I'm not even going to pretend to justify the fact that I'm posting about celebrity gossip. It is what it is. Today's topic is Britney Spears--a decline? Or is it?

Let's all face up to the fact that it's not as though Britney Spears was the best role model on the planet to begin with. She was a package deal...mediocre singing ability, some damn good PR people, a once athletic body, and an ability to work a crowd. She didn't have to do too much public speaking, she just had to look sexy yet wholesome, shake her thang, and unconvincingly deny allegations of sex and/or plastic surgery. We didn't hear too much from Britney, because she wasn't "Britney." She was a business. Of course lots of people loved her!

Of course, America can only stand so much saccharine, as you may guess by looking at the average waistline in this country. We didn't want artificial sweetener...so the PR people decided to introduce skimpier and skimpier clothes and raunchier lyrics and dance moves. I believe there was a nose job, as well as another breast enlargement to enhance what had been once enhanced before and then taken out (and if you don't believe me, look at the pictures.) By the age of 18 she'd had her career and her body manipulated by dozens of executives who were salivating at the money she was bringing in. Still, we didn't hear too much from Britney herself.

I'm not sure when the change set in, but at some point during the "sexy" phase something happened to good old Britney. Maybe she changed managers, or PR people...either way, she started to get just a little more tacky as time went on. The roots...the fake tans...the clothing. But I don't think this was Britney "declining." I think this was the real Britney who had been hiding behind a shiny plastic veneer all along. This is the Britney who was more of a real person. She reminded me of a lot of those girls you see hanging out at the mall all the time.

When she broke up with Justin, we started to hear more from the horse's mouth, so to speak. Again, I won't call this a decline or a downward spiral...we were hearing HER, not some middle aged music executive words coming out of her mouth. And then she took some time off. Had some knee surgery, met Mr. Federline, took up smoking...I don't know what happened. Maybe she woke up one day and realized she wasn't living her own life and got good and pissed off.

People started bashing her and calling her fat (and at this point she'd really only gained about ten pounds...not a lot, considering she'd had knee surgery). There were a lot of ghastly trucker hats which I WILL not stand up for, because trucker hats are the scourge of Satan and a nice Southern girl should really know better. She was seen out and about with yesterday's makeup smeared all over her face, her skin broke out and she never brushed her hair.

"Where has Britney gone?" people would lament, posting pictures of her barely legal, airbrushed body all over the internet. But Britney didn't go anywhere...in fact, during those tender years of 14-19, THAT'S when we should have been asking "where's Britney?"

And now she's 24, she's married, and she's starting a family of her own. What's so bad about that? Did we think that she was going to stay 18 forever?

Now, a lot of people have blamed Kevin Federline for her "descent," saying that if she only divorced him she'd return to her former svelte, pushed up glory. But I don't think that's the case...I think, if anything, that Britney's been having a really hard time under the pressure and scrutiny. I think that sometimes she says and does things that don't make sense because 1)she's gone through a lot of changes and lived a lot of life in a very short time and 2)she was NEVER a rocket scientist, so I don't know why we expect that she would be. Did we think all those years when we never heard more than sound bites out of her mouth that she was hiding a nuclear physicist's brain under all that platinum hair? Nah. She's just as dumb as the rest of us. She has a flair for the melodramatic and she's taken to speaking and acting without much foresight...something we're all prone to, I just might add.

Here's the thing about Kevin. If he were really as bad as all that, wouldn't Britney's bodyguards just beat the shit out of him? She has millions of dollars---she doesn't have to put up with much. Now, I hate his music just as much as the rest of the world seems to, and I think he has overly high expectations of his own talent, and maybe he always looks like he douses in a vat of grease before leaving the house, and he thinks he's a pimp, and he has a ratty mustache......actually, as I typed all that I forgot what I was going to say that was good about Kevin Federline. Ah...yes.

At least he's trying to have his own career. As much as people like to bitch about him, you rarely read about him doing anything REALLY stupid which is more than I can say about some other celebrities out there. He married up...good for him.

For all we know, she's the crazy one who wants to hold desperately to glory, and he's the sane, grounding element in her life. I think people want to point the finger at someone for staining their beloved former Mousketeer, and that those same people are all too quick to forget someone's 55 hour marriage, the allegations of former bodyguards and even former ex-boyfriend, Justin Timberlake. I'm just saying.

Don't cry for Britney, America. If anything, she's come home. And I bet she's a lot happier doing what SHE wants to do for once, instead of what WE want her to do.