Still Spearing Spears?

I was never a fan of Britney Spears’ music—When she was at the summit of her career, I was in a high school classroom, and teaching tenth grade students about how to manage and maneuver their way around the old world dinosaurs, Mac G3’s.

It seemed as if every single boy in the room did their first Internet search and guess who was the search topic of choice? Britney.

Cool.

For them.

I guess.

On the other hand a good majority of the female students also launched a major search for Britney, posing search engine questions like, “Where is Britney?” And, “Who is Britt dating?” And “What’s in Britt’s handbag?” They all wanted to see a piece of Britney eye-candy. And at the time, for Britney, the too soon to be drippy and melted-media sundae, she must have had been happy to be “Hit me baby one more time!”

Yikes. Poor kid.

She didn’t see it comin’

The real deal is that, I was thrilled that the students were on task as relevant to the class lesson and as long as they remained engaged in learning how to refine an Internet search, I was a very happy teacher teaching.

But, alas, the Hollywood Gods would do her their way.

Britney was doomed from the start and my students were the Peanut Gallery.

Makes sense—these kids (students) are like little tea bags soaked in liquid media. All they know is what they see. 



Four years trudged between the Britney moment and the introduction of the next nymphet, Britney was washed up according to the kid trend barometer aka current students, who were (and remain) launched on a plethora of Internet searches. (Perhaps still on those darn school G3’s), Though this time the search winner was/is _______!

Yes!

No. I stopped paying attention. The G3’s stopped paying attention too; their memory was fading as badly as a human with a senior moment. 


All things considered, the aging of the G3’s, a one-time seductive computer novelty combined with the exploitation of Brittany had lost her sparkle, the shine. The “I want that!” caliber of desire for no good reason other than it isn’t working up to the dangling carrot of current par. Okay, so the G3’s are machinery and it can’t get its feeling hurt when the whole class agrees that it’s useless. But, think about it (sob) Britney is real! She played like a wind up doll and didn’t seem to mind it. Still, she was just a kid when she (mom) was launched into the throes of the American Idol snake pit, and why?