|
|||||||
In her bestselling memoir, Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert recalls something that her older sister once told her when she was breast-feeding her first born: “Having a baby is like getting a tattoo on your face. You have to really want one.”
Wise words that Britney Spears should have considered before she brought her two boys into her chaotic world.
I’ve been doing everything I can, save for squeezing my eyes shut, clapping my hands over my ears and repeating the sound “Wah! Wah! Wah! Wah!” to avoid having to listen to anything more about the poor popwreck’s plight. I’m long past Schadenfreude where the “mama-with-the-drama” is concerned.
The former Mouseketeer is unravelling in front of our eyes. It’s frightening — terrifying for her and an indictment that so many of us consider this entertainment. If only “Internet celebrity” Chris Crocker wasn’t just trying to profit off Britney’s breakdown when he pleaded tearfully on YouTube.com for us to just “leave Britney alone”. (I hear he’s inked a deal for his own reality show as a result of those videos. Ugh.)
Spears’s struggles are all the more poignant if you hear what she told Diane Sawyer in 2003: “I would love to have a family. That would be when I’m the most content. My kids and just, I mean, they become your life. It’s not all about you anymore.”
I WAS WORKING at Harper’s Bazaar when they shot the pregnant then- popstar for their cover. The shoot was seen as something of a coup for the magazine and Spears’s life seemed picture perfect. There she was, wearing nothing but diamonds and a fur coat, talking about her happy marriage and her journey to becoming a mom for the second time.
Fast forward just one year and her marriage is over, she’s publicly demeaned herself on more occasions than I can count, and Sean Preston, 2, and Jayden James, 1, have been handed over to dad by the courts to keep them safe from their drug-addict mum. TMZ.com has nicknamed her “Unfitney” and Federline, 29, will retain custody until a new hearing .
Writing in the Washington Post, Paul Williams describes Spears as “a national joke — an out-of-shape hoo-ha flasher”. He says Federline is “a guy you wouldn’t trust to fill up your gas tank”.
The former back-up dancer doesn’t exactly inspire much confidence as a parent, it’s true, but rumour insists that he does at least understand the importance of car-seats when it comes to travelling with his toddlers.
Spears can still visit her kids, but, according to the court papers, “all visitation shall be in the presence of a monitor” who “shall terminate visitation immediately if any conduct or action by [Spears] endangers the minor children”.
Neither she nor Federline can “consume alcohol or other nonprescription controlled substances” within 12 hours of taking care of their children. This might be difficult for Spears if Star magazine’s report is to be believed. That magazine claims that the bloated former babe is living on handfuls of laxatives, diuretics and amphetamines. They also say that Brit goes to the bathroom once an hour.
BUT THIS CONSTANT monitoring is just what the doctor ordered, it seems. “Don’t leave Britney alone” is the message from Dr Phil, Oprah’s favourite self- help guru. “Right now, I believe Britney is so out of control she probably couldn’t stop this if she wanted to,” he said on a special one-hour show about Spears. “I do think she is a suicide risk. I think in her heart and soul she is a loving and caring mother. But with a toxic brain, sometimes it is hard to do the reasoning.” His suggestion? Spears may need to be committed involuntarily to a mental hospital.
Sinead O’Connor, who told Oprah that she almost killed herself at age 31 before being diagnosed with bipolar disorder and going onto medication, has come out in support of her fellow chanteuse: “I think to attack someone as a mother is very dangerous. Some people may end up really regretting the way they’re treating [Britney].”
But while Spears’s own family are certainly a no- show, lawyers agree that the court is trying to give Spears a wake-up call by taking away her children. “This is a little shock treatment for Britney to get the treatment that she needs,” attorney Gloria Allred, who represents Spears’s former bodyguard, said on Good Morning America.
In the meantime, the public is showing its support by listening to Spears’s new single, Gimme More. It’s the top downloaded song on iTunes and it’s at No 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
