Rolling Stone magazine on....

Britney Spears



The Tragedy of Britney Spears

A pop star at the mall is an eternal cause for happiness, especially on a Sunday afternoon in the Valley. One moment, shoppers in the Westfield Topanga mall are living in the real world, monotonously selecting a new shade of eye shadow or rubbing perfume on wrists, but upon the rapture of Britney Spears, they are giggling, laughing, orgasmic, already sharing their secret on cell phones. "Her legs are actually really skinny," an adolescent whispers into her Sidekick, as Britney beelines for the Betsey Johnson boutique, pseudo-punk designer of evening dresses and splashy heels worn to suburban high school proms. In person, Britney is shockingly beautiful — clear skin, ruby lips, a perfectly proportioned twenty-six-year-old porcelain doll with a nasty weave. She cuts through the crowd swiftly, the way she used to when 20,000 adoring fans mobbed her outside a concert, with her paparazzi boyfriend, Adnan Ghalib, trailing behind.

Only a few kids are in the store, a young girl with her brother and two blondes checking out fake-gold charm bracelets. Britney rifles the racks as the Cure's "Pictures of You" blasts into the airless pink boutique, grabbing a pink lace dress, a few tight black numbers and a frilly red crop top, the kind of shirt that Britney used to wear all the time at seventeen but isn't really appropriate for anyone over that age. Then she ducks into the dressing room with Ghalib. He emerges with her black Am Ex.

The card won't go through, but they keep trying it.

"Please," begs Ghalib, "get this done quickly."

One of the girls runs to Britney's dressing room, explaining the situation through a pink gauze curtain.

A wail emerges from the cubby — guttural, vile, the kind of base animalistic shriek only heard at a family member's deathbed. "**** these *******," screams Britney, each word ringing out between sobs. "These idiots can't do anything right!"

Ghalib dashes over to console her, but she's already spitting, growling, throwing a big bottle of soda on the floor so that it begins to spill underneath the curtain, and then she's got a box of tissues and is throwing them on top of the wet floor along with piles of discarded merchandise. A new card finally goes through, but by then Britney is out the door, leaving her shirt on the ground and replacing it with the red top. "**** you, **** people, ****, ****, ****," she keeps screaming, her face splotchy and red as she crosses the interminable mall floor, the crowd behind her growing larger and larger. "Leave us alone!" yells Ghalib.

The siblings run after Britney to get a video to put up on YouTube, and some of the shopgirls run after her to hand off the merchandise she left behind, and there's an entire bridal party wearing yellow T-shirts who have pulled out camera phones too. A crush of managers in black shirts and gold name tags try to keep the peace, but the crowd running after Britney gets larger, and now the shopgirls have ­started to catch up to her, one of them slipping spectacularly in her platform shoes, grazing her elbow. She pulls herself up, mustering the strength to tap Britney's shoulder. "Um, I'm from the South too," she mumbles, "and I was wondering if I could get a picture with you for my little sister."

Britney turns to Ghalib and grabs his arm. "I don't want her talking to me!" she screams. She whirls around and stares the girl deep in the eyes, her lips almost vibrating with anger. "I don't know who you think I am, *****," she snarls, "but I'm not that person."

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the saddest thing is, once she recovers (if she recovers) she will be haunted by all of these stories and all the things she did...

My friend, who went thru something similar, is ok again, and she can't forgive herself for all the things she did... She remembers them as if they were in a dream. She told me she can't imagine if it was all videoed and written about!!!!

Message edited 2/6/2008 8:09:33 AM.

Re: Rolling Stone magazine on....

As a teen, the singer’s mother, Lynne, allowed her to get breast implants. But after going under the knife, “she regretted the implants, particularly because her chest was still growing,” a friend says. “When her natural breasts became larger, she had the implants removed.” But Spears kept the surgery a secret. Adds the friend, “When other girls did their boobs [they admitted it] and moved on, but Britney was brought up to lie about herself.”

• The singer never bonded with her father Jamie, mostly because of his heavy drinking. “It was upsetting for Britney Spears to be around her dad,” a pal tells Rolling Stone. “He came backstage one night, and he was wasted. She was devastated. Britney would tell friends that her father was emotionally abusive.”

• When Britney was just beginning her career in the 1990s, she was bribed to work around the clock. “If she didn’t want to come out of the trailer, the label would come to me saying, ‘Please talk to Britney, make sure she performs, and we’ll take you on a shopping spree,’” a close friend says. Adds her former driver: “We would wake Britney up at 6 a.m., and she’d work on a video for three or four days straight for 20 hours a day.”

• Throughout her career, she lobbied “ to appear sluttier,” the magazine claims, to appear more mature. (As a kid, her parents let her walk around the house naked, Rolling Stone reports.) “Every girl in America was wearing crop tops and booty shorts, and Britney felt like she was being held back,” says a friend. “She would joke about wanting to do videos topless.”

• Darrin Henson, who was the choreographer for several videos from Britney’s first album, says: “Britney would come offstage after performing in front of 15 to 16,000 people and start crying because she thought she was terrible. The girl doesn’t know who she is.”

• She reportedly began sleeping with Wade Robson around the time of the 2001 VMAs. “In February 2002, Timberlake discovered a ... note from Robson in Britney’s room. Britney and Timberlake were performing on Saturday Night Live that night, and they sat backstage miserable — he refused to accept her apologies,” an insider says. “The breakup was a terrible shock, particularly as it was followed by Britney’s parents divorce two months later.”

• Britney’s 2002 split from Justin Timberlake devastated her. “Justin had his head screwed on so straight... He became the great force in her life, but it started a pattern — she began to look for guys to help her get away from the people who could control her,” an insider says.

• Britney’s original concept for her 2004 video “Everytime”: “To die in an overflowing bathtub with pills and booze strewn around, and get reincarnated as a baby,” a source says. But Spears’ label objected, and she refused to shoot initally. “Finally, Britney agreed to do it, but first she said, ‘I need three Red Bulls, and call my doctor,’” the insider says. The video, which co-starred bad boy actor Stephen Dorff, ended up featuring her running away from the paparazzi before drowning in a bathtub.


Sam Lutfi — who was recently slapped with a restraining order — tells the magazine he may pen a book based on his troubled days with the singer. “You know, this is so much more than a magazine article — we’ve been doing dictation, she’s been telling me her story, and I’ve been writing it all down. It would make a great book!” Lutfi says.

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we love creating these mega-superstars...because it's so much fun (and sells so much) to watch them crash...

Re: Rolling Stone magazine on....

Wow.... some of those things are crazy, and some make total sense as to why she behaves the way she does.