1:09:14
sort of where the premise is
1:09:16
like, oh, the man finally got himself free of
1:09:18
this woman. He's free to go to be the
1:09:20
artist he's supposed to be. It really, it kind
1:09:23
of makes all the labor that the
1:09:25
woman put into that relationship totally invisible.
1:09:29
Yeah. Yeah, and that sense
1:09:31
that actually it was something bad you were
1:09:33
doing to him. Yeah. You were
1:09:35
trapping him. Like what you were saying before about
1:09:37
the appeal of him being this like good sport
1:09:40
boyfriend who was letting her sort of
1:09:42
take center stage, like going along with
1:09:45
her corny couple costume ideas,
1:09:49
that that was him being emasculated
1:09:51
and downtrodden and ripped and
1:09:54
in order to be respected and the
1:09:56
adult male world. He breaks out and like you
1:09:58
were just, you were just holding. him back the
1:10:00
whole time. Anytime that you asserted a
1:10:02
desire and he agreed to it, that was you like
1:10:05
oppressing him in some way. And
1:10:07
I also think for these
1:10:09
male pop stars that yeah, that
1:10:12
came out of these relationships, it
1:10:15
also worked for them with their
1:10:17
core demo of young women fans
1:10:19
because we got to see these
1:10:21
men like Justin be
1:10:24
emotionally available and attentive and
1:10:26
sort of fall into that
1:10:28
perfect boyfriend trope that you
1:10:30
could fantasize about as young
1:10:32
women. And then at the same time,
1:10:35
feel bad for them after they left like,
1:10:38
oh, he this this emotionally available
1:10:40
man who just wore corny outfits with
1:10:42
his girlfriend. He was so hurt. Yeah.
1:10:44
And that that makes him even more
1:10:47
desirable to me like a 13 year
1:10:50
old girl. Exactly. And then
1:10:52
he can go on drive time radio shows and
1:10:54
joke about how he got in her pants and
1:10:56
then he can appeal to a
1:10:58
male demographic that would have gotten to
1:11:01
corny and too much of a girly
1:11:03
figure in pop culture that works for
1:11:05
him across all of the different
1:11:07
groups that he needs to appeal to.
1:11:10
And it worked against Brittany and all
1:11:12
of those same groups because to young
1:11:14
women, suddenly she was trashy
1:11:16
or stupid or
1:11:19
a mess or she had stepped
1:11:22
out on Justin and to
1:11:24
adult men. She was no longer
1:11:26
this virginal doll that they could project
1:11:29
all of their fantasies onto because she
1:11:31
was a person who had real desires
1:11:33
and had children and made
1:11:35
decisions that were a little messier. Exactly. And
1:11:38
I mean, when you look at speaking of
1:11:40
the virginal thing, the way that the two
1:11:42
of them were treated so differently when they
1:11:44
were together, the questions about whether
1:11:47
she was sleeping with Justin, the idea that she
1:11:49
had to be a virgin, none of that was
1:11:51
put on him. And yeah, he was a teenager
1:11:53
at the time too, so maybe it's not fair
1:11:55
to expect him to be totally cognizant of the
1:11:58
very different. ways that they
1:12:00
were treated. But that too completely changed the way
1:12:02
that we look at Brittany and I think the
1:12:04
way that she felt like she was able to
1:12:06
experience the world. I mean, she's talked in her
1:12:08
memoir about how she started having sex when she
1:12:11
was 14. She wasn't a
1:12:13
virgin. This very creepy thing was
1:12:15
happening where middle aged men were
1:12:17
telling this teenager what to say about her
1:12:19
sex life. And Justin didn't have
1:12:22
to deal with any of that. I
1:12:24
expect like later to be like, so you
1:12:26
getting some, which is really more
1:12:28
an opportunity for him to... Yeah,
1:12:30
I'd add... Yeah, bag. Bag or
1:12:33
play the gentleman, which are both kind of
1:12:35
flattering looks for him at the time, at
1:12:37
least. Exactly. Yeah.
1:12:39
We have a lot to dig
1:12:42
into about the hot sexy virginity
1:12:44
of it all. I wanted first
1:12:47
to ask a little bit about
1:12:49
the Free Brittany movement, because
1:12:52
that was something you were such a central
1:12:54
part of. And it ultimately
1:12:57
led to the conservatorship of course
1:12:59
being ended in November 2021. I
1:13:01
mean, what was it like for you to
1:13:04
be at the center of that? And how
1:13:06
do you feel about how things have shaken
1:13:08
out for Brittany now? It
1:13:11
was so many different things to be
1:13:13
at the center of it. It was
1:13:15
very stressful. It was like
1:13:17
we released the Whistleblower episode of our podcast. And
1:13:19
that was sort of the first sort
1:13:24
of like overnight just became like
1:13:26
this giant story. Like we intentionally
1:13:28
released it at midnight because Babbs
1:13:31
and I knew, my partner Babbs and I knew that
1:13:33
if we could
1:13:35
get it big enough on
1:13:37
the internet before her team found out about it, they
1:13:39
wouldn't be able to like quiet it. So
1:13:42
we intentionally released it in the middle of the night. And
1:13:46
literally like I that boy, the time the sun came up, it
1:13:48
was like all over the internet. So it was like this big
1:13:50
crazy thing that we got kind of like thrown
1:13:52
into. And then for the next
1:13:54
couple of years, we were contacted by a
1:13:57
lot of people who were close to Brittany or had worked with
1:13:59
her or had these different. situations with her. So now
1:14:01
we had all this information coming in and it was
1:14:03
like, okay, now we have to like, cause we made
1:14:05
Britney's Gram in my garage. Like it was literally just
1:14:07
literally in my garage. And it was like, now we
1:14:09
need help. We need the real team and an illegal
1:14:11
team and stuff like that. So this is sort of
1:14:13
really truly to report out this story. So we were
1:14:16
actively trying to report out the story as the story
1:14:18
was becoming like bigger and bigger, you know, the New
1:14:20
York times got into it and it sort of became
1:14:22
this like international story that we
1:14:24
were both reporting out and a part of.
1:14:26
And truthfully, you know, I spent a lot
1:14:28
of that time, like really, really worried
1:14:30
about Britney's safety. I mean, so it was
1:14:33
very, it was very stressful
1:14:35
sort of in that regard too. Yeah.
1:14:37
I mean, I can imagine it's
1:14:39
kind of like Gothic what she
1:14:41
went through before the conservatorship and
1:14:43
also under it. It's hard to really
1:14:46
wrap your mind around the fact that
1:14:48
it even happened and it's terrifying. It's
1:14:50
very terrifying. And I mean, that was
1:14:52
the other thing too. Like while reporting
1:14:54
out the story is I got to
1:14:56
know a lot of other people who've
1:14:58
been victims of conservatorship abuse. I started
1:15:00
to have a better understanding of our
1:15:02
court system and just
1:15:04
understanding like this could happen in America. That alone was
1:15:07
sort of a shock and like a hard thing to
1:15:09
wrap my brain around because I don't think that people
1:15:11
really before Britney's case, like
1:15:13
understood that this was not a common thing, but
1:15:15
it's something that does happen to sort of a
1:15:17
lot of people. And
1:15:20
also something that like with Britney
1:15:22
could happen and then despite her
1:15:24
being so public and so known
1:15:26
could just sort of operate quietly
1:15:28
in the background for more than
1:15:31
a decade without causing much
1:15:33
stir. Exactly. I mean, I
1:15:35
had a lot of guilt the more I
1:15:37
started to first understand about her situation because
1:15:39
I think I was also
1:15:41
blinded by my own sort of like,
1:15:43
I guess misogyny or by my own
1:15:45
participation in the patriarchy because I knew
1:15:48
that Britney was in a conservatorship. I
1:15:50
didn't know what a conservatorship was, but I knew
1:15:52
that her dad was making decisions
1:15:55
for her. And I guess I
1:15:57
also knew that Jamie Spears was not a great guy.
1:16:00
But I think for a lot of years I
1:16:02
was sort of like, well publicly facing she seems to
1:16:04
be doing okay, like a dad is in charge. And
1:16:06
I think subconsciously I kind of didn't question things after
1:16:08
that. And I think that's a
1:16:10
big part. I think a lot of us. Yeah, I
1:16:12
think that that goes for a lot of us. I'm
1:16:16
curious how you think the Free
1:16:18
Britney movement changed how
1:16:20
we look at and think about
1:16:22
the Britney and Justin relationship specifically,
1:16:24
and then Justin Timberlake as a
1:16:27
figure. I think the Free
1:16:29
Britney movement and especially like the the
1:16:31
framing Britney spirits documentary that the New
1:16:33
York Times did, I think really in
1:16:35
a really good way had us all sort of re-examine
1:16:37
the way that we treated Britney. And I think we
1:16:40
all need to accept culpability for that
1:16:42
because most of us were reading Perez-Hilton and
1:16:45
Star magazine and most of us were participating in
1:16:47
that culture that was essentially leading to her being
1:16:49
stalked by paparazzi kind of
1:16:52
non-stop. And
1:16:54
I think that part of that sort of
1:16:56
reckoning was understanding that we were really unfair
1:16:58
to her in that breakup. So
1:17:01
I think that after that was like, well,
1:17:03
why isn't Justin Timberlake being a little bit
1:17:05
more vocal here? I mean, like I was
1:17:07
saying earlier, he of all people, he knew
1:17:09
what she lived through. And
1:17:12
he knew how unfairly she was treated. And I think
1:17:14
the first thing that he sort of came out with
1:17:16
in the Free Britney movement broke was
1:17:18
he eventually like, you know, he released a
1:17:20
Notes app apology, which is like, could you
1:17:22
be any more generically shitty? I
1:17:26
know. Make a music video about it,
1:17:28
buddy. That's what you did before. Exactly.
1:17:32
And the night actually the night that Britney
1:17:34
got out of the conservatorship, Babs and I
1:17:36
threw like this huge party in West Hollywood,
1:17:38
which is like, amazing. And like,
1:17:40
everyone came from the courthouse, the club, and
1:17:43
it was great. And we had this great
1:17:45
playlist that was mostly all Britney and allies.
1:17:48
But Babs had put I
1:17:50
think Crimea River on the
1:17:52
playlist, and she started playing it
1:17:54
and the whole club started booing. And then
1:17:56
like she has a bit
1:17:58
of where she couldn't
1:18:00
change the song and both of us were like panicking trying
1:18:03
to change the song with like 200 people Buddha,
1:18:06
Justin Timberlake. So yeah,
1:18:08
he now gets a very role reversal
1:18:11
What she experienced when she literally
1:18:13
like went anywhere outside after their
1:18:15
breakup. Yes Yeah, that
1:18:17
is that is wild It
1:18:20
has like made their their relationship kind of more
1:18:22
of a topic of conversation again for the first
1:18:24
time in decades and at
1:18:27
the same time we're having this big reexamination of
1:18:29
just the kind of
1:18:31
the pop culture that we all grew up
1:18:34
with as millennials around the
1:18:36
turn of the millennium and a big
1:18:39
part of that that I think we need to really
1:18:41
dig into was like
1:18:43
the pop star purity culture that
1:18:45
Brittany was very much the
1:18:48
Pioneering figure head of like she
1:18:51
was the yeah first one. Yeah,
1:18:53
the first biggest symbol of like
1:18:57
Chased but sexy pop
1:18:59
starlet. She was the blueprint
1:19:01
and That
1:19:03
had so much to do with like The
1:19:06
broader culture at the time right like
1:19:08
it was the 90s and
1:19:11
going into the odds It was the rise
1:19:13
of purity culture Which was
1:19:15
a big Christian movement
1:19:17
in the 90s, especially among evangelical
1:19:19
Christians to like really emphasize sexual
1:19:22
abstinence Especially for women and girls
1:19:24
the first ever purity ball in which fathers pledged
1:19:26
to protect the chastity of their daughters was held
1:19:29
in 1998 in
1:19:31
Colorado Springs, so really right before
1:19:33
Brittany Hit it
1:19:35
big. I mean that's yeah months before
1:19:37
her debut out Yeah,
1:19:40
I mean is which is kind of wild
1:19:42
timing Then there are organizations
1:19:44
like true love weights that push these purity pledges
1:19:46
and purity rings and that became bigger with like
1:19:49
especially a younger generation of Disney stars
1:19:52
like the Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus
1:19:54
and Disney
1:19:56
was huge in purity culture
1:20:00
which is of course where Brittany and Justin got their star. It
1:20:02
was so determined to keep the images of their child
1:20:04
stars really squeaky clean. They didn't want to scare
1:20:06
off parents. They wanted these kids to be like
1:20:08
good role models. And so yeah,
1:20:10
many young stars at this time were talking
1:20:12
openly about being virginal and Brittany was
1:20:14
of course like the trailblazer in that
1:20:17
respect. And at
1:20:20
the same time, like sex was like
1:20:22
almost more at the forefront than ever, right? Like
1:20:26
we're so fixated on these women and
1:20:28
girls sexual purity, also how hot are
1:20:30
they? How low rise are their pants?
1:20:32
Can we see their thongs? Like how
1:20:35
flat are their abs? Women
1:20:37
were really pressured to go to extremes to
1:20:39
fit these beauty standards of extremes fitness. They
1:20:41
were supposed to present as very hot
1:20:43
and sexy. And
1:20:45
that was like the stew that Brittany
1:20:48
emerged from. It's fascinating because
1:20:50
it's the stew that she emerged from and it's
1:20:52
also sort of the stew that she was not
1:20:55
the cause of because I think other people were putting
1:20:57
pressure on her to be that person. But that
1:21:00
I think again speaks to something that I think
1:21:02
about a lot with Brittany that I think is
1:21:04
very sort of universal and relatable about her, which
1:21:06
is that she's expected to live
1:21:08
in sort of like two diametrically opposed
1:21:11
universes, you know, the virginal one and
1:21:13
the super sexy one. And
1:21:15
so there's no place that she's actually
1:21:17
allowed to be. Right? And
1:21:19
I think that that's something again, that a lot of
1:21:21
women deal with throughout our entire lives. Like we are
1:21:24
supposed to be taken seriously but you better be hot
1:21:26
or you're not gonna get to
1:21:28
do that job. You know, you better be friendly, but lean in, you
1:21:31
know you better be a good mom, but also like be good
1:21:33
at your job. And like, and like,
1:21:35
there's really no place in the world. Are you
1:21:37
giving the American So
1:22:00
it was like this carrot that we were never
1:22:02
actually going to reach nor were we ever going
1:22:05
to be like the void of any Sexual desires
1:22:07
and so it kind of put us in this
1:22:09
place where we were always going to feel like
1:22:11
there was something really wrong with Us yeah,
1:22:14
and that's something that was
1:22:16
so powerful about her as a symbol and
1:22:18
a reason that I think like
1:22:21
I personally had a lot of resentment towards
1:22:23
her as a young person kind of growing
1:22:25
up in that stew and and
1:22:28
Put a lot of that on her
1:22:30
as an individual without really seeing all
1:22:33
the forces that play around her
1:22:35
that were directly Benefiting
1:22:38
financially from her stepping into
1:22:40
this role as this
1:22:42
symbol It's
1:22:45
just yeah, I mean and
1:22:47
as you said Claire in
1:22:50
this moment there
1:22:52
there were these examples of
1:22:56
Girls who were kind of the
1:22:58
opposite of Brittany like Monica Lewinsky,
1:23:00
right? Or Hillary Clinton was right.
1:23:02
I think then but Monica to me
1:23:04
is so interesting because she is where
1:23:06
Brittany is Sexy
1:23:08
in all the right ways that adult
1:23:10
men want but pure
1:23:13
in the way that they want Monica
1:23:15
both didn't fit Those
1:23:19
like beauty ideals that we were told
1:23:21
we needed to have to
1:23:23
have value as young women and also Had
1:23:26
sexual desires that were splashed
1:23:29
everywhere. Yeah I
1:23:31
really want to credit here to Doyle in their
1:23:33
book train wreck women We love to hate mock
1:23:35
and fear and why which when I read it
1:23:37
a few years ago Really
1:23:40
reframed the way that I thought about Britney
1:23:42
Spears in a fundamental way and in the
1:23:44
book Doyle argues that
1:23:46
the idolization of Britney was just such a
1:23:48
reaction to the Clinton years that Britney was
1:23:50
the Anti-Hillary and
1:23:52
also very much the anti Monica
1:23:55
at the same time like both of these women who
1:23:57
were opposites Who are in the media? and
1:24:00
who are both hated, Brittany had to be opposite
1:24:02
to both of them in the relevant ways, right?
1:24:05
So I want to quote from this book,
1:24:08
to save herself from the hatred that defined
1:24:10
the public lives of Hillary Clinton and Monica
1:24:12
Lewinsky, the ideal woman would have to steer
1:24:14
between them like Skilla and Caridis, navigating the
1:24:17
currents without being swept toward either side, virgin
1:24:19
and pinup, wide-eyed innocent and worldly temptress, icon
1:24:21
of cool and conservative Christian role model. She
1:24:24
would always have to be both and neither, everything and
1:24:26
nothing, and she would have to be able to do
1:24:28
all of this when she was still very, very
1:24:31
young. Damn. Jude, Jude
1:24:33
is such a great, great
1:24:35
writer and really I think like nails it. Yeah.
1:24:38
Nailed it on the head and that kind of,
1:24:40
you can see from that how
1:24:42
Brittany was always set up to
1:24:44
fail, right? Like she was
1:24:47
always going to have
1:24:50
some sort of relationship that would let
1:24:53
people know she was no longer a virgin. Her
1:24:55
body was always going to change. She
1:24:58
was always going to grow up and her
1:25:01
image simply couldn't sustain any of
1:25:03
those very natural human changes. Not
1:25:06
at all. In the same way that like there's whatever that
1:25:08
figure is that always like, oh, if Barbie was a real
1:25:10
person, she wouldn't be able to walk because her feet are
1:25:12
too small. Like Brittany was given feet that were too small
1:25:14
to walk in. Exactly. Yes.
1:25:17
Yes. Yeah. And
1:25:20
I think, yeah, the very, very young part is so critical to
1:25:22
this. This idealized
1:25:24
image of womanhood is really an
1:25:27
image of girlhood and
1:25:29
there is no way to break out of that
1:25:32
in a way that is like acceptable
1:25:34
to society. Right. No. Because
1:25:37
you're going to become an adult woman. Yeah. Like
1:25:39
that's just going to happen and automatically
1:25:42
Brittany was going to lose when that
1:25:44
inevitably happened. And I don't
1:25:46
know, you're going to become an adult woman. You're going
1:25:48
to be enfantalized until the moment you're too old for
1:25:51
everything. Yeah. And
1:25:53
then the infantilization kind of turns against you. Right. What
1:25:56
did we immediately start to think about Brittany and Jessica
1:25:58
Simpson? Oh, she's dumb. Like I
1:26:00
was saying up top, like we
1:26:03
immediately start to see as soon as these
1:26:05
women show too much
1:26:07
like adultness in a certain way, they get
1:26:09
married, they have kids, like they start to
1:26:11
make adult decisions that we don't agree with.
1:26:14
We start to see that cute child
1:26:16
like wide eyed innocence
1:26:18
as stupidity. And it
1:26:21
was very much how we saw Britney.
1:26:23
Exactly. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right.
1:26:25
I think also like, yeah,
1:26:27
definitely one of my first feelings
1:26:30
for Britney was jealousy. I remember being
1:26:32
like wildly jealous of her because she
1:26:34
was so beautiful. And it was like
1:26:36
all of our genes were so low
1:26:38
rise. Just I just remember those abs
1:26:40
and that belly button. And it was
1:26:42
like I just Yeah, those abs were
1:26:44
traumatic. So traumatic. Like I think we
1:26:47
all had some degree of disordered eating
1:26:49
just because of like the, you know,
1:26:51
her music videos, you know, but and
1:26:53
then you look back at the Diane
1:26:55
Sawyer interview, and there's like a 35
1:26:57
second supercut that is just cut
1:26:59
off photos of like images
1:27:02
of just her abs and
1:27:04
Diane's like the most powerful
1:27:06
inch in all of entertainment,
1:27:08
most valuable real estate and who owns it
1:27:10
21 year old Britney
1:27:12
Spears and you're like, how could
1:27:15
anyone survive this that like,
1:27:18
this is the way she's being talked about. And
1:27:21
also all of these young women who
1:27:23
can never achieve that thing that she
1:27:25
has for this limited amount of time
1:27:28
are going to be primed to resent
1:27:30
her for it. Exactly. Because I think
1:27:32
what we were actually resenting was the
1:27:34
system that was expecting us to have
1:27:36
those abs and myself, but she was
1:27:39
the system to us as exactly in
1:27:41
centene. Yeah. You know,
1:27:43
we didn't see her managers.
1:27:45
We didn't see David Luchapelle,
1:27:47
you know, framing that photo
1:27:49
shoot. And as she's later
1:27:51
said, kind of tricking her
1:27:53
into posing suggestively, like
1:27:55
we didn't see any of that labor.
1:27:57
And to us, like she just was
1:28:00
delivered to us as exactly who she was. And
1:28:03
that was a symbol that was impossible for
1:28:05
us to live up to. Yeah,
1:28:09
and I mean, I think like a huge
1:28:11
evolution in my feminism was like when I
1:28:13
realized that Brittany wasn't the problem and I
1:28:15
was able to like stop presenting Brittany and
1:28:17
start loving her. And I think for
1:28:20
myself, and I think a lot of real
1:28:22
hardcore Brittany fans, it's like when we really
1:28:24
fell in love with her was after the
1:28:26
breakup. Like my favorite Brittany is Barefoot Red
1:28:28
Bull and I'm like, I'm going to see
1:28:30
the singer at Brittany because that's so fucking
1:28:33
subversive. Like when she was just
1:28:35
like, fuck you guys. Like I am going out
1:28:37
Barefoot, I'm going to CBS to
1:28:39
get lipstick, I'm walking into a gas station without
1:28:41
shoes on, like all the things that they tried to vilify her
1:28:43
for, I think so many of us sound
1:28:46
so empowering because it was like, finally, someone
1:28:49
is just out there without a bra
1:28:52
drinking Red Bull. Yeah, like we all
1:28:54
wanna be, right? And
1:28:56
our life and yeah, a big
1:28:58
part of that also was that Brittany wanted
1:29:00
a life that wasn't just being a sex
1:29:03
symbol, right? She wanted to be a wife
1:29:05
and a mom, which is supposed to be kind
1:29:07
of the correct desire according
1:29:09
to like the Christian purity culture that
1:29:11
was pushing a lot of this. That
1:29:14
was supposed to be the correct desire but it threatened her
1:29:17
being used to sell stuff and her making
1:29:19
a ton of money. And so that had
1:29:21
to be a big problem but she actually
1:29:23
represented a very realistic image in a lot
1:29:25
of ways of what it looks like for
1:29:28
that cute girl to become a wife and a mom,
1:29:30
which is you don't have time to make
1:29:33
sure that your hair looks perfect all the time. Your
1:29:35
bras don't fit anymore, like your abs aren't
1:29:37
flat anymore, you feel like a bowl of
1:29:39
Jell-O and you have to go to the
1:29:41
gas station with your baby and everything is
1:29:44
very difficult. And that's
1:29:46
like real, that's real, that's relatable to
1:29:49
me as a mom. Exactly,
1:29:51
and then I
1:29:53
think when once we started to see those human
1:29:56
elements in her, like she ceased to be just
1:29:58
an object that people could kind of. like throw
1:30:00
their sexuality onto. And I think that was really
1:30:02
upsetting for the people that tried to put her
1:30:04
in that box. Yeah, I think
1:30:06
a lot of people didn't like that.
1:30:08
We also do have to talk about
1:30:10
Justin's image and kind of
1:30:13
what made them so alluring
1:30:15
as a couple.
1:30:17
You know, he was equally
1:30:20
desirable to that same target
1:30:22
demo as Brittany was. He
1:30:25
was this like cute and
1:30:28
something that I think is key in like the
1:30:30
fandom of so many young girls of these boy
1:30:33
bands is that all of the members of these
1:30:35
boy bands seemed kind
1:30:37
of non-threatening. Like they were puppy
1:30:40
dogs. They were singing about love
1:30:42
in a very childlike way. And
1:30:46
so that made like Justin as
1:30:48
Brittany's partner so
1:30:50
exciting, I think, for a lot of young
1:30:52
women who were fans of both NSYNC and
1:30:55
Britney Spears. And it also like really played
1:30:57
into her brand, right? They reinforced each other
1:30:59
because he
1:31:01
had this sort of neutered appeal as
1:31:04
a boy bander. They were
1:31:06
exactly the same age. I think if she were
1:31:08
dating an older man or someone
1:31:10
who seemed more edgy and
1:31:12
sexual at the time, it
1:31:14
might've thrown her like chastity narrative
1:31:17
more into question. And instead it
1:31:19
was somehow seen as
1:31:21
plausible that they literally lived together
1:31:24
and they weren't having sex. Claire,
1:31:26
they're just two good Southern kids. Yeah,
1:31:29
they're just two cuties. They call each other
1:31:31
stinky and pinky. They wear matching outfits. It
1:31:34
really is Barbie and Kenneth. Like they're
1:31:36
sexless lovers and
1:31:38
a matching pet. It's almost like they're
1:31:40
siblings, right? They go together. Yes.
1:31:44
But they aren't necessarily doing anything yucky
1:31:47
and gross like sex. No, yeah,
1:31:49
like Justin, like when I think of like NSYNC,
1:31:52
Justin, like I struggled to even,
1:31:55
he was so bland. He was like
1:31:57
tofu. Like you really could just put what
1:31:59
I wanted. you wanted onto him, which I think
1:32:01
when you're that young, you kind of
1:32:03
just do to boys. Like, you kind of just choose a
1:32:06
random boy and have a crush on him because nobody has
1:32:08
a personality. That's why I
1:32:10
had a crush on Nick Carter
1:32:12
because he was like so childlike
1:32:15
and floppy haired. And yeah,
1:32:18
there was nothing safe.
1:32:20
He was safe. And Justin gave that to
1:32:23
a lot of young women. Yeah. And I'm
1:32:25
just realizing, I guess the sort of dark
1:32:27
side of that is also, I think when
1:32:29
you're a teenage girl, unfortunately, you are actually
1:32:32
starting to like, that's your first time in your
1:32:34
life that you're realizing that like, actually, boys aren't
1:32:36
safe. Like, he kind
1:32:38
of offered this fantasy that allows you
1:32:41
to sort of ignore what the
1:32:43
cusp of what a lot of girls I think are
1:32:45
starting to learn, which is like, Oh, I have to
1:32:47
keep my guard up. Like this boy that
1:32:49
I like could like, either hurt me emotionally, maybe
1:32:51
because, you know, like, boys are something that you
1:32:53
kind of have to be a little bit worried
1:32:55
about. And he exactly he was safe. And
1:32:58
like sex didn't play into it. You could just like have
1:33:00
a crush on him. He was like a penisless Kindle. Yeah,
1:33:03
it's like the way that I imagined having
1:33:05
a boyfriend growing up. I remember telling my
1:33:07
dad, like, I think it would
1:33:09
be so cool to be in a relationship with one of the
1:33:12
Beatles, you would just like they would
1:33:14
just sing you a song every night before bed.
1:33:16
Like, you're just hanging out with a cute guy
1:33:18
singing you a song like that is the level
1:33:21
that you're conceiving of romantic relationships on
1:33:23
when you're like a tween
1:33:25
girl. Yes. And, or at least I was.
1:33:27
And you can make a few answers with
1:33:29
them. Yeah, it'll be
1:33:31
so long. All my party every night
1:33:33
to me so much good choreography. Yeah,
1:33:36
he is a good dancer. But
1:33:39
at the same time, because they're in this relationship,
1:33:41
and she's a famous virgin, that
1:33:43
also fuels it because we all get
1:33:45
to constantly, you know, the media gets
1:33:47
to keep asking them, like, are you
1:33:50
having sex? Are you having sex? Yeah,
1:33:52
that happened. Yeah. The current relationship. Like,
1:33:54
an ongoing story, like, that's always potentially
1:33:56
developing of has
1:33:58
the sex happened yet. Yeah, it was
1:34:00
like an inherent will there won't they as if
1:34:03
they were gonna tell us Yeah,
1:34:05
no, they really thought that they were gonna tell us
1:34:07
they're like, I'm sure when they have sex They'll put
1:34:09
out a press release and they'll let
1:34:11
us know and whether it was good. I'm like if they
1:34:14
plan on doing it again Yeah
1:34:17
It created this ongoing intrigue
1:34:20
and I think like you really see how this You
1:34:23
know this is seen in the mirror image
1:34:25
almost after the breakup when she has a
1:34:27
fling with the Bad boy
1:34:30
celeb Colin Farrell. It really tarnished
1:34:33
That image for her in a
1:34:35
different way because who could have
1:34:37
a relationship with like Colin Farrell But isn't
1:34:39
very sexual right exactly like that's not the
1:34:41
kind of girl She was supposed to be
1:34:43
Justin was the kind of safe. Maybe he
1:34:45
smooth down there boy. I Mean
1:34:49
like Colin Farrell is all Penis
1:34:54
it's one of those big leather band watches at
1:34:56
the head Spiky
1:34:59
hair It was
1:35:01
such such a vibe and it
1:35:04
was almost like they were their own Boy
1:35:06
band in a way like this is like I think of
1:35:08
like the Spice Girls and the boy band like there weren't
1:35:10
really a lot Of girl bands. I
1:35:12
mean that's something I think about a lot with Brittany
1:35:14
too is like Justin had people around him as he
1:35:16
was Famous and performing like Brittany was
1:35:19
going on TRL by herself Brittany
1:35:21
was doing these interviews by herself asking being
1:35:23
asked by middle-aged men about her sex life
1:35:25
by herself And so I
1:35:27
think yeah, you look at all of all of those
1:35:30
teen Queens were all solo artists Mandy
1:35:32
Moore Christina
1:35:35
Aguilera and Jessica Simson Christina Aguilera
1:35:37
Yeah, now you're like, oh my god, you were 15 dealing
1:35:40
with that Like that I like I would feel
1:35:42
bad for a 15 year old alone at Starbucks.
1:35:44
Thank God for Destiny's Child. Seriously. We had one.
1:35:46
Yes That's true Yeah,
1:35:49
I think the pairing of Brittany and Justin it
1:35:51
almost created like another group for us Even though
1:35:53
they never did music together. It was like kind
1:35:56
of another group That you could
1:35:58
kind of place that for the Super Bowl halftime I'm sure.
1:36:01
Yeah. That's a really good
1:36:03
point though. It creates that pleasing sense
1:36:05
of like, yeah, being able to match
1:36:07
things, like seeing things moving in unison,
1:36:09
that the boy band or girl band
1:36:11
paradigm really pluckles that
1:36:13
part of our brain that's pleased by that sort of
1:36:16
thing. And they were able to do that
1:36:18
also. And yet I
1:36:20
think it is interesting that of
1:36:22
all of those pop princesses, the
1:36:24
only ones who escaped relatively unscathed
1:36:27
from that era were the ones who
1:36:30
were not in high profile relationships like
1:36:32
this. It's the Mandy Moores.
1:36:34
It's the Chrissy Nagularas who are able
1:36:36
to navigate that a little
1:36:38
bit more seamlessly. Whereas
1:36:40
like the Jessica Simpson, the Britney Spears,
1:36:43
you know, they, and you know, Destiny's
1:36:45
Child, they have each other and look at
1:36:47
Beyonce now. So it is
1:36:50
just interesting to see how partnering with
1:36:52
a male pop star is such a
1:36:54
fucking death nail for your career as
1:36:57
a woman in the same business. Yeah, he's going to
1:36:59
rise and you're going to fall. He's going to leave
1:37:01
you like roadkill on the side. Yeah, because you are,
1:37:03
you're going to, like that Jezebel trope is just going
1:37:05
to be applied to you. I think no
1:37:07
matter what. Yeah, it
1:37:10
is. And also when you get famous as a
1:37:12
young woman, like any famous woman,
1:37:14
her value kind of just starts
1:37:16
disintegrating every moment she
1:37:18
ages. Yes. And like
1:37:21
the opposite happens for these young men. Yeah.
1:37:23
Like they're only going to get better looking and more desirable and
1:37:26
their adultness is going to be a boon
1:37:29
for them. Yeah. Because what
1:37:31
we can view as success and as desirable
1:37:33
in men is so much more elastic. Right.
1:37:36
And I think about Beyonce a lot because
1:37:38
yeah, you're right. She didn't have that high
1:37:40
profile relationship and she also fired her dad.
1:37:43
Yeah. Yeah. I
1:37:46
mean, she had she had that huge relationship, but it wasn't.
1:37:48
Yeah, it wasn't treated the
1:37:50
same way. It was a little bit more in
1:37:52
the background. It wasn't front and center for publicity
1:37:54
in the same way. Yeah. Yeah,
1:37:57
exactly. And I think. I
1:38:00
think also what you said earlier about him being like
1:38:02
an accessory for Brittany is so telling. I
1:38:04
think that was a big part of the appeal to be part of
1:38:06
the Barbie and Kenness of it all too is
1:38:08
like she's Barbie. He's just Ken, right? Yes. And
1:38:11
then how does he break out of that? He has to like
1:38:15
stab her in the back and
1:38:17
take her down in order to
1:38:19
a bad patriarchy. Like their story
1:38:21
is the story of the kind
1:38:23
of old go to his mojo
1:38:25
Jojo class. Wow. Justin.
1:38:29
Yeah. Wow. Justin did the Ken
1:38:31
Rafalt. He did. They all
1:38:33
had to do it. I mean, it's also
1:38:36
what you were saying, Tess, that I thought
1:38:38
was really on point about how at
1:38:40
that moment, girls in the target audience
1:38:42
were all starting to realize that men can and
1:38:44
boys can hurt us. And we
1:38:47
have these safe puppy dog tiger, be, you
1:38:49
know, poster boys heartthrobs that
1:38:51
we can have a safer
1:38:53
crash on. And they
1:38:56
have to navigate that transition in their
1:38:58
career in a way that
1:39:00
doesn't either allow them
1:39:02
to continue to be like the emasculated
1:39:05
accessory of a woman, which is obviously
1:39:07
terrible for them or to
1:39:09
suddenly be like the villain. And
1:39:12
they have to kind of sacrifice
1:39:14
the women that they're with in
1:39:16
order to make that transition to no longer
1:39:18
be her accessory and also not to be
1:39:20
her villain. They have to make her. Is
1:39:23
there. Right. And that's what
1:39:25
you were more than you were cheated on.
1:39:27
And now you're just an emotional mess who
1:39:29
needs to be nursed back to emotional health.
1:39:32
It was perfect. It was it was absolutely
1:39:34
perfect. Yeah. He was hitting because
1:39:36
at that point in his age, he's in his early
1:39:38
20s at that point and he's hitting yet another thing
1:39:40
that I think women have been conditioned to seek out,
1:39:43
which is a boy to take care of. Oh,
1:39:46
no, you had your heartbroken. Exactly. Let
1:39:48
me fix you and take care of you. He did the
1:39:50
care of all of us. And that was incredibly,
1:39:53
incredibly seductive, even though now you watch
1:39:55
those music videos back and you're like,
1:39:57
there are a lot of. extremely
1:40:00
disturbing visuals here, but
1:40:03
I don't remember noting any of that at
1:40:05
the time. Yeah, I
1:40:07
think it's like pretty explicit also in some of
1:40:10
the media at the time, the way that what
1:40:14
he was navigating to make this transition
1:40:16
after they broke up, Details magazine ran
1:40:18
him as a cover model. And
1:40:21
the cover line was, can we
1:40:23
ever forgive Jocelyn for all that
1:40:25
fizzy music? Hey, at least he
1:40:27
got in Britney Spears' parents. Oh,
1:40:30
I don't see how it can be
1:40:32
more fucking explicit. Sick. Like he is
1:40:34
emaculated by... You're good with the dudes
1:40:36
now. You're good. He was emaculated by
1:40:39
being in the boy band genre and
1:40:41
having young female fans. And now
1:40:44
he has to sort of
1:40:46
go before a tribunal of real
1:40:48
men and ask for forgiveness and
1:40:51
offering up the fact that he
1:40:53
had made conquest of the most
1:40:55
desirable, virginal woman in
1:40:58
America in order to get
1:41:00
that masculinity card handed back.
1:41:04
It's literally the inverse of what Britney
1:41:06
was expecting to jump through in order
1:41:08
to get her femininity. Right. Yes.
1:41:11
Wow, that's so gross. And also, I
1:41:13
mean, in Britney's book too, I love
1:41:15
the part where she's talking about, oh
1:41:18
wait, who was it that they... was it Genuine?
1:41:21
That they ran into Genuine in Manhattan and
1:41:23
he does that terrible, the first... Oh
1:41:26
my God. I actually think... Talon, do
1:41:28
we have a clip of that? I think we might have
1:41:30
a clip. Oh, you bet we have a clip. One
1:41:34
day Jay and I were in New York going to
1:41:36
parts of town I'd never been to before. Walking
1:41:39
our way was a guy with a huge blinged
1:41:41
out medallion. He was flanked by
1:41:43
two giant security guards. Jay
1:41:45
got all excited and said so
1:41:47
loud, oh yeah, fo' shiz, fo'
1:41:49
shiz, Genuine, what's up homie? As
1:41:53
she's Genuine walked away, Felicia did an impression
1:41:55
of Jay. Oh yeah,
1:41:57
fo' shiz, fo' shiz, Genuine. Jay
1:42:00
wasn't even embarrassed. Be
1:42:02
embarrassed, man. That's embarrassing. He really should
1:42:05
be embarrassed. Yes, I hope he's embarrassed
1:42:07
now. He's not enough. I can't stand
1:42:09
this man. And like the fact that
1:42:11
this to me this moment encapsulates everything
1:42:13
that is Justin Timberlake. It's like number
1:42:15
one, I feel like Brittany,
1:42:18
a lot of her takedown was like, Oh, you're
1:42:20
someone that's from this like low income family that's
1:42:22
trying to make it in this very glamorous world
1:42:24
whereas Justin Timberlake is some like an upper to
1:42:27
middle class white family. Here he
1:42:29
is impersonating a rapper. He's so
1:42:31
cringe. And in every way he
1:42:33
should be a maligned and he should be embarrassed
1:42:36
about his behavior, but he's not shamed for it.
1:42:38
He goes on and continues to be a poser
1:42:40
for like the next decade. And he continues to
1:42:42
not be embarrassed for like what is this really
1:42:44
just ick behavior? Yeah,
1:42:47
grow. Yes, he does benefit a
1:42:50
lot from co-optation of black culture
1:42:52
and, and on his
1:42:54
trajectory toward to fame, he of
1:42:56
course, not only sacrifices
1:42:58
Brittany, but also Janet Jackson.
1:43:01
Yeah. Well, he feels really bad
1:43:03
about benefiting from the structures of
1:43:05
racism and misogyny. That one time
1:43:07
on Instagram, he did feel really
1:43:09
bad. So
1:43:12
yeah, like their relationship
1:43:14
really plays into both
1:43:17
the exact way that he needs to kind
1:43:19
of grasp
1:43:22
that masculinity in order to reach his
1:43:24
full potential and the ways that it's
1:43:26
like impossible for her through being
1:43:28
a woman to remain as
1:43:31
desired and successful. Like
1:43:34
she's just, there's a point when like
1:43:36
hot young things, they
1:43:38
just get discarded from the industry and there are
1:43:40
different ways that that happens. And
1:43:44
well, you look back and like
1:43:46
the odds are just littered with
1:43:48
ingenues and comedians and pop starlets
1:43:51
who just like were
1:43:53
driven into public breakdowns, disappeared,
1:43:55
or never
1:43:57
had the careers that we thought they could have. And then there's
1:44:00
there's like a very small handful of women
1:44:02
who continue to be successful. Yeah, and I
1:44:04
think in so many of those situations, like
1:44:06
the blame is placed on the person and
1:44:08
not the situation that caused that person to
1:44:10
have a breakdown and to be in this
1:44:13
kind of place in life. It's like, well,
1:44:16
cause I think it was more convenient. Like
1:44:18
imagine it's much easier to put all the
1:44:21
blame on Brittany and okay, she needs
1:44:23
a conservatorship. She can go over there, do her
1:44:26
little work. We don't have to think about it
1:44:28
too much. It's a lot more uncomfortable to grapple
1:44:30
with the fact that we all
1:44:32
participated in this culture that was
1:44:35
extremely detrimental to her and that
1:44:37
we propped up a man who
1:44:39
was able to benefit from
1:44:41
really like throwing her under the
1:44:44
bus in a pretty misogynistic way. Like
1:44:46
that would require all of us as a
1:44:48
collective culture to take responsibility. Exactly. And that's
1:44:50
harder work. We are just in Timberlake, I
1:44:52
guess, in that. Yeah. Well,
1:44:55
we all wanna just align with power, right?
1:44:57
That's what's easier and that's true for...
1:45:00
We all wanna be genuine. Oh, well, and
1:45:02
that's true. God, no, I'm not gonna say
1:45:04
that. But
1:45:07
I think it's such interesting like place next to
1:45:09
the moment we're having
1:45:11
now with Barbie and with Taylor,
1:45:14
Swift and Travis and like the
1:45:16
eras tour. I think it's
1:45:18
such interesting context to look back at
1:45:20
this time and how we're reevaluating it
1:45:23
that like at the time also it's
1:45:25
happening sort of piecemeal. You're like, oh,
1:45:27
she's just an idiot.
1:45:29
She's just mentally not... Also
1:45:33
we were very ableist about mental health at
1:45:35
the time and the way that a lot
1:45:37
of this was handled. She's just crazy. She's
1:45:39
just dumb. She's just slutty. And
1:45:42
looking back, you see such a pattern.
1:45:44
Like it just happens that all of
1:45:46
the famous pop singers
1:45:48
at the time and like socialites had
1:45:51
the exact same arc. And maybe that wasn't
1:45:53
a coincidence that they all just were terrible
1:45:55
people. Maybe it was the structures around them.
1:45:57
And then we look at today, the...
1:46:00
careers that are possible for women
1:46:02
and the art that's possible because
1:46:04
of that. Like, you look at a
1:46:07
career like that Taylor Swift has had,
1:46:09
you look at what Beyonce has been able
1:46:11
to do after somehow emerging
1:46:13
from this, and it
1:46:15
looks so different from what things look
1:46:17
like for Brittany and her cohort. Yeah,
1:46:20
and I mean, I do always think with
1:46:23
Brittany, part of it is to, I think
1:46:25
she just really got unlucky with the
1:46:27
time that she was as famous as she was
1:46:30
because I do think so much of
1:46:32
what went down with her has to
1:46:34
do with paparazzi culture. I
1:46:36
mean, because I've lived in LA my entire
1:46:39
life and like I remember,
1:46:41
there was one night that I lived in West
1:46:43
Hollywood, I lived right across from like a pretty, like
1:46:45
one of the clubs that Brittany and Lindsay always went
1:46:47
to, and paparazzi would like hang out in my front
1:46:49
yard to get pictures of them. And
1:46:51
I remember, yeah, I remember being awake one
1:46:53
night at like three o'clock in the morning in my
1:46:55
whole living room, it looked like daylight because there were
1:46:58
so many flash bulbs. And I saw Brittany pull
1:47:00
out in a car and just be pursued by these like
1:47:02
50 guys. And
1:47:04
I always think about that moment because I'm
1:47:07
like, I don't know if people really understand
1:47:09
how scary that would be to have
1:47:11
that many men persuing. Terrifying. Yeah,
1:47:14
that's a big part of it. A lot of these
1:47:16
women were literally driven into mental
1:47:19
health crises by being
1:47:21
stalked by hundreds of people wherever
1:47:23
they went. People they stalked and
1:47:26
photographed. Yeah. And
1:47:28
something that really struck me
1:47:30
from the famous like Bimbo
1:47:33
Summit article is
1:47:35
that, yeah, the way that that
1:47:37
writer talks about the paparazzi as something
1:47:40
that is being like very actively invited.
1:47:42
Yes, it's very, it's very, she
1:47:44
asked for it. Yeah, yeah, she
1:47:46
asked for it. She wanted it.
1:47:48
So that was the way that
1:47:51
we justified as a culture that
1:47:53
stalking because we had to understand
1:47:55
that they wanted it and they actually asked
1:47:58
for it. Brittany
1:48:00
is just crazy and that's why she took
1:48:03
an umbrella to a paparazzo's car.
1:48:05
Yeah, it's that manipulative... Because she is
1:48:08
individually crazy. Exactly. It's victim
1:48:10
blaming and it's that thing of like a
1:48:13
manipulative person doing something to you
1:48:15
and then getting mad that you
1:48:17
had a reaction to it. It's like
1:48:19
I don't know that any... Like very much of what
1:48:21
Brittany did, especially in that period of her life, was
1:48:23
that different than what most people would do. Absolutely
1:48:27
not. No. Absolutely
1:48:29
not. I look back on the way
1:48:31
that they wrote about her almost dropping
1:48:33
her son when she is
1:48:35
being pursued by
1:48:37
paparazzi. And I
1:48:39
mean, I'm sorry, who among us has
1:48:42
not almost dropped our child at some
1:48:44
point? I didn't have a
1:48:46
bunch of people yelling at me and taking
1:48:48
flash photos of me at the same time
1:48:50
and then talking about it on a panel
1:48:52
and the view the next day. So
1:48:55
I can't even wrap my head around how horrified I
1:48:57
am. What
1:48:59
I'm trying to find out would be it's amazing that anyone
1:49:02
survived being the target of
1:49:04
that kind of attention. And
1:49:08
Justin was able to benefit from a lot
1:49:11
of this while escaping that scrutiny. That's the
1:49:13
thing. The surveillance that we put on
1:49:15
female stars was so different from
1:49:18
the way that male stars were
1:49:21
included in that. Oh yeah. I
1:49:23
mean, I think it's just maybe we didn't feel...
1:49:25
Or the paparazzi especially didn't feel like they had
1:49:27
the right to male stars in that way and
1:49:29
that they had the right to their personal space
1:49:31
and their image. It's also
1:49:34
like a consent issue. I
1:49:37
also think that a lot of it is just
1:49:39
about money, right? Like whose pictures are worth more
1:49:41
money? It's Britney. It's because Britney's
1:49:43
photos will not only sell to
1:49:45
adult men who want to like jerk off
1:49:48
to her, but also to her young women
1:49:50
fans. Also, a male pop
1:49:53
star is going to sell
1:49:55
to a lot fewer people. And I think the
1:49:57
potential for shock value here is a lot higher
1:49:59
also. because you have much more strict
1:50:01
expectations of Brittany, right? What if you
1:50:04
catch her with an
1:50:06
upskirt photo? What if you catch her showing
1:50:08
side boob? What if you catch her not
1:50:10
perfectly made up? Those are all what ifs
1:50:12
that don't apply to men? Like, what are
1:50:15
you going to see Justin Timberlake doing? That's
1:50:17
so shocking. He's allowed to do basically whatever
1:50:19
he fucking wants, except maybe feed on Brittany.
1:50:21
So as long as he doesn't get photographed
1:50:24
doing that, he's fine. And he was. And
1:50:26
it was fine. He literally was. And that
1:50:28
was still fine. Yeah,
1:50:30
no, that's so true. Like, it's like no
1:50:33
matter what, whether he's going to Starbucks
1:50:35
first thing in the morning or on his way
1:50:37
to an award show, Justin Timberlake is going to
1:50:39
look the same. Like, women, the whole idea of
1:50:41
celebrities without their makeup on, it just speaks to
1:50:43
this idea of, ew, gross, do you look the
1:50:45
way your face actually looks? Gross. Yeah,
1:50:48
you as a woman should never look the
1:50:50
way that you actually look. You should always
1:50:52
look like this very manicured mask that you're
1:50:54
presenting us. And yeah, that is
1:50:57
going to fuel that economy. Yeah, exactly. I
1:50:59
personally think Justin should have been shamed a
1:51:01
little more for his fedora wear.
1:51:05
But yeah. But then we would
1:51:07
have to talk about Britney Spears' newsboy
1:51:10
cap. And I think we should just leave that wear
1:51:12
out. Those are some of the less, OK? This
1:51:17
has been such a great discussion. Tess, thank
1:51:19
you so much for joining us. I feel
1:51:21
like this is a great place to wrap
1:51:23
up. Thank you so much for having
1:51:26
me. Can you tell all of the people
1:51:28
listening where they can find you in all
1:51:30
of your amazing work? Yes, I have a
1:51:32
comedy podcast called Lady to Lady, which you
1:51:34
can get wherever you get your podcasts. And
1:51:36
then yes, my documentary podcast, Toxic, The Britney
1:51:39
Spears Story, Sun Stitcher. You can also find
1:51:41
that sort of anywhere. It's
1:51:43
so good. If you have not already
1:51:45
listened, you absolutely should. It's
1:51:48
fantastic. Wow,
1:51:52
that was a really great discussion with Tess.
1:51:54
That was so much fun. Before
1:51:56
we let all of you listening
1:51:58
go. We've got
1:52:00
to talk tropes and cultural pairings.
1:52:04
Yes, my favorite. I've been waiting for this.
1:52:06
I'm so excited. So this is
1:52:08
a little bit different from Taylor and
1:52:11
Travis. This is our first time talking
1:52:13
about a relationship that ended very badly
1:52:15
and that we know now wasn't always
1:52:17
a very healthy or supportive relationship, especially
1:52:19
for Brittany. And so I don't
1:52:23
want to say that this correlates so closely
1:52:25
to most romance tropes, but I have to
1:52:27
be honest, the popularity of the relationship did
1:52:29
derive partly from some of those archetypes. So we
1:52:32
are going to talk about them even though we
1:52:34
are not saying that this relationship represents
1:52:36
them in a really good
1:52:38
or healthy or idealized form. One
1:52:41
is just like celebrity pop
1:52:43
star romance. These two
1:52:45
were individual heartthrobs. They
1:52:48
are even bigger heartthrobs together
1:52:50
and that is just pop-tivating. Yeah.
1:52:52
Something I think is interesting about
1:52:54
them as a couple is that
1:52:57
they are both huge celebrities and often
1:53:00
in a celebrity or pop star romance, one
1:53:02
of them will be a nobody of some
1:53:04
kind. That creates the narrative tension. With Brittany
1:53:06
and Justin, it was more like, well, obviously
1:53:08
they're supposed to be together, which I think
1:53:10
almost places them more in the position of
1:53:13
the couple that is wrong for
1:53:15
each other in one of those romances. Like,
1:53:17
oh, I met the hot guy. Everyone thinks
1:53:19
he's still hung up on his ex and
1:53:21
she's so much better than me. She is
1:53:24
like the pop princess that everyone wants to
1:53:26
be like, and I'm just a humble makeup
1:53:28
artist. Right? Yeah. Or like I'm the unknown
1:53:30
who was accidentally cast in the lead role.
1:53:33
And that other bitch who's already famous is
1:53:35
so jealous of me. Like I've definitely seen
1:53:37
a movie that
1:53:39
follows those tropes. Yeah. Or like he's
1:53:41
the other pop singer and I'm just
1:53:44
the math teacher who's at this
1:53:46
concert with my daughter and
1:53:49
suddenly I got pulled on stage to
1:53:51
marry her. We locked eyes. Yeah. So
1:53:54
in that way, are you talking about JLo's?
1:53:56
I literally am. Yes, I am talking about
1:53:58
JLo's. Marry me. So yeah. it
1:54:00
differs, their relationship is almost
1:54:02
more like a before the
1:54:04
romance relationship in one of
1:54:06
the usual formats of this trope, but it does
1:54:09
play into that because they were such big stars.
1:54:11
That was a big part of their allure. And
1:54:14
the other part, another big part of
1:54:16
their allure, I think, is what Tess
1:54:18
said, which is that they were childhood
1:54:20
friends. These are just two crazy kids
1:54:22
who grew up together, both
1:54:25
came from relatively humble beginnings,
1:54:27
and got big together and fell
1:54:30
in love. Yeah, friends to lovers.
1:54:32
Childhood friends to lovers. Yes.
1:54:35
Oh, childhood love.
1:54:37
Childhood love is so
1:54:39
powerful. Yeah, that is like the big heartbreak, as
1:54:41
Tess was saying, of their relationship in a way.
1:54:44
It's like that feels like something that should be
1:54:46
so pure. Like you knew each other before the
1:54:48
glitz and the glam. You have
1:54:50
a deeper foundation of trust,
1:54:53
you would hope, and that is
1:54:55
something that made their relationship seem
1:54:57
so appealing and so real and
1:54:59
authentic. And then, of
1:55:01
course, there is the trope of like
1:55:03
the chaste or clean romance because
1:55:06
Brittany's virginity was such a big
1:55:08
part of their brand as a
1:55:10
couple. Yeah, this is like the
1:55:12
one of those like faith-based
1:55:15
publishing houses. Exactly. And like that has
1:55:17
a very real fan base. It
1:55:19
really appealed
1:55:25
to fans and parents of fans who
1:55:28
felt uncomfortable with sex being part
1:55:30
of their media consumption
1:55:33
of their child's media consumption and
1:55:35
wanted romance to be
1:55:37
something that could be explored without the threat
1:55:39
of sexuality. And
1:55:41
it gave it just that sense of
1:55:44
wholesomeness that set it apart from other
1:55:46
celebrity couples that they were, unlike
1:55:49
those other couples who were doing adult stuff, they
1:55:51
were the ones who are like the hottest guy
1:55:54
and girl you know who are just having a
1:55:56
slumber party forever like doing face masks together like
1:55:59
he was painting her nails. like they were
1:56:01
doing karaoke with a hairbrush together. How
1:56:04
much more fun does that sound like a seventh grade
1:56:06
girl than whatever adult flub
1:56:08
couples are doing? But then there
1:56:10
was also the constant specter of
1:56:13
the loss of virginity and as
1:56:15
we know that loss
1:56:17
of virginity between childhood friends
1:56:20
especially who become lovers is
1:56:22
a major romance trope. Yeah
1:56:26
and there was that fixation like is this
1:56:28
relationship has it already
1:56:30
or will it soon end her chastity?
1:56:33
Like is she going to enter into
1:56:35
that like era of
1:56:37
womanhood through you know
1:56:39
having sex with Justin and
1:56:42
that is just like commonly a symbol
1:56:44
in romances that are not cleaner taste
1:56:46
romances for like an entry into like
1:56:48
a new realm of womanhood and like
1:56:50
being initiated into like a world of
1:56:52
pleasure and like true adult
1:56:56
womanhood that heretofore she
1:56:58
has not known and so the interest
1:57:00
and whether that was happening was like
1:57:02
a big part as we've discussed of
1:57:04
their fame. Now let's
1:57:07
talk about some cultural pairings some
1:57:09
things that you can read and
1:57:11
watch if you are intrigued by
1:57:14
the Justin and Britney relationship. I
1:57:16
have a pretty obvious one for a
1:57:19
reading recommendation. I mean it's
1:57:21
perfect. It basically was somewhat
1:57:23
inspired by their story the
1:57:25
daydreams by our friend Laura
1:57:27
Hankin which imagines a sort
1:57:30
of version of the Justin and Britney story
1:57:32
in which things
1:57:34
can go better and
1:57:37
in which the man can perhaps turn
1:57:39
out to not be quite such a
1:57:41
complete bag of shit and the woman
1:57:43
can be vindicated in the public eye
1:57:45
and sort of get a second chance
1:57:47
at having the love story
1:57:49
and the career that she deserves.
1:57:52
There's a second chance for everyone at
1:57:54
the end of the daydream so if you
1:57:57
watch the Justin and Britney
1:57:59
storyline and your like, oh, I like
1:58:01
that, but happier. I
1:58:03
do recommend the Daydreams very strongly. It
1:58:06
digs also into a lot of these
1:58:08
questions of how the culture
1:58:10
and the media and the
1:58:12
fandoms treated famous girls, pop
1:58:14
stars in the public eye in
1:58:17
the early aughts and how
1:58:19
we are starting to reckon with that now. Now,
1:58:23
for what you can watch, obviously
1:58:26
for movies, Crossroads, starring
1:58:30
Britney Jean Spears. Yeah,
1:58:32
I mean, loosely inspired
1:58:34
by her life. Incredible. It's
1:58:37
almost too easy. I'm sorry. I
1:58:39
know, I'm sorry. It's so obvious, but
1:58:41
also watch Crossroads. My
1:58:45
other suggestion for a movie
1:58:47
was Step Up because
1:58:49
it's just two very skilled
1:58:52
dancers from slightly
1:58:54
different worlds who become even
1:58:56
more successful together. And we
1:58:59
always forget people don't talk
1:59:01
enough about the fact that
1:59:03
ultimately Britney and Justin are just two very
1:59:05
skilled dancers. It's honestly,
1:59:07
it's true. Yeah.
1:59:09
I wanted to talk for TV shows about
1:59:13
the seminal Canadian series,
1:59:16
Instant Star, which
1:59:18
is a little different. Okay. It's got
1:59:20
a very creepy romance at its heart
1:59:22
between a teenage girl who wins a
1:59:26
TV voice competition, similar
1:59:28
to American
1:59:31
Idol, and ends
1:59:34
up having a romance with her former boy
1:59:36
band singer producer who
1:59:38
is in his twenties and it's
1:59:41
extremely inappropriate. But
1:59:44
watching it, knowing very much that that is
1:59:47
not okay. It is a
1:59:50
really fun and
1:59:53
campy and like silly TV show
1:59:56
about being a young woman, entering
1:59:58
that like machine. of
2:00:01
the music industry and
2:00:03
falling in love and finding your
2:00:05
voice all at the same time and
2:00:08
it's a little more obscure. I recommend
2:00:11
it. The music is incredible. Alex
2:00:13
Johnson, who starts in it, sings
2:00:15
the soundtrack. She is outstanding and
2:00:18
I think it captures some of
2:00:20
what made Brittany and Justin appealing
2:00:22
and also don't,
2:00:24
if you're a 20-something music producer, have
2:00:26
a relationship with a 16 year old, obviously.
2:00:29
Claire is endorsing men. I'm not endorsing it
2:00:31
at all. He is really hot and he
2:00:34
is much
2:00:38
from Schitt's Creek also. I love
2:00:41
it. We also had to throw
2:00:43
Dawson's Creek in there, you know,
2:00:46
just two kids, find
2:00:49
and love together, innocent,
2:00:52
teenage sweethearts. And
2:00:57
on that note, that is it for this episode
2:00:59
of Love to See It with Emma and Claire.
2:01:02
Love to See It is produced by us,
2:01:04
Claire Fallon and Emma Gray and Stitcher. This
2:01:06
episode was edited by Talon Stravley. Our theme
2:01:08
music is by Tamara Yves and our art
2:01:10
is by Celine Chang. If you
2:01:12
like our show, please remember to follow us, rate
2:01:14
us 5 stars and leave a review and of
2:01:16
course spread the word to all
2:01:19
of your friends about Love to See
2:01:21
It. Visit them bringing with you a
2:01:23
framed love letter to the show. It
2:01:26
will be very difficult for them to ignore. If
2:01:28
you want to get in touch, you
2:01:30
can email us at [email protected]. You can
2:01:33
also find us on TikTok at love
2:01:35
to see it pod and on Instagram
2:01:37
at clarendemapod. And you can find our
2:01:39
newsletter rich text on sub
2:01:41
stack at clarendemma.substack.com. I'm also
2:01:43
on social media at EmilyV
2:01:46
Rose and I'm at clarelyfarn. I'll
2:01:48
be back next week. you
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