Britney Spears

From makeovers to makeunders

Women's magazines are embracing two seemingly contradictory beauty transformations

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From makeovers to makeunders

Once women’s magazines have found a successful gimmick, count on them to stick with it. Recently, they seem to have found two, albeit ones whose messages completely conflict with each other. 

The first: Girl-zines’ penchant for making over “regular” women who become stars. That includes anyone who doesn’t fit the mold that the publications themselves have created of females who are ultra-thin, creamy-skinned, young and beautiful. Call it the Susan Boyle Treatment. Harper’s Bazaar took the famously frumpy British singer, and bestowed on her many appearance upgrades when it featured her in its pages. Ditto for Precious star Gabourey Sidibe.

The latest ladies to get sanitized by Harper’s Bazaar are the female castmembers of Jersey Shore, famous for their cheap, shiny outfits and, um, un-ladylike behavior. “As TV’s breakaway stars, the Jersey-ites are finding themselves in surroundings more rarefied than nightclubs,” the magazine rationalizes; hence the need to paternalistically teach these girls a thing or two about style and charm (ignore the irony of having Tinsley Mortimer, herself a castmember of a reality show in which girls similarly behave inappropriately, help scrub the Jersey Shore girls down).

It’s not just Harper’s Bazaar that has gotten in on the act, either. South Africa’s You magazine undertook a similar effort with Caster Semanya, the young track star who was forced to undergo gender testing when her muscular build drew the attention of sports officials. Semanya withdrew from the public spotlight, only to re-emerge on the cover of this glossy, caked in makeup and sporting a tight, girly getup and heels. “Wow, look at Caster now!” blared the headline.

The message seems to be clear: If you’re not conventionally pretty and feminine, you need to find a way to get there right quick if you want to grace the pages of a fashion magazine. But if that’s the case, then how does one explain the other en vogue magazine stunt of the moment: “revealing” those stars who are classically, typically beautiful in all their natural, unretouched glory. French Elle lit the fire for this trend by showing its models sans makeup or computer enhancements in its May 2009 issue; since then French Marie Claire and Harper’s Bazaar have also put out retouching-free issues. Now, celebrities are joining the push, with Jessica Simpson appearing on the cover of Marie Claire without makeup or airbrushing; and Britney Spears releasing unretouched photos of her most recent Candie’s ad campaign.

It just goes to show that the grass is always greener on the other side. If you’re not already the picture of feminine beauty, you need to undergo whatever amount of styling, hosing-down, dolling-up will get you there; and if you are, well, you need to shrug off all that beauty by appearing au natural to make it seem like such attractiveness comes effortlessly.

Upcoming movies: Awesome or awful?

Terry Gilliam and Tim Burton's latest, Britney and Lindsay do Bergman, and leaked Anne Frank-David Mamet dialogue

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Upcoming movies: Awesome or awful?Mia Wasikowska as Alice in "Alice In Wonderland"

Walt Disney Pictures

Mia Wasikowska as Alice in “Alice in Wonderland”

OK then, here’s a pop quiz for pop-culture mavens. First, identify each of the following proposed movie projects. Second, identify which one I just pulled out of thin air. Or to put it another way, identify which one was not pulled out of thin air, or some darker, moister region, by someone sitting behind an extremely nice neo-retro desk in Los Angeles. After that we’ll get to the subject of whether any of these motion pictures should exist at all.

  • A bewildering adult fantasy, adapted from a literary source, that features four different actors playing the same role and also includes the final performance of a recently departed star (no, really — his final final performance), directed by a one-time rebel genius now viewed as both a loose cannon and box-office poison.
  • A bewildering adult fantasy, adapted from a literary source and shot almost entirely in a green-screen, effects-driven process that makes its director (he says) “jittery and crazy.” Said director is a one-time rebel genius now viewed as an underperforming Hollywood hack.
  • A remake of a breakthrough American indie crime drama of the ’80s, made in a foreign language by a director who himself made more than one breakthrough indie crime drama in the ’80s.
  • A remake of a breakthrough foreign-language film of the ’60s about an intense, crypto-erotic relationship between two women, sexed up and made contemporary as a comeback vehicle for two flagging post-teen stars.
  • A remake of a red-meat, Red Scare action film of the ’80s, sexed up and made contemporary as a vehicle for the offspring of a flagging mega-star.
  • Approximately the umpteenth adaptation of a tear-jerking literary classic read widely by teenagers, to be scripted by a major American writer who seems uniquely unsuited for the task.

So how did we do? Too easy, right? I would agree, but I would further contend that my fake idea is no worse than the third- or fourth-worst idea on this list. And yeah, maybe I cheated by including one movie that actually exists, along with another one that’s partway along. That’s not the point, if I have one; the point is to argue that the movie-supply pipeline of the moment seems jampacked with baffling, half-baked ideas that, y’know, could surprise us and be pretty good, but have a really high potential of turning out to be incredibly awful and/or memorably bizarre, and very likely belong in the category of Someone Should Have Thought About This a Little Bit Harder.

Now, to review. In order, as above:

“The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” Yes, the latest addition to Terry Gilliam’s oo-ver is an actual, completed motion picture that will apparently be released this fall. Doesn’t quite seem that way, though, does it? Gilliam’s effects-driven, unsummarizable, Munchausen-scale fantasy — which does indeed feature four actors playing one role, and stars the late Heath Ledger alongside Johnny Depp — premiered this spring at Cannes, to mixed and tepid response. That’s neither a positive nor a negative; dark, indigestible films don’t do well at film festivals (this is known as the “Synecdoche, New York” problem). This movie has a higher profile than anything Gilliam has made since God knows when — “12 Monkeys,” maybe? — but given his propensity for muddled aesthetic results and commercial failure, that’s not saying a whole lot.

My personal feeling is that Gilliam has been so badly burned by the forges of the film industry’s Saurons that he’s morphed from Sméagol to Gollum — he’s become a perennially sour old dude who has lost all sense of how to reach audiences. I know he’s got fans out there, because I hear from y’all every time I complain about him, so let me state what should be obvious: Gilliam is a rare, acerbic talent with genius-level skills in composition and design, and one of these years he might cough up a good movie. Thing is, I’m tired of waiting — and unlike almost everybody else in North America, I actually sat through “Tideland,” the hackneyed, cruel and thoroughly poisonous Alice-in-Wonderland knockoff that was his last film. Go watch that — no, I’m serious, go right now; the rest of us will wait — and then come back and tell me what a big fan you are.

Here’s the British trailer for “Imaginarium,” which New York magazine’s Vulture blog has summed up as “something you’d dream after eating some bad clams and falling asleep in a sauna”:

“Alice in Wonderland” Now we come to Tim Burton’s effects-driven spectacular in the offing, and I got stuck trying to define exactly what relationship Burton bears to Terry Gilliam. He’s the rich man’s Gilliam? He’s the saner, less evil member of a pair of evil-genius twins? I can’t quite figure it out. I know, I know, you’re very excited that Burton is finally making a Lewis Carroll adaptation, he seems perfect for it, etc. There’s a huge gap here, in that none of the screen versions of “Alice” is fully satisfactory, and I absolutely agree that Burton’s trailer looks gorgeous, exactly the kind of vaguely sinister visual candyfloss that made his reputation.

But let’s be honest here: Burton has a terrible record with adaptations (“Sleepy Hollow,” anyone? “Planet of the Apes”? Didn’t think so) and if the story’s not about a damaged Goth kid, he doesn’t know how to tell it. There’s a real risk here that this “Alice” will wind up with Johnny Depp’s Mad Hatter as the main character, who happens to meet some chick from another world. And as for making Alice a fully pulchritudinous young adult instead of a little girl, doesn’t that risk pushing Dr. Freud even closer to the surface of the film? Again, just personally, I was greatly and pleasantly surprised by Burton’s take on “Sweeney Todd,” mostly because I wasn’t expecting much, but expectations are already off the charts for this one. In case you haven’t seen the trailer, or need another look:

Zhang Yimou’s “Blood Simple” remake There were some startled blogosphere reactions to the idea that the director of “Raise the Red Lantern” and “Hero” is set to stage a Chinese-language remake of Joel and Ethan Coen’s hallowed 1984 debut film. I’m here to tell you that I think it’s a tremendous idea. Several of Zhang’s best movies have a pronounced noir element, slowed down and adapted to the rhythms of life in rural China. And here comes the moment where I blow my so-called indie cred: I don’t like “Blood Simple” that much. It’s really well made, but it’s one Coen movie that totally earns their rep as sadistic and smirky. I’ll probably like Zhang’s version better.

Britney Spears-Lindsay Lohan “Persona” remake Sadly, this does not exist. Yet. Awesome idea, though, right? I’m hereby offering to write and produce, hopefully launching myself on a Zalman King-like trajectory as softcore mogul of the 2010s. Screw the moody, black-and-white cinematography of the original, of course — but you know that scene when Bibi Andersson tells the story about how she and her hot friend get it on with some kid on the beach? What we do with that scene is gonna put the whoot-there-it-is back in avant-garde cinema, my friends. (And that moment where the film breaks and all sorts of crazy shit happens is a good spot for some product placement: BK, Red Bull, Captain Morgan.)

Connor Cruise “Red Dawn” remake This is just depressing and there are all sorts of reasons I don’t want to think about it, let alone write about it (or, still worse, actually watch it). Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman’s 14-year-old adopted son, Connor, has joined the cast of a remake of John Milius’ Cold War action flick “Red Dawn,” to be directed by Dan Bradley, which sounds like a porn-star name but is actually the name of a dude who shot second-unit on the Bourne films. Evidently this reheated Red Scare paranoia exercise will involve the premise that Russian and Chinese troops are invading the American heartland and — I’m sorry, that’s enough.

Mind you, I might want to act all high-minded, but I’m pretty sure I paid to see the Milius film on the big screen myself, so OK. Since we’re casting celebrities’ kids in remakes of popular ’80s films that the world would have gotten along fine without in the first place, there’s also a “Karate Kid” remake in the works, with Will Smith’s son to play opposite Jackie Chan. Your suggestions please! “Back to the Future”? “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”? “Dirty Dancing”?

David Mamet “Anne Frank” project So by the time I get around to deriding the news that irascible man’s-man playwright and screenwriter Mamet has been hired to write and direct a version of “The Diary of Anne Frank,” not just one but two parody excerpts have already been scribbled by my competitors. Neither is pitch-perfect — Mamet’s voice is so distinctive that mocking it is quite difficult — but I think the Village Voice version is closer, and much funnier, than the New York magazine attempt.

It ought to be more like this:

Anne: What do they want? The people who …
Peter: People? What people? The Nazis? Is that what you mean? The fucking Nazis? [Laughs.]
Otto: Peter. The child. She’s just a child.
Peter: She’s a child? A child? You’re a fucking child. No, no, I’m sorry. I take that back. I apologize. I fully and freely apologize. I’m the child here. Let’s be honest.
Anne: The people who will come here …
Otto: When I was a child, there was a river. No, a stream, not a river. A river is …
Peter: Roaring. A river is roaring.
Anne: What will they do? What do they want?
Otto: Yes, roaring. That’s right. A stream gurgles. It gurgles.
Peter: Where was this stream? When you were a child? It was at your house? Your house, or someone else’s?
Otto: Yes. No. Perhaps it was my grandmother’s house. Perhaps it wasn’t near a house. I was a child.
Anne: I think about what they will do. But I can’t imagine it. You can’t imagine something like that.
Peter: Did you throw stones in it? In the gurgling stream? I love to throw stones. That is one thing that I love.
Otto: I did. I threw them. I think I threw them. Or I am saying it because you said those words. How can I be sure?
Anne: I am asking you a question! What will they do when they come to this house?
Peter: They will fuck us with their big uncircumcised cocks and they will suck the marrow from our bones. Is there anything else that you would like to know?

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“Fat” Britney vs. “horror show” Madonna

Can't a lady celebrity ever win?

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Hey, have you heard? Britney Spears is “fat” again! This “angered” and offended her German fans so much that they have dubbed her “Dickney” and “Speckney.” (Both allegedly mean “fat” in German, though the former could probably do double-duty as a slut-shaming term in its English translation.)

But think twice before you order Spears to remedial gym training. According to the Daily News, Madonna’s “stringy,” “veiny” arms are “more like a horror show than something out of a gym.” “Time to quit the gym, Madge!” says writer Nicole Carter — you are working out too much! Fellow Daily News writer wonders, “Are Kate Gosselin and Madonna workout buddies?” Because guess what? Kate’s too-sculpted biceps, while not yet veiny, are on a slippery slope to mimicking the Material Girl — “time to soften the image and drop the dumb bell now!” (Clearly, neither one learned their lesson from the first lady). Perhaps both are just trying to stave off the dread “bingo wings,” also known as “dinner lady arms” that, according to the Daily Mail, are nearly impossible to remedy without hideously painful surgery — “for most women of a certain age there’s little to do except slip on a cardigan.”

Now I’m really confused. Do I make that afternoon yoga class, break out the barbells, or just sit in the yard and eat lettuce and drink cucumber water? Do they make cardigans I can wear in July?

OK, so tabloid writers are fucking batty. We all knew that, right? We can — and should — rage about body image all we like, but it may also be perfectly reasonable for the rest of us to conclude that if one wishes to avoid national exposure each time we gain or lose a few pounds, perhaps we should choose a career in which one does not quite literally make money off one’s looks. Truth: Madonna’s arms, unlike Michelle Obama’s, do not look like the kind of thing one gets simply doing some morning bicep curls. They look more like the result of a 50-year-old woman in full-blown panic mode that she might finally be succumbing to the natural results of her age. And that does make me feel sort of sad and weird.

But what gets me is not merely the fat-shaming of women who, by no rational measure, should be considered “fat.” It’s also the inevitable miracle weight-loss success story, which every last Hollywood publicist insists their client achieved through old-fashioned diet and exercise — even if we all know that no one has ever lost 10 or 15 pounds in less than a month without severely unhealthy calorie restriction, no matter how many wind sprints their personal trainer may put them through. And let’s be honest: What we are calling the difference between “fat” and “thin” here is the difference between about 10 or 15 pounds; a concave stomach versus a bit of a muffin top when one is wearing the skinny jeans one bought 5 pounds earlier.

To get all academic about it, this tells us nothing about health: Even by the notoriously useless and often unfair standards of the BMI table the average woman can fall within about a 25-pound range, without ever veering into being officially “under-” or “over”-weight. By some estimates (calculated by the likes of Star magazine, so I’m not vouching for accuracy here): I’ve seen “fat” Britney listed at 125 pounds (which, at 5-foot-5 would give her a a low BMI of about 20) up to about 140 pounds, which would give her a BMI of 23, still 10 pounds shy of “overweight”; “thin” Britney was about 105 to 110 pounds for a BMI of 17 or 18, about 5 to 10 pounds “underweight”; “fat” Jessica Simpson was about 140 pounds, which, at 5-foot-3, would give her a BMI of 24 — still within the border of a “healthy” weight. (If she’s 5-foot-2, as other publications report, well, she would have been 5 pounds “overweight.”)

Having not personally weighed and measured these ladies myself, I can’t tell you if these weights are accurate, or merely the inventions of some tabloid editors or publicists. But they are, at the very least, the figures available to women and girls who wish to measure their own bodies against those of the stars. And what they do tell us is that, if anything, these women are likely closer to being a “healthy” weight when they are being maligned as “fat.” Yet when Britney or Jessica starts to show a bit more flesh in their midriff-baring stage costumes or high-waisted jeans, everyone starts to joke about their alleged indulgence in barbecue, fried chicken and good old Southern food; when they get “back into shape” it’s all about their fantastic workouts with their personal trainer and eating fresh veggies. (Never mind that it could just as easily be the Beyoncé Knowles “subsisting on lemon juice, water, cayenne pepper and laxatives for two weeks” diet plan; the Angelina Jolie “my mother died and that stressed me out” diet plan; or the time-honored cigarettes, coffee and cocaine diet plan. Or maybe just bulimorexia.) Unless, of course, they work out too much. Because everyone knows veiny biceps on a lady are, like, way unfeminine.

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Amy Benfer is a freelance writer in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Jackson’s peers react

Madonna and Mariah, Britney and Beyonce, Spielberg, Scorcese, Cher and many others respond

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Jackson's peers react

Actors, singers and performers from across the entertainment world, as well as the Jackson family members, are reacting to Michael Jackson’s death with outpourings of sadness and tribute. Here’s a round-up of what some well-known celebrities are saying:

  • Madonna: “I can’t stop crying over the sad news. . . I have always admired Michael Jackson…The world has lost one of the greats, but his music will live on forever! My heart goes out to his three children and other members of his family. . . God bless.”
  • Justin Timberlake: “We have lost a genius and a true ambassador of not only Pop music but of all music…He has been an inspiration to multiple generations, and I will always cherish the moments I shared with him on stage and all of the things I learned about music from him and the time we spent together. My heart goes out to his family and loved ones.”
  • Paul McCartney: “It’s so sad and shocking…I feel privileged to have hung out and worked with Michael. He was a massively talented boy-man with a gentle soul. His music will be remembered forever and my memories of our time together will be happy ones.”
  • Steven Spielberg: “Just as there will never be another Fred Astaire or Chuck Berry or Elvis Presley, there will never be anyone comparable to Michael Jackson. His talent, his wonderment and his mystery make him legend.”
  • Britney Spears: ”He has been an inspiration throughout my entire life and I’m devastated he’s gone!”
  • Lisa Marie Presley: “I am so very sad and confused with every emotion possible. I am heartbroken for his children, who I know were everything to him, and for his family. This is such a massive loss on so many levels, words fail me.”
  • Cher: ”I am having a million reactions…When I think of him, I think of this young boy, this teenager I first met … He was a great teenager, optimistic and adorable.”
  • Beyonce: ”He was magic…He was what we all strive to be. He will always be the King of Pop!”
  • Usher: ”May God cover you Michael. We all lift your name up in prayer. I pray for the entire Jackson family particularly Michael’s mother, children and all his fans that loved him so much. I would not be the artist, performer, and philanthropist I am today without the influence of Michael.”
  • Mariah Carey: “I am heartbroken. My prayers go out to the Jackson family, and my heart goes out to his children. Let us remember him for his unparalleled contribution to the world of music, his generosity of spirit in his quest to heal the world, and the joy he brought to his millions of devoted fans throughout the world. I feel blessed to have performed with him several times and to call him my friend. No artist will ever take his place. His star will shine forever.”
  • Whitney Houston: ”I am full of grief.”
  • Marion Jackson: ”He was looking well. He was getting ready to go into rehearsals for his tour. I don’t know what happened.”
  • Quincy Jones: ”I am absolutely devastated at this tragic and unexpected news…I’ve lost my little brother today, and part of my soul has gone with him.”
  • Jamie Foxx: “I hope he is remembered for the brilliance of his music and not for the circus sideshow his life had become.”
  • Celine Dion: “I am shocked. I am overwhelmed by this tragedy. Michael Jackson has been an idol for me all my life.”
  • Sophia Loren: “It’s horrible news, so unexpected…The world has lost an icon and music has lost treasures. He wrote songs that generations of yesterday, today and tomorrow will all keep on singing. What he wrote was amazing.”
  • Lenny Kravitz: ”If not for him, I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing. He gave me joy as a child and showed me the way to go.”
  • Brooke Shields: “My heart is overcome with sadness for the devastating loss of my true friend Michael. He was an extraordinary friend, artist and contributor to the world. I join his family and his fans in celebrating his incredible life and mourning his untimely passing.”
  • Hugo Chavez: Michael Jackson’s death is “lamentable news.”
  • Martin Scorcese: “Michael Jackson was extraordinary. When we worked together on Bad, I was in awe of his absolute mastery of movement on the one hand, and of the music on the other. Every step he took was absolutely precise and fluid at the same time. It was like watching quicksilver in motion.”
  • Imelda Marcos: “Michael Jackson enriched our lives, made us happy…The accusations, the persecution caused him so much financial and mental anguish. He was vindicated in court, but the battle took his life. There is probably a lesson here for all of us.”
  • Jermaine Jackson: ”May our love be with you always.”
  • John Legend: “As a child of the ’80s, I feel as though his music and his videos have been an inseparable part of my life and that of an entire generation,” he said. “And the powerful thing about great music is that it will always live on. He was and always will be an icon.”
  • MC Hammer: “I have no words…I loved Michael Jackson.”
  • Tommy Mottola: Michael Jackson was “the cornerstone to the entire music business.”
  • Miley Cyrus: ”Michael Jackson was my inspiration. Love and Blessings.”

Vincent Rossmeier is an editorial assistant at Salon.

Zac Efron and the twilight of the teen idol

The "High School Musical" pinup wants to shed his cheesy image. Can he succeed? Plus: A look at the heartthrobs who made the leap to adult fame.

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Zac Efron and the twilight of the teen idol

There is a time in every young teen idol’s life when he must ditch the tan bronzer and try to make a go of some adult career. This is always fascinating to watch, because it signals the chance, however slight, for a real person to claw his or her way through the plastic, to veer off-script in an industry that has, up until this moment, micromanaged every last Ryan Seacrest interview. This is the moment that separates the Justin Timberlakes from the Joey Fatones. Many dewy youths have fallen in their attempts at this career juncture, and they have the drinking habits and the VH1 reality shows to prove it.

And so we have arrived at Zac Efron’s moment. In this month’s Interview magazine, the well-scrubbed 21-year-old star of “High School Musical” loosens the shackles of his pukka-shell necklace and undergoes a dirty-sexy makeover — black-and-white photos feature him rolling in the mud with a naked model (Lithuanian Edita Vilkeviciute), her pert nipples visible, and looking like he is 15 years late to Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game” video shoot. The whole package is a self-conscious attempt to rescue Efron from the sea of Disney banality in which he has been dog-paddling for some time: The artsy cover ominously declares, “Zac Efron Is the Future.” The interview is conducted by beloved indie director Gus Van Sant — a man whose stamp of approval is so coveted by young Hollywood that it became a plotline in HBO’s “Entourage” — and the pair gab about vintage furniture and Efron’s upcoming period film with Richard Linklater, “Me and Orson Welles.” The repeated message here is that you won’t have Zac Efron to sing your four-part harmonies anymore. On Tuesday came the announcement that Efron had pulled out of his starring role in the remake of “Footloose,” a part that seemed to seal his fate as a song-and-dance plaything for tween America and the next logical step in his retread of vapid ’80s teen idoldom. Ditching that part is possibly the most interesting thing Efron has done in his career — which is, admittedly, a short list, including the time he told Elle magazine that his mom bought him an economy box of condoms. 

Even in the pantheon of bland teen stars, Efron always seemed particularly animatronic. (That’s not even his real voice in the original “High School Musical,” though he insisted on singing in the sequels.) With his ’50s-era Boy Scout good looks, annoyingly windswept bangs, and the made-for-the-tabloids romance with Vanessa Hudgens, Efron has never been much more than a punching bag for those of us over 10 years old. When Rolling Stone declared him the “New American Heartthrob” in 2007, it seemed to be saying more about its own desperate bid for relevance than anything else. “As long as I stay boring, I think I’ll be fine,” Efron said in the cover story. And there did not seem to be any danger of him doing otherwise. Which is another reason why this moment is exciting: He could have sucked on the bong of “HSM” for years, living a cozy existence fortified by Teen Choice awards, in which the most serious question he faced was whether or not he liked to wear makeup

I don’t mean to suggest that by splattering mud on his face and pressing his pecs against a naked lady, Efron will suddenly morph into Johnny Depp. Depp displayed hints of his talent even in his earliest roles, whereas Efron’s chops have yet to manifest. In fact, it’s a bit squirm-inducing to hear about Efron’s artistic aspirations, however fledgling and undefined they are. “I’m getting a list of great films on my iPhone,” he told Gus Van Sant, “and every time somebody mentions one, I try to go out and watch it.” (He just saw “Ordinary People.” Verdict? “I was amazed.”) His next film is “17 Again,” a hokey-sounding age-inversion film in which he plays a 37-year-old stuck in the body of a teenager, which is not likely to land him on anyone’s Oscar shortlist.

Nevertheless, there’s something invigorating about a teen idol attempting to wriggle free of his constraints. It’s a gamble for a star whose fame relies on the conflicted desires of the young girls (and boys) who adore him, in part, for his androgyny, because he is unthreatening, sweet and cuddly as a puppy. No matter how sexualized our culture becomes, the overwhelming success of “High School Musical” — in fact, of every teen idol — confirms that kids crave the soft-focus fantasy of romance and sexuality while keeping all the dirty, nasty stuff at arm’s length. (Hello, Jonas Brothers.) Trying to transition into a more grown-up role is the sword on which so many beloved teen idols have fallen. But whether he can pull a Depp or a Timberlake, or whether he winds up as the next David Cassidy, forever plagued by the credibility that eluded him, Efron’s career now has a quality it has lacked for so long: It has become unpredictable.

 Teen idols who have crossed over

The career span of a dreamy pinup is often painfully short, but a handful have cheated fate and turned themselves from punch line to marquee player.  Here are a few hits (and near-misses):

Johnny Depp

Almost as soon as Depp pierced public consciousness as the young star of late ’80s teen-cop drama “21 Jump Street,” he made it clear he wasn’t a going to be a garden-variety idol. He started talking in interviews about making a movie of Kerouac’s “On the Road” and threatening to shave off his hair. By 1990 he was fleeing his prime-time trap for a starring role in John Waters’ “Crybaby,” which he described at the time as “the ultimate juvenile-delinquent musical comedy” — soon to be followed by Tim Burton’s “Edward Scissorhands,” the first of many quirky movies he would choose on his way to becoming one of the world’s most admired actors.

Justin Timberlake

From his early appearance on “Star Search” to his squeaky-clean image in ‘N Sync, there was little to suggest towheaded Timberlake was anything more than harmless fantasy fodder. He and Britney were the reigning fairy tale couple — but in 2003, they broke up and in one fell swoop, both young lovers tumbled into adulthood. Timberlake took up with the very grown-up Cameron Diaz, and his debut album catapulted him to superstardom. He became a regular Rolling Stone cover boy, made even more infamous for exposing Janet Jackson’s nipple during the Super Bowl.  But he found respect and widespread critical acclaim with his adventurous album “FutureSex/LoveSound.” Timberlake had pulled off the ultimate former teen-pinup feat: building up artistic credibility while keeping the fans panting.

Britney Spears

The beleagured pop star has zigzagged across the line of credibility so many times that it’s hard to remember when she first arrived. La Spears was incubated in “The New Mickey Mouse Club,” of course, and burst on to the pop scene with an album that had one bona fide megahit (“Baby One More Time”) and a lot of cloying nonsense. She had all the trappings of a one-hit wonder, but Spears leveraged her time in the spotlight with a series of then-shocking magazine spreads, beginning with David LaChapelle’s Rolling Stone cover in 1999, flaunting her sizzling teen bod while promising to keep her virginity tucked away in a heart-shaped box. It was all a bunch of calculated nonsense, of course, but it worked, along with all those perfect Max Martin pop confections, so that by the time she swapped saliva with Madonna on the MTV Video Music Awards in 2003, the homespun Louisiana teenybopper had transformed herself into the country’s reigning pop princess. And then, other things happened. Maybe you heard.

Bobby Brown

Booted out of the ’80s teen group New Edition for bad behavior, Bobby Brown could have easily been a footnote to the ’80s boy band era — and a minor one at that. His first solo attempt was largely ignored, but his 1988 smash album “Don’t Be Cruel” was all swagger and sass, and the hit “My Prerogative” became an anthem for teen-idol rebellion when Britney Spears remade it in 2004. Brown became a blueprint for Spears in another way, as his music career soon became eclipsed by the hot mess of his tumultuous reality-show life.

Mark Wahlberg

A life of crime or life in a boy band seemed to be the two options facing Mark Wahlberg at the age of 13. He switched off between the two, spending a short stint in his brother Donnie’s band New Kids on the Block and another in jail before finding fame as Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. The party jam “Good Vibrations” was a massive hit, as was the video in which Wahlberg flexed his bare, extremely buff chest. His career as a Calvin Klein underwear model eventually overshadowed his music, and a dead-end future as a hunky has-been was looming. But in 1993, Wahlberg got a part in a movie, which led to a string of strong performances in movies like “The Basketball Diaries” and “Boogie Nights.” Nowadays, Wahlberg not only acts (nabbing an Oscar nomination for “The Departed” in 2006) but he’s also a Hollywood exec, producing the HBO series “Entourage” (loosely based on his own experiences) and “In Treatment” — about as impressive an outcome as a pretty boy teen idol could imagine.

Miley Cyrus

Last April, tween superstar Miley Cyrus, aka Hannah Montana, tried her hand at a different kind of girl power: posing for a racy Annie Leibovitz portrait (just as David Cassidy had once done), draped in nothing but a bedsheet for the cover of Vanity Fair. What was presumably meant to signal a break from the goofy girldom of her Disney career prompted a ferocious backlash among parents and Disney itself, panicked that it might be losing its prized pony. A contagion of apologies and hand-wringing trend pieces later, the moment still stands as a transition for Cyrus, who managed to catapult herself into the national conversation, though she’s back in line now for the most part, starring in April in another soft-focus “Hannah Montana” film. More moments of teen rebellion inevitably await.

 David Cassidy

OK, so David Cassidy never exactly crossed over to mainstream credibility. But it’s not like he didn’t try. Before he was cast as Keith Partridge in 1970, Cassidy had dreams of being a serious actor and musician — but his massive TV superstardom derailed his plans and left him with a trail of screaming girls and a zillion lunchboxes bearing his image. ”I was playing a part on television, and that became the David Cassidy story. But underneath, there was this guy who was dying to do ‘Purple Haze,”’ he once told Entertainment Weekly. He desperately tried to shred his image by posing for a nude Annie Leibovitz Rolling Stone cover, his pubic hair on show, and dissing “The Partridge Family,” but to no avail. Cassidy didn’t find a place for himself until 1983, when he took the lead role on Broadway in “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” a musical that has become a refuge for many former teen idols (Donny Osmond, Andy Gibb, Michael Damian and Leif Garrett among them) seeking salvation.

– Joy Press and Sarah Hepola 

 

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Sarah Hepola is an editor at Salon.

The year celebrity scandal died

Amy Winehouse imploded, Tina Fey triumphed, Heath Ledger overdosed -- and so did the tabloid era. Finally.

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The year celebrity scandal died

If you care deeply about Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt — “The Hills” stars whose cloying mugs and romantic melodrama dominated the cover of an alarming number of gossip rags — then 2008 was a banner year for you. If you savor hand-wringing debate over Miley Cyrus’ exposed body parts, if you actually give a rip that Madonna ditched her husband for a baseball star who resembles a wax statue, if you crave constant updates on the spermination of Angelina Jolie — well, then, this was a great year in celebrity scandal.

For the rest of us? Not so much. The year kicked off on January 22 with the shocking accidental death of Heath Ledger. The story had all the familiar and sordid mixings of juicy tabloid tragedy: Drugs! Depression! A heartbroken (and famous) ex-wife! An Olsen twin! And yet, Ledger’s death wasn’t fun, wasn’t funny, wasn’t the kind of downward spiral whose images you pass around like Christmas snapshots — images like, say, a bald Britney Spears banging on an SUV with an umbrella or Lindsay Lohan passed out in a car. No, the demise of Heath Ledger was dark, baffling, sad. For years, as celebrity shenanigans grew increasingly more ridiculous, more desperate and anguished, it seemed inevitable that some public tragedy would cast a pall over the bitchy fun of celebrity gossip. Who knew it would involve a spotlight-shunning actor who had only just completed his most stunning performance yet?

The celebrity industrial complex was already maxing out in 2007, when Heather Havrilesky wrote, “What’s fascinating and disturbing about this moment in our culture is this pervasive feeling of vertigo, the push and pull of new media marginalizing the more historically weighty stories while the flashiest trivia holds the camera’s gaze.” It seemed that nothing mattered as much as David Hasselhoff drunkenly snarfing a burger or Alec Baldwin screaming at his poor daughter, and it looked like that trend might continue until, as Mike Judge had joked in his 2006 satire “Idiocracy,” the country was run by a camera-hogging professional wrestler. Celebrity minutiae and misdeeds became a kind of media wallpaper overshadowing real stories like the war in Iraq and concern about the economy. (The economy? Who cared about the economy?)

But then, the culture shifted. Politics seemed, weirdly, like something we could believe in again. Empty gossip felt, well, emptier. As Rebecca Traister wrote back in March, in a terrific and prescient piece about the demise of celebrity gossip, “The pleasure we take in snurfling through the trash bins of those more rich and famous than we seems to be waning, leaving me a little sad,” Traister wrote, “but perhaps, at the end of the day, just a little less dumb.”

As the most stirring election in recent memory revved up, the daily banalities of A-list celebs like Tom Cruise, Jennifer Aniston, George Clooney and Brad Pitt took a back seat to rumor-mongering about Sarah Palin and a discussion of whether or not Barack Obama wore boxers or briefs. In May, Us Weekly editor Janice Min told the New York Times, “When you look at the great celebrity dramas of the last few years, you have Team Aniston, Team Jolie, Team Heidi and Team Lauren. And now we have Team Hillary and Team Barack.”

But it wasn’t merely the high voltage of the political season that tanked celebrity gossip. The industry itself had badly overreached — like Wall Street, the real estate market, Starbucks and every other American enterprise bent on total domination. Supermarket stands had become a hot mess of tawdry tabloids. (Who were the people so unsatisfied with Star, People and Us Weekly that they required Celebrity Living, too? Well, whoever they were, there weren’t enough of them. The magazine folded earlier this year.) 

By late December, even celeb site Jossip raised the white flag in a post called, “Gossip’s Dead and It’s Everyone’s Fault.” The item offered a brief summation of the fallen soldiers on the field: “Ben Widdicombe was the first to go, ankling his post as the New York Daily News’ most respected gossip columnist. Next were Rush & Molloy, the married gossips who since 1995 had also penned a column for the Daily News — they wanted to focus on other stories for the paper. Then Jo Piazza, whose scuttlebutt replaced Widdicombe’s, quit, too. Jossip’s gossip-oriented sister site Mollygood shut down, much like the short-lived PageSix.com before it. Also, tabloid sales continued to shrink.” Layoffs hit Gawker and its sister site Jezebel. TMZ, which had so zealously launched its own TV show in 2007, ended the year with a decrease in readership — a rare occurrence online, where new users appear by the minute. It seemed deeply symbolic when Mr. Blackwell — the bitchy tabloid queen responsible for “The Worst Dressed List,” a Schadenfreude tradition that gave birth to a gazillion “fashion police” — passed away in October. It was fitting, almost. The end of an era. Or, depending on your perspective — an error.

It was 20 years ago that Brat Pack pretty boy Rob Lowe scandalized the country by making a sex tape with two women he’d picked up in a bar, one of whom turned out to be (gasp!) 16 years old. The event was, in many ways, the beginning of the modern tabloid age and a glimpse at the two decades to come, in which celebrity scandal captivated the public imagination, whether it was pop royalty dethroned (Michael Jackson, Britney Spears) or beloved role models besmirched (OJ Simpson, Woody Allen and, of course, Michael Jackson) or pretty-boys-turned-prison-mates  (Robert Downey Jr., Tupac, Kiefer Sutherland) or the parade of attention-starved exhibitionists who seized the spotlight in the first part of this decade, the LiLos and the Brit-Brits and the MTV reality queens. It is almost quaint to think of Lowe’s sex tape now: A romp with two chicks, one of whom lied about her age. People were outraged! Fast forward 15 years or so, and R. Kelly is pissing on 14-year-old girls and still making hotly anticipated albums.

But the sheer volume of celebrity scandal has ground us down, made us cynical and mean-spirited. It’s damned hard to care anymore, to respond to souls in crisis with little more than a sneer of contempt and one giant eye roll. Just consider the case of Amy Winehouse, the English crooner and tabloid favorite who has been in a spiritual and chemical freefall since she first hit the charts in 2006. Things looked bright when she finally fled to rehab in January 2008 — after a series of epic, bloody blowouts — but by June she was flailing again, with cuts on her arms and troubling reports of early-stage emphysema. By December 2008, she was back in rehab once more. And all of it was so grim, so ugly and hopeless — an implosion via RSS feed — that you would be forgiven for failing to care. After all, was it really such sport to laugh at a woman with a black eye and a fat lip, a woman lurching through a darkened street with broken heels and a glazed, pained look in her eyes? Was it really still funny? Had it ever been?

Of course, there were a few celebrity scandals of the old-fashioned variety in 2008. Lindsay Lohan began dating a woman, Samantha Ronson (and appeared — finally, if only temporarily — calmed by it); Britney Spears made yet another comeback and was dogged by yet another series of reports about her dangerous weight loss and failures at mommyhood; Gwyneth Paltrow and Coldplay’s Chris Martin were reportedly on the outs; Hulk Hogan split with his wife Linda, who  began dating a 19-year-old. Then there were the happy endings and silver linings: the surprise weddings (Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon), the shotgun weddings (Ashlee Simpson and Pete Wentz), the high-pressure engagements (Jamie-Lynn Spears and whoever is engaged to Jamie-Lynn Spears), the about-time weddings (Jay-Z and Beyonce Knowles) and the straight-up tear-jerkers (Ellen Degeneres and Portia de Rossi). Oh, and I almost forgot: Clay Aiken’s gay. Does that count as celebrity scandal? Hmm. I didn’t think so.

Oddly, the year’s most interesting celebrity gossip came from a thoroughly unlikely source: Tina Fey. Bolstered in no small part by her eerie resemblance to a certain vice-presidential nominee (and her classic “Saturday Night Live” performances), Fey found herself in the national spotlight and landed a $6 million book deal at a time when the bottom was practically falling out of the publishing world. Her NBC comedy “30 Rock” — once dismissed as a doomed critical darling — boasted cameos from no less than Oprah Winfrey, Jennifer Aniston and Steve Martin. Fey graced the cover of Vanity Fair twice in one year, with a profile that painted her as the ultimate anti-celebrity: a teetotaler, a tireless worker, a boring homebody happily married to a nice guy. And the story of how she got that mysterious scar on her chin — she was cut in her front yard at the age of 5 — made national news. (Our Tina Fey? Yes, our Tina Fey!) As Britney Spears continued to disappoint, as critics threw tomatoes at Tom Cruise in their early reviews of “Valkyrie,” Fey emerged as the scrappy hero of recession-era America: a self-made woman with real brains — and real boobs!

They say that celebrity is a reflection of how a culture would like to see itself. And though I shudder to think what the long and shameful reign of Paris Hilton says about our country, what I do know is that I’m glad Tina Fey has the crown these days. It was about damn time for a regime change.

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Sarah Hepola is an editor at Salon.

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