The Reluctant Whore

Britney Spears is working with Elizabeth Arden to promote a fragrance line – one can only assume this was an iron clad agreement she signed on for more than two years ago – and Page Six reports that despite Spears’ relentless failure to operate as a civilized human being in public for around a year now, they’re pushing ahead with the marketing of “Believe”.

I, incidentally, am finding it hard to.

What’s astonishing about Britney is that even though she’s a total product anyway and never quite needed to show up with any sincere human presence to present her heavily calculated music, even with an undeniable character meltdown which has played out in embarrassing, sad detail on a daily basis for the past six to twelve months, all she has to do is phone in the barest minimum to register her presence and a product is sellable. And not just sellable in a crap, weird paparazzi way, sellable in an Elizabeth Arden’s research says they should go ahead with the product despite Britney herself – way.

But who knows, maybe there’s a contingent of 8 year old girls and weird middle aged gay men out there in the flyover states who don’t read Perez Hilton, watch Entertainment Tonight or see any gossip magazines (or maybe they do but they simply choose to block it all out) that are still diehard, bedroom bound Britney fanatics who, research has ascertained, will more than likely fork over babysitting money to smell like whatever the hell the marketing department have come up with to differentiate this product from the 5 other fragrances she’s slapped her signature on.

Incidentally, there’s a review of her last one, Midnight Fantasy with an almost alarming amount of un-ironic commentary on the structure of the fragrance, and a little cultural perspective on it here. Anyway – the point with the marketing of her new fragrance is that, according to Elizabeth Arden, the head in the images may be Britney’s but the body most certain isn’t.

According to Page Six, Britney showed for the shoot a while back but never quite got through it:

"She looked amazing, but she left the shoot three times in a state of distress before driving away for good," our source said. "They had decent shots of her face, but not her body, so the art director made the stylist - a cute girl name Kylie Cavaco - get in Britney's clothes and pose.

Britney can collect a paycheck nowadays without even turning up. As long as the barest minimum is there – she’s good to sign off on it. [source]