elizabitchtaylor:

suicideblonde:

Britney Spears photographed by David Lachapelle for Rolling Stone, March 1999

Spears and LaChapelle both say they knew the photo would cause a bit of commotion, but they figured it was worth it. “I said to her, ‘You don’t want to be buttoned up, like Debbie Gibson,’ ” LaChapelle recalls. “I said, ‘Let’s push it further and do this whole Lolita thing.’ She got it. She knew it would get people talking and excited.” Spears proved, even then, that she was going to take charge of crafting her own image. One night while they were shooting, LaChapelle says, Spears’ manager, Larry Rudolph, walked in at 2 a.m. to find her posing in her bra and panties. Rudolph demanded to know what was going on. “Britney said, ‘Yeah, I don’t feel comfortable,’ ” says the photographer. “At first I felt betrayed. But as soon as Larry walked out, Britney said, ‘Lock the door’ and unbuttoned her shirt wide open.”

Based on what I’ve gathered from interviews and clips, Britney wanted to dress sexy because she thought it made her more adult, glamourous, and sophisticated. She didn’t realize the implications of the “nymphet” image that her management was pushing. Remember, she was only around 16/17 when all of this went down.

It’s not like Madonna, who really was in charge of her image from the very get-go. Britney had a team of managers picking out the clothes she wore in her everyday life based on how ‘sexy’/‘too sexy’ they were. Britney was also required to publicly advertise her 'virginal’ status, making her the perfect sex object for middle-aged men to lust over: ripe, ready, and unspoiled. She was allowed to be sexy, but only as a passive object, never as a woman in control of her sexuality.

That changed around the time of “In The Zone”, but baby Britney had no idea what was being thrown at her or the many ways she was being exploited.