By, Camryn Braithwaite
There are few musical albums that consumers, critics, and historians can agree have had an indisputable impact on pop culture, but with a 14x platinum certification (RIAA, 2023), Britney Spears’ …Baby One More Time is one of the most influential pop albums of all time. In 2023, we tend to regard this body of work with reverence—sonically, it provides a summary of the popular lyrical content and production of its time, and set the standard for pop consumption in the 2000s. However, Britney’s fame is strikingly different from contemporary celebrity fanaticism because it was shaped by ongoing historical happenings. If we analyze the meteoric success of …Baby through societal and political lenses, these happenings can be made greatly clear to us.
Before we can discuss the success of Britney Spears and …Baby, an analysis of the music industry in the late 1990s is essential for contextualization. Bubblegum pop music created by Britney Spears (as well as peers like Christina Aguilera, ‘NSYNC, and the Backstreet Boys) was preceded in the late 1980s to early 1990s by the mainstream Grunge-era, upheld by groups like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden. In the context of Britney as a late-90s phenom, we should place the Grunge-era into the sphere of Riot Grrrl ideology and culture; spearheaded by punk-rock groups like Bratmobile and Bikini Kill. Riot grrrl media promoted radical feminism and pro-sexuality, while condemning misogyny, classism, and violence against women. Historically, their adopters share the social, cultural, and political beliefs that made them both spread. We can accredit the early influences of these popularizations mainly to the Reagan presidency, the Gulf War, and MTV. First, the economic policies of President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s led to staggering income inequality and an overwhelming sense of financial uncertainty for many Americans. This contributed to widespread disillusionment and anger, which was reflected in grunge music created by young people. Additionally, the Gulf War, began in 1990 and was a controversial, highly publicized conflict with resistance among many young people. Almost all Grunge and Riot Grrrl musicians outwardly opposed the war, and their music often echoed this political inclination. For young women specifically, this idea is encompassed in the Riot Grrrl Manifesto, created by and for female fans of grunge. Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill writes the lines:
“BECAUSE viewing our work as being connected to our girlfriends-politics-real lives is essential if we are gonna figure out how we are doing impacts, reflects, perpetuates, or DISRUPTS the status quo / BECAUSE we recognize of Instant Macho Gun Revolution as impractical lies meant to keep us simply dreaming instead of becoming our dreams AND THUS seek to create a revolution in our own lives every single day by envisioning and creating alternatives to the bullshit christian capitalist way of doing things”
(Hanna, 1991)
Hanna addresses women’s discomfort within the landscape of pro-war American nationalism in the early 1990s, emphasizing sex-positivity, “girl-power” and other facets of third-wave feminism; in the context of Britney’s incoming rise, evaluate tracks like “Rebel Girl” or “Double Dare Ya”.
As we know, the Gulf War and Reagan presidency evenutally ended; retrospectively, it seems as though the passing of Kurt Cobain in 1994, or Bikini Kill disbandment in 1997, signaled the beginning of the end of the mainstream Grunge era. Despite the label success of grunge via radio and MTV, music fans and industry insiders began to feel fatigued. The genre and its political commentary seemed to become played-out—thus, no longer danceable, playable, or monetizable. This created a demand for a new type of music that was fresh, exciting, and adoptable to a young-adult audience. Britney would eventually fulfill this demand in 1998.
First, Britney’s physical appearance during the late 1990s undoubtedly played a prominent role in the success of …Baby, which is a testament to the influence of the American female beauty standard, as well the commonplace sexualization of teenage girls and young women during the late 1990s and early 2000s. In the wake of third-wave feminism, it seems that the idealized female “superstar” combined girl-power in mainstream pop (ie. Spice Girls) and overt pro-sexuality, via black hip hop culture (ie. Foxy Brown and Lil Kim) to create a digestible, desirable, and most importantly, marketable image.
Retrospectively, we can infer that during the 1990s, it was practically mandatory for a woman to be conventionally and sexually attractive—in the eyes of women and men, respectively—to garner widespread public attention. Britney Spears perfectly fit this image; she had a healthy, athletic-looking build and was visually among the same age as her target audience. Additionally, perhaps most importantly, she was white, young, and considered “pretty.” Her beauty and perceptible whiteness are essential in the contextualization of the success of …Baby and its release to an American, predominantly white consumer market. Whiteness, or proximity to it, has been seen as a standard of beauty in American society throughout history; in this way, it’s clear why Britney “Baby” prevailed economically over acts like Lauryn Hill, Jennifer Lopez, and Destiny’s Child.
However, this did not protect Spears from the ramifications of expressing overt sexuality as a young woman in 1999. Among the influx of societal slut-shaming following the Clintonian impeachment, we recall Monica Lewinsky, who was a young woman being scapegoated as the cause of this event. Socially, the Clintonian impeachment resulted in an immediate undoing of female sex-positivity instilled into society by third-wave feminism. However, perhaps this controversy was the perfect storm for marketing “…Baby One More Time” as a song, and its associated music video. In a time where purity was pushed, especially for high-school girls, the outrage for Britney performing in a stylized school uniform was the perfect push for word-of-mouth publicity for the lead single.Regardless of the controversy surrounding its release and marketing, the success of …BabyOne More Time speaks to American culture through how and why it was consumed. Historians across fields agree that politics are constantly influencing pop culture, whether directly or inadvertently. In this way, …Baby’s rise to cultural prominence cannot be attributed to coincidence; third-wave feminism and the feminine ideals it instilled into young women and girls during the 1990s played decisive roles in …Baby’s prevalence.
