This article is also published on the InspirHER blog.

Early 2000s Hollywood is an era I don’t think we will ever see again— it was a revolutionary time where a small-town girl could reign over the music industry with just a gospel voice and a guitar at hand. It was this dream that gave young girls everywhere the hope that one day while playing at their local radio station or nearby cafe, that they would be discovered by some big talent firm and be hoisted off limousine-style to a big city— a Cinderella-like story. 

And this dream became a reality for two girls of very similar backgrounds— one discovered just by singing at her local church in Kentwood, Louisiana, and the other discovered when performing at small radio stations and clubs in Nashville, Tennessee. Two powerhouses in the music industry— Britney Spears and Taylor Swift— were able to give other young musicians hope that they could, too, one day be discovered organically just by their talent, hard work, and luck. 

The two were completely unmatched during their time in the music industry. Ruling over the 2000s pop genre, Spears is referred to as a powerhouse, constantly setting the bar for what stage presence should look like— Britney Spears was inescapable within the media. Journalists covering 2000s award shows seemed to headline whatever Spear’s performance was for that night or Spear’s attire rather than mention any actual award acceptances. Swift’s first platinum record Tim McGraw was written when she was 14-years-old— an age when no one could even visualize what big fame Hollywood looked like. While bias is involved in the creative process of creating a documentary, Miss Americana shows Swift and her producer improvising and free-styling her now released Lover album that could convince anyone that songwriting seems to be an effortless process for her. 

Miss Americana not only shows her process with Lover but also Reputation and how these albums were being written during significant moments in her life— Reputation being an album made during a time when Swift is overwhelmed with the bad press following the Kanye West Famous situation, and Lover being an album made during Swift’s hideaway year. Swift’s songwriting is reflective of her state of mind at the time of writing, and with her transparency, it is clear why her fanbase is one of the most dedicated and largest in the world.

They say that fame creates more problems than it solves. With maturity and independence still not fully developed, it’s clear that child stars that are propelled into the media industry at a tender age must grow up quicker than others. And it’s no wonder that when their “rebellious years” of boyfriends and girlfriends, partying, and other growing pains are made to the public eye, it can make them despise the industry when they’re older. 

This problem is represented in both documentaries with segments on Hollywood’s fixation on Britney Spears’ and Taylor Swifts’ love lives. It’s interesting to see how despite the stark differences between the two and their public image, there is still a similar consensus that the world had made about them to that point— they were sluts. 

Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake were the Hollywood sweethearts— the match was almost too perfect: the two biggest teen pop stars are now together and madly in love. Even with the couples’ young ages at the time, both being 17, the media seemed predatorily fixed on the couple’s sex life. But even before Spears and Timberlake started dating, Spears would be asked questions related to her promiscuous stage presence. There are numerous interview clips shown in Framing Britney of seemingly professional hosts asking young Britney whether she is a virgin or whether she really is not that innocent. It’s painfully uncomfortable to watch but even more, are interviews of other celebrities making their assumptions about the young starlite such as Eminem or Rosie O’Donnell. There seemed to be an endless hate train in the 2000s for Spears whether it was critiques of what she was wearing to award shows or whether she was setting a good example for girls in Hollywood. This standard wasn’t inclusive to all child stars in the industry however: many of Spear’s male co-stars on Disney Channel (Justin Timberlake and Ryan Gosling on the Mickey Mouse Club) had a very separate work-to-life balance, their life outside of set was kept very private in contrast with Spears.

Early Hollywood had a very unprogressive mentality for young stars (considering the industry was currently being run by veterans like Tom Hanks, Oprah Winfrey, Ellen Degeneres, etc.)— for a small-town girl to make it big in the industry, it was expected for her to never stray away from that small-town girl persona. That conservative Spears that was plucked out from her gospel-singing lessons in small-town Louisiana was now expected to remain the saint that Hollywood needed for its young girls to follow. When the media started to realize that young Spears was growing up, they criticized and condemned her to have her never change— I like to think of it as the Hannah Montana phenomenon. Spears was not allowed, in parents and talk show hosts’ eyes, to stray from the 11-year-old Spears they let their children watch on the Mickey Mouse Club years ago.

Now, Taylor Swift had more publicized relationships than Spears. And Hollywood made sure that we knew of it. I remember the influx of articles being written about Swift and her love life, the fixation that the world had on who this love song lyricist was going to write about next. It seems to be a recurring theme within females in the music industry— finding out their next inspiration, their next muse for the song that will ultimately end their ex-lover’s career. This curiosity hasn’t died out, and we’re already seeing exposé videos and compilations of everything that Olivia Rodrigo has said about Joshua Bassett. 

I also believe that Hollywood didn’t want to watch Taylor Swift grow up as well, seeing a country girl sing about being Fifteen to now being Hollywood’s scarlet woman. 

There is, however, a pure and yet sad element that is prevalent in both Spears and Swifts’ documentaries: their measure of success being extrinsic validation. We see in both documentaries that fame and stardom only mean that even more work was going to have to be put in to keep them there— and by this point, it has been acknowledged that this work must go into other avenues: staying in top music industries is no longer only about an artist’s raw talent but now commercialized capital such as merchandise, tour dates, management, press releases, etc. An opening monologue in Miss Americana where Swift recalls her early state of mind of work validation sets the tone for the rest of the documentary, how Swift was able to come to terms with defining success within her mental checklist rather than Grammy nominations or mass-audience appeal.

The documentaries Framing Britney and Miss Americana have allowed audiences to revisit the dark side of Hollywood and have enlightened us of the dangers the media industry can have on impressionable future artists and creatives. 

However, the cases of Spears and Swift were special in the sense that most of the ridicule received (slut-shaming and intrusive scope onto their personal lives) would not have happened if they were men. Spear’s costars Timberlake and Gosling were not held to the same scrutinization by the media as Spears was, however, the conglomerate was riding the same level of fame and success after just coming out of the Mickey Mouse Club.

Even with arenas and stadiums now being filled by history’s youngest-ever artists such as Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo, I hope to see more transparency within today’s industry show curtains and different narratives from Eilish and Rodrigo as they mature and make sense of if their booming success as teenagers shaped them for the better or worse.