According to this article Britney has been seen "binging" on junk food and this will ruin her comeback because she might gain a few pounds (oh the horror).
Her managers have placed her on a strict diet of 1200 calories a day and are calling it a "healthy lifestyle". Last I recalled eating only 1200 calories a day is not healthy.
This is just like the whole Amanda Palmer thing where for women to be successful in this industry they have to be super thin.
The tone of this article was hilarious (to me anyways) the way the article was stating that because Britney had decided to have a burger she was going to ruin her comeback. Are they for real?
I personally am a fan of Britney Spears and have been since I was little. But whether your a fan or not you can't deny she has been treated very harsh by the media.
I remember when Britney had her first child and the those entertainment shows were going on about how she was such a horrible mother because she had made a few mistakes (She almost dropped her son from his highchair and she drove with her son on her lap because she was in rush trying to get away from the paparazzi). She was a new mom and all new mom's make mistakes, my mom did but that doesn't mean she was a horrible mother. But the media played it out like she was the worst mom on the planet and should have had her children taken away from her.
They also try make her out to be a bad mother because she parties. She's in her twenties that's what people in their twenties do. Just because she's a mom doesn't means she should not have a life of her own.
Then there was the media saying she had gone crazy because she decided to shave her head. Because any woman who doesn't want to conform to conventional standards of beauty has to be crazy. In her documentary Britney says she shaved her head because so many horrible things had happened to her that she wanted to wash that away and shaving her head was a release for her.
I'm not saying that she doesn't have her issues, she's a celebrity which celebrity doesn't and she does have stuff she has to work through. But the media needs to calm down and let her be. The media's treatment of young women is horrible.
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I agree that all the tabloid attention she gets is ridiculous - let alone the fact that they print such ridiculous stories as this one. I don't get how they can be so surprised that she's as emotionally unstable as she is. You just need to know the basics to see how completely messed up her life is and make some [probably] accurate assumptions about how it is that she reached this point.
I love the first quote regarding why she might feel the need to binge: "It's as if she's trying to defy her father and bosses, and break out of the controlled environment by turning away from the healthy lifestyle they've put in place." Gee, ya think? Anyone who knows anything about eating disorders knows they're not about dieting, but about control. And it says further down in the article that almost every decision in her life is made for her. Who wouldn't want to break out of that farce of a life?
As a side not, 1200 calories a day is a normal, healthy daily intake (as long as it doesn't come from a single Big Mac combo).
"As a side not, 1200 calories a day is a normal, healthy daily intake (as long as it doesn't come from a single Big Mac combo)."
I'm not so sure about this. Yes, 1200 calories can be a healthy intake for a small woman in her 20s, but even then, I think that only one who was not exercising and was actively trying to LOSE weight should go that low. She still really young, and the younger you are, the more calories she needs. I am bothered by articles like this that print a quote that says "1200 calories is a healthy diet" with no qualifications of how much exercise the person is getting and how much weight she is actively trying lose. I believe it sends severely inaccurate and dangerous messages to people who may not have a full understanding of nutrition and fitness.
After I wrote my comment I Googled what a healthy daily caloric intake is and most of the results I found were in the range of 1800-2200 calories. And yes, it depends on your level of fitness, current weight, weight loss/gain objectives, and (very often overlooked) dieting history. And I agree that those things are almost never addressed in generic weight loss articles because it would take too much explanation and the majority of readers looking for a quick fix would lose interest. I think I probably read the 1200 calories a day thing a few years ago, and nutritional guidelines have changed since then.
The idea of female musicians gaining weight and thus "ruining" their careers is nothing new. The view could be seen as more justifiable in the case of Britney, since much of her success was based less on her music and more on her sex object status, her abs, and dare I add, dance abilities (whether this is right or wrong is another story). But in the past, this has happened to women who were thought to be successful as a result of their musical talent alone. The ones that come to mind are Stevie Nicks and Ann Wilson, both rock singers and songwriters (ok, Nicks, especially, may not be considered "rock" per se, but moreso than Spears, but suffice it say there was no dancing involved in either of their shows).
If I recall the story correctly, Stevie Nicks overcame a severe drug problem and reinstated her solo career. I was really little at the time, but instead of public attention being placed on a popular singer making herself well after addiction and returning to her musical career, the focus was centered on how much weight she gained in rehab. It's almost as if the public would have preferred her die a thin woman than to regain her health and comeback a few pounds overweight.
I also remember being a young kid and watching a Heart video post Ann Wilson's weight gain and really sort of identifying with her. I really grew up in the early 80s with a strong "barbie" beauty ideal. I took dance classes from a young age and all my teachers were tall, thin, blond women in their early 20s, and I really felt that this and only this look was beautiful. But I think I saw Ann Wilson as the confusing (to me) phenomenon of the "pretty fat girl." She had big thighs, but she was on MTV and had this awesome black hair and clothes and was a singer in a band, like how cool is that? But later as adult watching some shows on VH1 and stuff, I learned that her record company was horrified by her weight gain and tried to hide her in videos, etc and luckily for them, her sister Nancy remained thin, so they put her in the spotlight. In the views of many, Ann Wilson is an amazing singer, there's no reason at all why she would need to be thin to be successful. In fact, there is a reason opera singers are fat, something about fat around the vocal chords having a desired effect.
Interestingly, I've read a lot about Aretha Franklin in music history, but I don't believe I've read her weight addressed anywhere but the movie School of Rock. I wonder if it was a similar problem at that time and place in music, before MTV (could we possibly go back to this in the post-MTV era, probably not with all the other visual media available), and if so, we just don't hear about it because history has remembered her for her voice, not her body. If not, I wonder if it is not just a time/place issue, but also a race issue.
I think this is were the cases of Stevie Nicks and Ann Wilson are really interesting, since both of them started their careers pre-MTV and experienced weight gain prime-MTV. For sure both of these singers were seen as beautiful women before MTV, but would anyone have really noticed their weight gain without it?
Please, her diet is only one of many symptoms of a horrid life that poor woman leads.
What I find most sad is how little she has chosen to educate herself. She is still as ignorant as ever, as inarticulate as ever and being manipulated by her handlers, her ex, family court, etc.
She is a product. That may have begun as an abuse from parents, but, she is a woman and a mother, so really
it's up to her to make changes.
She has more resources available to her than I can imagine.
She can get a tutor for fuck sake.