B. MICHAEL PAYNE
Britney Spears became human to me in 2007. Until her very public breakdown that year, Britney had seemed like a robot built in a lab according to the exact specifications of the male gaze. She wasn’t for me. From the comfort of my feminist-populated women’s college in New England, I’d scoffed at Britney. And then, as I watched on a friend’s computer in our dorm as Britney shaved her head, clearly in crisis, I realized that “built in a lab according to the exact specifications of the male gaze” was a terrible standard to expect a human being to adhere to, and a tremendously unkind way to describe a real person.