This piece is a part of our series, Women We Watch, which examines celebrity women as archetypal models of American femininity. The series also includes the story, “The Celebrity Life Cycle of the ‘Messy White Woman’”, “The Reign of the Pristine White Woman”, and “Twice as Good: The Perils of Flawless Black Women”.

With #FreeBritney now rising to the top of folks’ Twitter feeds, celebrities and lay people alike are reflecting on 20 years of our societal treatment of Britney Spears. What’s curious about this moment is that, in many ways, nothing new is happening with Britney Spears; the circumstances of her current life are essentially the same as they were five years ago. What has changed is the public and media orientation toward those circumstances- the ways we talk about them, and, in total, her.

Britney is a Broken Starlet: a woman whose career, in her youth, launched quickly into the stratosphere, and who we’ve since watched careen violently back to earth with glee-tinged horror.

Whitney Houston, Lindsay Lohan, Anna Nicole Smith, and others all join Britney here. A few things differentiate the Broken Starlet from other scandal-impacted celebrities: the speed of ascent in their youth, the vital danger of their collapse, and public engagement in their celebrity.