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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

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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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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