Dairy farmer’s daughter Lynne couldn’t contain her excitement over her ‘extremely active, precious bundle of joy’—her first daughter and a sister for four-year-old son Bryan. Family lineage on both sides had always produced boys so she’d yearned for a girl, no doubt to repeat the mother-daughter bond shared with her English-born mother Lillian Portell, who emigrated from London in 1946.
‘You can imagine how excited I was,’ Lynne recalls in Heart to Heart, ‘an adorable baby girl to dress up like a little doll! A daughter to have little tea parties with!’ It seems a strange, child-like reaction for a mother to have, recognising the accessory and companion before the actual child. There is no doubting the genuine joy Lynne felt, or the doting adoration she heaped on her second child, but embedded within that natural reaction is the first sign that Britney was unconsciously regarded as an object or a possession; an attitude that would follow her through life. She was a living doll back then as much as she remains a commodity today. Such an unintended insight suggests Britney was objectified from the moment she was born. As the psychotherapist consulted says:
Lynne reveals much with her response to Britney’s birth because when people don’t have a sense of self, they tend to objectify others and babies can be viewed as ‘dolls’ to fulfil a parent’s need to be merged with their child, and to be In control of love. But when this happens, there tends to be trouble ahead. It’s almost as If Lynne was telling Britney, ‘You’re going to be my love object, and all my needs are with you.’ And she wanted everyone to know how happy this first daughter made her, showing her as ‘Baby of the Week’.
The honey-coated pedestal was already being prepared. Around the same time, Lynne’s sister, Sandra Covington, also gave birth to Laura Lynn. Though cousins, she and Britney grew up side by side as if they were twins, sharing the same crib by day, wearing matching outfits, and attending dance recitals together. The family photo albums are filled with pictures of Britney and Laura, always hand in hand, wearing identical dresses, nightgowns, tutus, shoes and hairstyles. The girls played dress-up, and often did so with garish make-up and adult attire, all dolled-up to the mutual delight of their mothers. They even had the same toys and gifts to open at Christmas, so that they wouldn’t feel as if they were being treated differently. But Britney was different.
The family recognised her precocious talent and, within their community, friends and neighbours commented on the little girl’s gifted voice and rare agility. At friends’ houses or the farm of Lynne’s brother Sonny, a three-year-old Britney often showed off a dance routine acquired through watching a toothpaste commercial on television.
‘Go on, Brit-Brit, show ’em what y’all can do!’ encouraged her mother, uncles and aunties.
‘I’m convinced that baby was born with a microphone in her hand!’ said museum curator Hazel Morris, who has known Britney since she was born, ‘she really was the sweetest of children, who shone from day one.’
From an early age, Lynne was both curious and perplexed by the bundle of energy that she sometimes struggled to contain. Britney was ‘the doll’ that wouldn’t sit still—jigging, singing, dancing or cartwheeling around the house, on the trampoline in the backyard, in the back-seat of the car or across the front lawn. She only ever seemed to stop to watch favourite TV shows, Growing Pains and The Wonder Years, or to continue the adventures of Ramona Quimby.
Lynne’s best way of harnessing that irrepressible energy was to find suitable outlets: the Renee Donewar School of Dance in Kentwood, and gymnastics lessons in Covington, 55 miles away. Her daughter attended classes three nights a week and every Saturday.
Britney’s first dance class was at the age of two and her first solo on-stage recital came at four. Dance teacher Renee Donewar described her as: ‘unusually driven, focussed and a perfectionist.’ Here was a girl, who for some inexplicable reason, was determined to perform and throw her heart and soul into being the best by turning in foot-perfect recitals. If there was a new technique to master, Britney mastered it; if there was a new dance routine, she owned it. She was clearly one of those potentially annoying, but gifted children who wanted to outshine everyone, with a poise, intent and concentration that belied her years. It therefore surprised no one when she often earned the Best Attendee in Class awards. As she grew older, Britney would write out scorecards and judge her own performances with marks out often. Then, as now, she was her own worst critic.
In gymnastics, she walked away with trophies and medals for impressive floor shows, and went on to win her junior level at the State Louisiana Gymnastics competition, performing a triple back-flip followed by a somersault in her lucky, all-white leotard. From the age of six to nine, Britney excelled, and different coaches suggested she had what it took to go all the way; a budding Shawn Johnson of her time. But when such high hopes led to more gruelling practice, and when the fun of performing became secondary to the need to work, her enthusiasm popped.
‘Mama, I don’t want to do this anymore. It’s too hard,’ she said one day. Gymnastics never provided the same buzz as performing, she later admitted.
For Jamie and Lynne, this represented a dilemma because they had witnessed the excellence of their daughter’s talent and agility and felt she was abandoning great potential. But they saw how fed-up it made her, compared to how her face lit up when she danced or sang. Even though it went against their better judgement at the time, they backed her decision. They didn’t wish to push her down a particular road, regardless of pleadings from coaches.
Nor were the Spears keen to push their daughter down the road of that showy American culture: the beauty pageant. Ever since the 1850s, these competitions have provided a somewhat cosmetic approval-bar. It is a culture which encourages dressing six-year-olds up as adults, with full make-up, building up an emphasis on image and beauty. One sour experience was enough for Lynne to realise the ‘horror’ of the system when Britney, who was painfully shy when not engaged in performance mode, lost out and finished almost bottom in a local ‘Little Miss Something’ contest.
Lynne was adamant her daughter would never again be made to feel ugly or rejected by the values of image and image alone. She always wanted Britney to know that it is someone’s qualities and attitudes that make them beautiful, not their looks. If there was one person in the world who could wipe away Britney’s tears and put her back together again, it was her mama. The irony, bearing in mind what she would ultimately be marketed as, was that the Spears family had vehemently railed against a pageant system primarily built on beauty as a commodity. Yet that’s exactly what their daughter would become: a marketable, image-led commodity; dressed up like a doll for the pop industry. Then again, Britney wouldn’t finish near the bottom of the table in the music industry as she did at the pageant. The Spears would argue that her success as a pop star was based on talent, not looks alone; that she is a performer, not a walkabout prop.
In recent years, a lot of emphasis has been placed on the fact that Britney was more performer and dancer than strong vocal talent. That suggestion seems hard to accept based on people’s recollections and what is evident in archive footage. It seems more like a well-embroidered argument promoted to mitigate the fact that the modern-day Britney lip-syncs when singing live; that she is more entertainer than great singer. But anyone who witnessed her sing as a child—and during 1999-2001—can feel rightly perplexed because she literally blew audiences away with her voice. On-lookers couldn’t help but get the chills when she sang as a child, with a mature quality and depth. She might not have come near the natural ability of a Christina Aguilera but she was nevertheless impressive. Let no one say Britney cannot sing live. She can. Or, more pertinently, she could…back in the early days.
She first stepped up to the plate in public at the First Baptist Church, aged four, holding a microphone bigger than her own forearm and immaculately turned out in a floral, conservative-church dress. It was Christmas 1985 and she sang the carol ‘What Child Is This?’ to the melody of ‘Greensleeves’. The congregation was stunned by the voice that emerged from the youngster. Lynne was told that her daughter