The so-called "big news" last week in popular culture was Britney Spears posing topless for British Elle magazine. I know talking about a pop music princess seems a bit off track for this column since it's hard to think of her as a real actress (even though she does have a few films in the pipeline, including the Nascar drama Rubbing Paint), but I can't help but laugh at this photo shoot. Not the pictures, mind you, but the intentions behind them.

Remember way back in the days when Britney was portraying herself as a virginal good girl waiting for the right man, and although she was sexy on stage she was supposed to be innocent in her everyday life? You know, like a year and a half ago when she was still trying to play this angle and no one besides her promoters were actually buying it. She recently admitted her whole virgin charade was exactly that for nearly two years, not to mention an off-hand admission of experimental drug use. Talk about a quick image transformation, apparently following in the over-sexed footsteps of her rival, Christina Aguilera.

What's particularly amusing about Spears posing topless, even if it isn't very revealing compared to what you can see every month in Maxim or any other number of men's or women's magazines, is that last year's Crossroads gave her the perfect opportunity to show a little skin, yet she declined to do so. This was also around the same time that her hype level took a sharp dip, and you have to believe if she had tried this image makeover back then it probably would have been more successful and her film almost certainly would have made more money (especially in DVD sales). Now it seems as if she's trying to keep up with the times instead of being the trend-setter.

Posted August 12, 2003 | link