Celebrity image change
Rick in Oz
Celebrity image change
By LOUIS B. HOBSON -- Calgary Sun
Images don't come much cleaner or squeakier than those cultivated through
Disney's Mousketeers or TV sitcoms like Who's the Boss?
While Christina Applegate started out playing white trash in Married With
Children, Alyssa Milano was the picture of impish perfection on Who's the
Boss?
Little Britney Jean Spears and her best tweener friend Christina Maria
Aguilera were wholesome family values personified when they sang, danced and
smiled for fans of The Mickey Mouse Club.
Poor Jessica Ann Simpson didn't get to join them because she proved too shy
and withdrawn during the gruelling MMC audition process.
What a difference a decade makes.
Britney, 22, and Christina, 23, have dropped their middle names and
necklines, while raising their hemlines.
They are largely responsible for the low-rise jeans, bare midrift and naval
tattoo and piercings that currently dominate youth fashion.
Spears insists she prefers skimpy because "other clothes would make me sweat
too much when I dance. My body needs to breathe."
These days Simpson, 23, is so far from introverted she's exorcised the word
from her vocabulary while neglecting to censor her raunchy speech.
Through Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica, her reality TV series with hubby Nick
Lachey, Jessica weekly bares everything from her ample curves to her shallow
soul.
As sexy witch Phoebe on TV's Charmed, Milano, 31, has charmed her way into a
sexier image which she eagerly trots out for cameos in such films as Dickie
Roberts: Former Child Star.
Even when she was playing a munchkin witch in the Addams Family movies
Christina Ricci was more nice than naughty.
These days Ricci, 24, is a true screen siren, preferring to play tortured
teen angst in films like Prozac Nation, The Opposite of Sex and Monster,
than the sweet girl next door.
As with so many teen and twentysomething female celebrities, these women
have not just discarded but trampled the virginal images that initially
endeared them to the public.
Calgary chartered psychologist Janet MacKenzie sees this image switch from
virgin to vixen as a natural progression.
She says the squeaky clean image "is not realistic. It's too extreme and it
becomes frustrating to sustain. It would also get very boring as these women
grow up and develop natural urges. They just started behaving like real
people, but they did so under the scrutiny of the media."
MacKenzie strongly feels society initiates and dictates the raunchy images
some female celebrities adopt.
"We are told in a zillion ways that sex sells everything. A sexy image gets
these women what they want from fame and attention, to success and wealth.
"Eventually there develops a competition to see who can push the boundaries
the farthest until somewhere someone has a wardrobe malfunction."
MacKenzie says the hoopla and backlash after Janet Jackson's exposed breast
was captured for three seconds at the Super Bowl is "the supreme example of
hypocrisy. It was the woman who was vilified for delivering accidentally or
purposely what the costume, song and act were all about."
Jackson apologized accepting most of the blame for the incident saying: "It
was not my intention that the costume reveal at the end of my performance go
as far as it did. I apologize to anyone offended ..."
Spears is refusing to apologize for her recent announcement that she intends
to marry dancer Kevin Federline, whose ex-girlfriend is pregnant with their
second child.
It was barely four years ago that bodyguards accompanied Spears and then
boyfriend Justin Timberlake on their little romantic get-aways assuring fans
Spears was still a virgin at 18.
"This is my life and I don't care what other people think. I've kissed a lot
of frogs in my life and now I have my prince," says Spears.
Last month, Aguilera tried to put the whole virgin/vixen image into
perspective: "For three years now, the media has been labelling Britney and
I as the good girl versus the bad girl. I change my hairstyle or wardrobe
and suddenly I'm the bad one.
"Britney takes someone's boyfriend so she becomes the bad girl and because I
changed my hair colour to caramel I'm suddenly good again.
"People making those labels have no idea who I really am. They don't even
know the image let alone the real me."
From Sunny Oz, Rick :)
Proud Keeper of the talented & beautiful Halle Berry.