Britney, Paris, Lindsay and Me
The pain of sexism still lingers 20 years later.
Nostalgia and trauma both take roughly 20 years to resurface. So it isn’t a surprise that while TikTok teens are waxing poetic about what life must have been like in the early 2000s, we’re simultaneously reframing our view of the women who were on the brunt end of its culture, whether through the Framing Britney Spears or This is Paris documentaries or the resurfacing of sexist late-night talk show interviews with Lindsay Lohan.
To list all the ways in which our entertainment, media, politics, and nearly every aspect of American life in the aughts was sexist is too extensive and almost too obvious to include here. Or, in the revelation I recently texted a friend: “We came of age in the era of American Pie. We didn’t stand a chance.”
While society apologizes to its pop culture princesses — who despite fame and fortune were still treated derisively — what has yet to enter the discourse is how this pervasive sexism harmed an entire generation of young women who don’t have the status or platform to own their redemption arcs. I should know. I’m one of them.
I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman
Britney Spears’ …Baby One More Time was released the year after I started my period and the year before I had my first kiss…
