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Britney's Belly Flop

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By JOCELYN NOVECK, The Associated Press

Published: September 13, 2007

NEW YORK - The consensus is clear: Britney Spears performed like she was sloshing blindfolded through mud at MTV's Video Music Awards. No one disputes that the troubled pop princess royally mangled her much-heralded comeback.

But what about the nastiest comments of all - about her body? 'Lard and Clear,' read Monday's headline in the New York Post. 'The bulging belly she was flaunting was SO not hot,' wrote E! Online. And so on.

Was it fair? Did Spears, lest we forget a mother of two, deserve to be held up against the standard of her once fantastically toned abs, sculpted by sessions of 1,000 tummy crunches? Or was she asking for it by choosing that unforgiving black-sequined bikini?

More profoundly, in an age when skinny models and skeletal actresses are under scrutiny for the message they're sending young girls, what does it say that we're excoriating a young woman for a little thickness in her middle?

Certainly people were curious to see her. The show drew 7.1 million viewers Sunday, up 23 percent over last year's VMAs, and was the highest-rated cable program of the year among ages 12 to 34, according to Nielsen Media Research.

On the morning after what VH1 called Spears' 'already historic' performance, the blogosphere was buzzing with opinions. For every 'fat' comment, there was an impassioned retort.

'Give her a break,' wrote one blogger on Aboutthink .com. 'The girl's had two kids - I hope I'm a size 10 after having kids!'

'OK, she isn't fat,' wrote another. 'But she isn't fit enough to be wearing (or not wearing) what she is.'

No Room For Excess

For many observers, the issue was not so much the body, but the body in THAT outfit.

'In that ensemble, you just can't have an ounce of anything extra,' says Janice Min, editor of the celebrity magazine US Weekly. 'Many women wouldn't eat for days if they were wearing that.'

'Did she look better than 99 percent of women? Yes,' adds Min. 'But compared to her earlier form, she probably didn't look as good.'

Besides, Min says, 'Britney Spears has always been about the whole package. It's never been 100 percent about the talent. Is it sexist? Probably, but she's built a career on an image of sexiness.'

Talk of Spears' physique comes amid an increasingly critical focus on overly skinny actresses in Hollywood who have largely replaced supermodels as the world's fashion plates.

It's hard to pick up a celebrity magazine without a critical photo of, say, Angelina Jolie's birdlike arms. And curvy actresses are getting positive attention, from Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson of 'Dreamgirls' to Golden Globe winner America Ferrera of TV's 'Ugly Betty.'

In the fashion industry, there has been an effort to promote healthier-looking models.

Skinny Is Out This Season

'Girls aren't looking as skinny this season as they did,' says Suze Yalof Scwhartz, executive editor at large for Glamour magazine. 'There's food backstage. They're looking sexier.'

At Glamour, she noted, a model won't be featured 'if she shows too much clavicle.'

The nastier headlines about Spears are uncalled for, Schwartz says, but at the same time, 'when you walk around the stage in a black bikini in front of millions of viewers, people are going to notice.'

She adds that although Spears doesn't have the perfect body she once did, 'Most women would die for the body she has now.'

'I kind of feel bad for her,' says Shelley Wade, a disc jockey at New York City pop radio station WHTZ-FM. 'She looked really nervous. And then now, I'm looking at all these blogs this morning about how everybody thinks she's fat, and I'm like, 'What! Fat?' She wasn't fat.'

How all this will impact Spears' career and sales of her new album, only time will tell. 'I just felt like that performance was make or break for her comeback,' Wade says. 'Now ... she's just kind of put herself back in the same boat. Everybody thinks she's a train wreck.'

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