All The Sequins You Can Handle

The name Britney Spears conjures up so many images in people’s minds. Saucy teenage vixen in a school girl outfit? Check. Unstable ex girlfriend to a pop super star? Check. Completely unhinged ex wife to a back up dancer? Yup. And that even leaves out the obvious head shaving, car beating, paparazzo dating, interview train wrecking nightmare that has been her last couple of years.

So after all this, I’m not sure what I was expecting from the concert last Monday. I can’t lie…a wee bit of me was thinking ‘well if she really is on the verge of another breakdown, maybe it will happen here and I can be a witness to it.’ I know. It’s so wrong. But I’m just being honest. We assembled the typical crew of lovely ladies, with the addition of M who came all the way from Philly to see Britney. Or maybe to see NKC. It was unclear who had more pull.

Before the concert tons of people were making a stink about Miss. Spears singing live. It didn’t take me long into the concert to think ‘who gives a flying flip?’ What a bunch of hooey. When I go to a Brit –Brit concert I want to see some great dancing, enjoy some fun costumes and listen to some great music. I would rather it be pre-recorded than have to listen to her huff and puff her way through the songs. This was a complete non issue for me.

What I did care about was that there were no cameras on her during the show, with footage projected to a Jumbotron. So we couldn’t see her close up. Or at least close-R up. I’m not sure if her ‘people’ (and man, I bet she has 100 of them to help her keep her shit together) are worried about the lip synching issue or about snarky comments regarding her physical shape but either way…who cares!? Give the fans in the cheap seats a chance to see her twirling tassels! Thankfully T had the forethought to bring some binoculars which all of us passed around like…well, like whatever you choose to share amongst your friends. The costumes were pretty fabulous; although I’m guessing they include a lot more netting and control hose than they did on her first go around. Also, I’m praying that the Wonder Woman cut of bikini bottoms (as one of our girls called them) isn’t about to make a comeback. Is that look really flattering on anyone, short of Wonder Woman herself? It was pretty obvious they were trying to avoid the MTV Music Awards nightmare of teeny-weeny bottoms and too much Britney and I guess it worked. Like I said, it was pretty hard to tell from our section.

So if that last paragraph should prove anything to Britney’s handlers it should be: HAVING NO CAMERA FOOTAGE DOES NOT PREVENT SNARKY COMMENTS SO GIVE IT TO US ANYWAY!

Anyway, all in all I’ve decided I’m proud of Britney for her comeback thus far. The concert was fun, and energetic, and she played Hit Me Baby One More Time, which was all I really wanted to hear anyway. Sure, it takes a staff of hundreds, and I’m sure what amounts to a traveling pharmacy, to keep her from derailing. And sure, she’s still a terrible role model for young girls (if I had taken a preteen girl to that concert I would have had a different opinion on the no Jumbotron footage thing. It would have been a blessing to NOT have to explain why the tassel outfit was not an appropriate choice for Halloween this year). But you know what? What person wouldn’t crack under the pressure that poor girl has been under. The biggest eye opening moment of the concert was when I tore my eyes away from a dance number and looked out into the crowd. All you could see were hundreds and hundreds of cell phones and cameras fixed on her from the crowd. If they were hoping for a meltdown, she left them wanting more.