From Britney Spears to Ariana Grande to Sabrina Carpenter, the picture-perfect pop princess trope is one that has recycled itself through generations; but how much have things behind the stage really changed?
It wasn’t until I was planning my Halloween costume this year that I considered the hyper sexualisation of pop culture’s female youth in the 1990s and early 2000s. I dressed as Britney Spears’ iconic ‘…Baby One More Time’ schoolgirl outfit. As I was barely buttoning the white shirt I wore to sixth form just the year before, and rolling up a pleated grey skirt, reminiscent of the one I wore to primary school, the twisted-ness of this entire concept struck me. A 16-year-old girl, costumed in a sexualised version of a school uniform catered for pre-pubescent children, dancing to her hit song for the world to see. As Spears’ first breakthrough onto the scene as the ultimate pop princess, this acts as a significant marking point for what it meant to be a pop girl, and the image that must be catered to.
Rolling Stone encapsulates this problematic dichotomy: “… [Spears] emerges, in a cloud of smoke, dressed in white stretch pants and a fringe top, her midriff bare, ready for school.”
Another key element of toxic ‘pop-princess’ culture which characterised this era was the insistence of feuds between the top pop girls. Namely, Britney and Christina, a feud that was fostered by media outlets galore. You were either Team Britney or you were Team Christina. There was simply not enough space for two main women on the scene.
The forced feuds haven’t ended by any means—consider the contemporary conflicts of Katy Perry and Taylor Swift, Nicki Minaj and Cardi B, and even Olivia Rodrigo and Sabrina Carpenter. Whilst many of these feuds are less exploited in tabloids than Britney and Christina, the social media presence of volatile fanbases forms a new culture of toxicity in wider music communities, not only in publications.
By the time the 2010s rolled around, a divide formed, between the picture perfect squeaky clean pop ‘princess’, and those who explicitly rebelled against this. We have pre-Reputation Taylor Swift, the epitome of girl-next-door, a small-town country girl turned pop megastar. There’s Ariana Grande, fresh off the Nickelodeon train, with cat-ears and high ponytails. On the flip side, however, this was also a time of meat dresses and swinging naked on wrecking-balls; a duality which unlikely would’ve been embraced in the 1990s. However, this lack of nuance in depiction of character and image has been a constant feature of female pop icons, with artists struggling to break away from the good girl/bad girl binary.
Today, pop girls are still under intense amounts of public scrutiny.
“How can these girls tour, write, perform, interview, sleep, eat and workout? And how can they do all and lead a team and be a boss and pay people and be like f*cking so politically educated?”, said Chappell Roan on the podcast Call her Daddy earlier this year.
From Sabrina Carpenter getting backlash for wearing a tutu in a Catholic Church, to Chappell Roan distancing herself from political responsibility, pressure on these women to be perfect political role models is unabating. But are we really asking too much? Have we always asked too much of our so-called pop princesses?
Illustration by Erika Bunjevac.