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Sympathy for the Schoolgirl | The New Yorker

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When Britney Jean Spears was sixteen years old, she put on a pleated skirt and channelled an archetype: the schoolgirl, underage temptress. It was a persona Spears wore like a polyester Halloween costume throughout her first flush of fame—from her pigtails and kneesocks in the video for “. . . Baby One More Time” to her pushup bra and curly phone cord on the cover of Rolling Stone. With the release of her memoir last month, Spears joins a roll call of pop-culture figures with narratives to reclaim—and perhaps the schoolgirl, too, merits a moment of reconsideration. In the long years since “. . . Baby One More Time,” teen girlhood has enjoyed a kind of cultural ascendancy. Adolescent tastes and interests have come in for critical reappraisal, or at least for grudging appreciation as market forces. Taylor Swift began as a troubadour of high-school’s emotional tumult—she was eighteen when she released a song about freshman year called “Fifteen”—and her billionaire status today is a testam

Save this story Save this story When Britney Jean Spears was sixteen years old, she put on a pleated skirt and channelled an archetype: the schoolgirl, underage temptress. It was a persona Spears wore like a polyester Halloween costume throughout her first flush of fame—from her pigtails and kneesocks in the video for “. . . Baby One More Time” to her pushup bra and curly phone cord on the cover of Rolling Stone . With the release of her memoir last month, Spears joins a roll call of pop-culture figures with narratives to reclaim—and perhaps the schoolgirl, too, merits a moment of reconsiderat

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