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Hey internet! This is kind of exciting. I honestly feel like I’m speaking into the void, but that’s totally fine for now. I decided to create a blog because 1) It’s super easy thanks to WordPress and 2) I’ve gotta write more if I’m going to get better. After years of lengthy English papers with snobby academic diction, I feel very ready to write about, well, what ever I want!

Shoutout to Dr. Coleman, my high school journalism teacher, who encouraged me to start this blog. I have to say, I’m seriously considering journalism at this point. These days, I’ve been dreaming of a career as a writer for a music publication (Pitchfork staff, if you’re listening, please take me; I will go on coffee runs everyday). Listening to and creating music is

A surge of attention on Britney Spears following the “Free Britney” documentary by The New York Times has forced America to examine her unfair treatment by the public, specifically the press. Yes, it’s a heartbreaking tale about the consequences of childhood fame, but there is more to her meteoric collapse that feels like a punch to the gut. Spears is a woman, and we’ve heard this story before.

Courtney Love, an alternative vocalist of the grunge movement, rose to fame with Hole, a ‘90s rock band. Any Gen Xer can remember when she became a true fixture of the public eye after her marriage to America’s beloved Nirvana member Kurt Cobain. Suddenly, Love was placed under a microscope. Her loud, unapologetic demeanor garnered more than a little backlash. According to a 1994 article in Rolling Stone magazine, Love was “skewered as a drug-fueled opportunist who married into celebrity.” When the couple’s relationship deteriorated in 1994 because of their shared substance abuse issues, Cobain shot himself in his Seattle home. He had been battling addiction and mounting anxiety about Nirvana’s increased popularity.

Love’s troubles with public image worsened after Cobain’s death. Many Nirvana fans still proclaim that she is a manipulative sociopath, and, most scathing, that she killed Cobain. But why were they so quick to paint her as unhinged and duplicitous rather than simply a flawed figure like her late husband? She continued to tour shortly after his death, and her lack of visible grief in public was cited as evidence that she never cared about him. But it should be a given that everyone copes with loss in different ways. Courtney Love put one foot in front of the other, and can we blame her for that?

Britney Spears was similarly shrouded with speculation and conspiracy at the height of her career. When Justin Timberlake announced that she cheated on him, the nation didn’t think twice before believing his accusation and charging her with promiscuity. Spears was flocked by the tabloids and relentless, profit-seeking paparazzi. When she screamed out in emotional pain, head shaved and umbrella in hand, we laughed in her face. Like Courtney Love, Britney Spears was seen as undeserving of pity because she was ‘unhinged.’ Notice that the public shunnings of these stars took place closely after they lost their male partners. Labeling an independent woman as duplicitous or mentally unstable is nothing new; the only thing we have done away with is the Scarlet Letter itself. 

But the worst has yet to come. The two singers nursed infants during their respective tussles with the public, and their smearing by the media focused heavily on their parenting skills. In a 1995 interview with Barbara Walters, Courtney Love was grilled about her ability to care for Frances Bean, her three year-old daughter. Walters coldly asked, “Ever do drugs in front of your child?” before berating her with questions to determine if she was an unfit mother. Would Cobain have been treated this way if he was placed in the same position? Britney Spears received similar attention after giving birth, as outlets fixated on her alleged incompetence. Flashy tabloid covers with “Bad Mom!” and “Selfish Britney!” in bold letters lined the aisles of every grocery store. It was none of our business.

I felt an odd sense of déjà vu after stumbling across the Walters interview. Shortly after Spears’ breakup with Justin Timberlake and prior to her pregnancy, she was interviewed on camera by Diane Sawyer, who claimed that Spears had “upset a lot of mothers in this country.” She fidgeted in a plush brown armchair as Sawyer icily pointed out her “betrayal” of Timberlake. Sawyer promptly questioned her virginity and inappropriate attire.

Love will never be your perfect widow, and Spears did not ask to be a role model for America’s youth. It is 2021, a year of reckoning with our past after COVID-19 has slowed our ability to move forward. Things are changing, but stigmas still exist surrounding female sexuality, agency, and motherhood. Courtney Love expressed concern for Britney’s wellbeing under her conservatorship in February. It’s possible that she sees a bit of herself in the 39 year-old mother of two.

I

She drums the kitchen table with chapped fingertips, knees pressed flush against sturdy mahogany legs; today it sounds hollow. Her steady motions have borne smooth ridges into the surface, notches that she feels strangely proud of. The irregular slopes, scooping hills drained of pigmentation, will be evidence that she was there after all. 

She tilts her chin back to see what lies above her head. The room is a winding conch shell, getting smaller and smaller as it stretches higher, tightly coiling until the very tip, where it is thin as a pin. Her legs ache, pleading to be stretched, but there is no room in this space. No space in this room. Its walls feel like chalk, instruments of that horrible squeaking noise when her boots bite into the corners. They unleash plumes of white smoke. 

The cacophony of nails has pattered on for what seems like ages, something she’s still never gotten used to. It’s getting too loud now. Out of instinct, her palms fly to her ears, only causing the beating of her pulse to crescendo. She is alive. The table drumming does not stop: Tap tap tap. The waiting game, the echoing of her percussive limbs, the thoughts that have no substance. Has it always been this bothersome? Perhaps it’s because she’s thinking about it. She thinks too much. 

Wait. Has that crack always been there? At first it looks like a single dark hair plastered to the wall, but then she sees roundness, something shiny. A silver bubble bound by surface tension bulges from the little wall canyon. It expands. The liquid pops and splashes and flows into the shell.

II

He has become a shell. There’s nothing else to it, he decides. He does not have a house, so he is his own house; his house his shell, his shell his body. The open plains reflect a quiet sheen that cuts into him with the precision of a dart. And the floor is liquid metal, perfectly still, a lustrous plate that his feet can trod on without disturbing the flatness. Wind whistling past his cheek, he whispers to it his wish: He wants something to hold onto, something that won’t slip away. 

He grimaces. His jacket has gripped the nape of his neck like sandpaper. It’s made of steel, freezing with such intensity that it melts to his feet in a messy puddle on the floor. And now it has become the floor. And now in its smoothness it is not messy anymore. He’s glad. 

Then he catches a glimpse of himself in his polished shoes, in the mirror like hills and the glassy clouds that look ripe enough to harvest and eat, a crunchy fruit. It’s soft, his face. Like nothing he has ever seen before, springing to his touch and growing flush as . . . well, he’s never seen such a color. Ten feet away there is a mound protruding from the earth, encased in a patina of silver. A pea-sized hole in the side of this hill peaks his curiosity, and he peers inside. It’s a pale cave, where drops of his jacket have begun to meet the calcified interior. Strange.

“Hi,” he says. She is observing the rising tide of liquid mercury when she hears his voice. It’s gushing into the shell and she splashes her feet around, feeling it seep into her socks. They lock eyes. 

“Hey,” she replies. “Who are you?”

“I’m not sure.” He tugs at his collar. “What do you see in there?” She’s not sure why she shifts her gaze up to the swirl above her head. She could have told him what it looks like with her eyes closed.

“A cone. Like a snake that has stacked his own body to get a better view.” He pictures a snake zig-zagged like a chubby staircase. That’s probably not right, he thinks. They both know that he’ll never witness what she has described because the hole is tiny and his view is limited to the sight of her face. She gestures towards the substance that has progressed to her knees, lapping softly. “What’s out there? Is it more of this stuff?” 

“Yeah. It doesn’t move like that though.” A comfortable silence sets in for a minute. He leans his elbows on the shell’s exterior and sighs. She knits her eyebrows, still observing the substance rise.

“It’s not easy, huh?” They smile together. It’s past her chin now, sluicing around and painting the curved walls into a funhouse mirror. He nods, “Yeah.”

My eyes flit open slowly. It’s dark, but I can see the shadows of my ceiling fan, soft stripes dancing across my walls. It’s 6:00 am and the sun is just about to rise. Another dreamless night. A yawn and a huge breath in. I peel the covers off, wincing because the heat wasn’t on last night. The floor sends a wave of shivers rushing from my toes to my chest. Today I’ll make tea before I trek to school. My mug cradles two satchels of chamomile, and they are soon submerged by scalding liquid. A golden puff fills the water, and I set it down. Reaching for the sugar, my hand stops midair. The silver of the sugar cap gleams vehemently, and for a second my reflection looks foreign, staring back at me. I blink. Jesus, do I look tired. I leave the house but forget to put the sugar back. It stays on the wooden table, still as ice.