Recently I came across a blurb of Britney Spears –I’m not calling it an article because what was posted were a variety of pictures of Spears and a sentence or two regarding each picture. After reading over it a few times and then coming back to it I just could not shake the bad taste it left in my mouth. I don’t know what Lydia Price’s intentions were so I cannot speak to that, but with my burning passion and intense studies on body image and how it functions in society, which lead to the creation of an organization called Real Women of the Quad Cities, I cannot help but see this article as more harmful than helpful.
I greatly promote people wanting to get fit as well as people embracing their bodies, BUT I do not promote people being made to feel that the following (article link posted at the bottom of the page) is what people should be made to have to look like -if they don’t want.

 
“Still Our Best Motiv-Abs-tion…” really?? Seeing that someone else has chiseled abs should motivate me into having chiseled abs? So because someone has something I don’t I should see it as motivation to gain what they have? Let’s not forget part of her job is to stay in shape and I’m sure she burns off a month’s worth of calories in one concert she performs. Plus I’m sure she has more means and resources available to achieve her current bod than many others do.
Price’s little blurbs became even more condescending with statements such as this, “Inevitabilities: The sun will rise, politicians will argue, and Britney Spears will give us body envy.” And this is supposed to be a GOOD thing; envy?? Envy to have a slim, tight, and tan body? Isn’t that one of the seven deadly sins? Yes, Price, let’s promote envy, and at that, envy of a body that you seem to think women should aspire to have…

 
“Her bikini bod consistently gets it right and keeps it tight.” So if my “bikini bod” isn’t tight like Britney’s it’s not right? I should seek to change this? This is where the “motivation” is really becoming harmful opposed to helpful. We’re being told to envy another person’s body according to another person’s standards of beauty. What if our society saw a potbelly as the “bikini bod [that] consistently gets it right?” Then this article would be written to that standard and the Spears’ of the world may start feeling bad about their abs. Let’s go back to Twilight Zone’s “Eye of the Beholder” where everyone has these mangled, piggish looking faces and after a woman’s surgery she’s the picture of our societal beauty, but in that world she’s seen as hideous. This is not a new concept! And is sadly still a prevalent issue.
“So tight, in fact, that why she ever wears anything other than a bikini is a mystery on par with Stonehenge or the Egyptian Pyramids.” 1. Because she has such a “tight” body she shouldn’t be in anything other than the bare minimum of clothing?? 2. We live in a culture that tells women by wearing little clothing they’re “asking” to be raped, while we have People magazine telling us that if you look like this you SHOULD wear as little as possible!?!? 3. Just because Spears is tan, fit, and thin does not put her on the same level as great monuments, wonders of the world; she is not the first nor the only woman to look like this; yet Price is painting her as something more than she is.

 
**Note** At the end of this blurb Spears is shown doing yoga, dancing, and performing, which a portion of is her career. It’s nice to see how she exercises and how flexible she is as many who exercise may be motivated into hitting that same level as Spears. However, making people think they have to do that to have a certain body isn’t right.

 
I’m not dissing Spears by any means, but I am not pleased with how Lydia Price is using Spears’s body in a harmful, shamming way to promote “body envy.” If Spears is proud of her body and wants to show it off -great, but for someone to use it to motivate women into envy of a tight ABS-olutely “perfect” bikini body…come on Price…let’s change our ways and stop shoving how society says women should look down people’s throats. Rethink what you’re putting out for the world to read and what your “writing” is doing to/for others.

http://www.people.com/article/britney-spears-body-moments?xid=socialflow_facebook_peoplemag