Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth." Genesis 9:13

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Britney Spears: The Time has Come

I rarely to never discuss current events on this blog. I especially try to avoid celebrity gossip because so much of it is just gossip and it is so often slanted unfairly.

However, I'm tired of the disturbing trend I see with Britney, and now that her sister has announced her teenage pregnancy there is even more speculation.

Britney Spears has problems. I'm not sure why nobody has assumed this would go right along with major stardom and all that goes with it at such an early age. So much is expected of these kids who are into show bisuiness so young. If I'm right Britney was pretty popular at 13 or 14 years old. She was living an adult life at that age, and no matter what her family life was like it couldn't be normal.

Britney obviously has a major set of issues. It sounds like she may well be part of the bipolar club. She nearly definitely has substance abuse issues. These things are making her parenting skills essentially absent.

But people are throwing around soooooooo many ridiculous statements about hypothesized situations. After Brittany's sister announced her teenage pregnancy I've seen several people note "see, bipolar like her sister". First of all, we don't even know she's bipolar. Second of all, bipolar or not, whatever drives Brittany's bad decisions clearly hurts. Third, being related to someone, even someone with bipolar, does not mean you will share this. Jamie Lynn gets to make her own bad decision. Teen pregnancy happens. When I was in high school it was so common that nearly half the girls in my class had babies by graduation.

This kind of thing makes me so angry because it is defining bipolar by the acts of someone who isn't even DIAGNOSED with it, causing many, many bad things to be assumed and publicly stated until people believe them and then generalize them to cover all of us.

The thing is I'm bipolar. Maybe you're bipolar. But our illnesses are certain to be different, and neither should define the other. This whole Britney thing has brought out more negative statements about mental illness than there have been since the entire Tom Cruise war a few years ago.

I cannot even begin to imagine what Britney's life is like. I can't imagine facing such private issues so publicly. No wonder she has struggled so much; every move she makes is criticized and blamed on conditions people start making hard remarks about, when she's never even been diagnosed with those conditions.

There seems to be a problem here.

4 comments:

Jean Grey said...

Unfortunately, there are pretty much only bad role models of bipolars out there. The stigma is just too great for most people to "come out" when they are doing well to the world at large. Cancer has all these high profile spokespeople like Lance Armstrong, you can't watch TV without seeing an ad about cancer. I wish that we could get to the same place with mental illness.

Anonymous said...

It's sort of a "sins of the sister" situation, but nobody looks back at the parents. My heart literally aches for BS and her sis.

Jon said...

Your traffic is going to spike - mention her name and watch your stats. It's a great way to increase your traffic, if you're looking for more.

Just Me said...

Jon-While I always am looking for more traffic, that was one reason I didn't post this before; I didn't want the WRONG traffic. I really don't need people telling me nasties about bipolar.

Oddly, I didn't get one hit from it. The whole mess has apparently gotten so bad that every webpage around has her name on it.....