Even if Ryan Reynolds insisted upon wielding NSYNC’s “Bye Bye Bye” (and its signature choreo) as the song for the opening scene of Deadpool and Wolverine, Blake Lively (a.k.a. Mrs. Reynolds) has seen fit to remind people that her millennial-oriented loyalties are forever with Britney Spears. Even when she “lightly” shades Lively for pulling an Ambular in Clueless by “going through her laundry.” Indeed, lately, and at their own peril, millennial women have taken a shine to paying major homage to one, Miss Spears.
It started earlier this summer with Halsey releasing what amounted to a bad cover version of Spears’ 2000 hit, “Lucky.” Although Halsey assured fans that she, of course, got Spears’ permission to use the song and “pay homage” to it with an accompanying video, Spears posted a rather unfavorable take on the single by saying, “For obvious reasons I’m very upset about the Halsey video. I feel harassed, violated and bullied. I didn’t know an artist like her and someone I looked up to and admired would illustrate me in such an ignorant way by tailoring me as a superficial pop star with no heart or concern at all. I have my own health problems which is why I took down my IG account yesterday. I will definitely be putting it back up to show I CARE. I’m speaking with my lawyers today to see what can be done on this matter. It feels illegal and downright cruel.”
Soon after, the post was deleted and replaced by Spears’ insistence that the condemnation was merely “fake news !!! That was not me on my phone !!! I love Halsey and that’s why I deleted it 🌹 !!!” Whether or not Spears’ phone was possessed by another person or another one of Spears’ personalities is at one’s discretion. However, based on this other recent “emotional flare-up” on Spears’ part, it appears as though she may very well have been the true culprit behind the Halsey shade. This based on the fact that, after Blake Lively showed up to the August 6th premiere of It Ends With Us wearing the Versace butterfly dress that Spears famously sported in 2002, Spears felt obliged to respond “indirectly” by, days later, posting a video of herself wearing a riff on the same dress (albeit shorter and differently cut) with the caption, “UPDATED VERSION OF MY 2002 VERSACE DRESS 👗 !!! I LIKE IT WAY BETTER. SHOWS MY LEGS !!! 💅🏻👗🌷🌷.” She then included the post-script, “I’m no @blakelively but I like it.”
Of course, while some might try to insist Spears meant “no shade,” her dick-swinging behavior of late was on-brand for her post-conservatorship, no-fucks-given vibe. (Besides that, why choose to make mention of the same dress and assert her dominance over it at the exact moment after Lively chose to wear it?) In point of fact, Spears has come a long way from being self-effacing and unwilling to take credit for all that she’s done for and contributed to music and pop culture, suddenly suffering no fools when it comes to “tributes.” Regardless of how effusive they might be. This even includes Lively’s gushing Instagram story post directed at Spears upon donning the dress: “Today’s mood. The ultimate queen who made us all want to sparkle and write and share our stories. Britney, us millennials all have a story of a moment, or of years that you made us want to shine and inspire awe, with strength, and joy and immensely hard work. Thank you for your example and your contribution to women telling their stories. So excited about your biopic and all you have to come.” Naturally, this sort of “love letter” to another “stronger than yesterday” woman is befitting of somebody who is known, apparently, as a “crown straightener” a.k.a. “a woman going around straightening all the women’s crowns around her.”
At the premiere itself, Lively continued to rave, “It’s Britney’s actual dress. It should be in the Smithsonian or the Met [instead, it was available via Tab Vintage]. But it’s on me. I feel so lucky.” Ah, that word—which also serves as the song title that Halsey recently “borrowed.” So yes, it would appear that the fellow millennial women showing Spears so much love of late aren’t exactly getting it in return in quite the same maudlin way, with Lively also noting at the premiere, “This dress meant so much to me because of what she meant to me.” Maybe, in this case, Spears was offended by use of the past tense, with Lively continuing, “Like, she was just somebody who represented, like, love and beauty and youth and hard work and determination and strength, and she was in touch with her sexuality and her delicacy and she just sort of represented it all.” To which one must ask: then what does she represent in the present tense?
During what some would like to call her “heyday” (a generally off-putting word used to signify that one’s prime is over), Spears wore the dress to Versace’s presentation of the 2003 women’s spring/summer collection in October of 2002, shortly after her very public breakup with Justin Timberlake—the one that, as she described it, turned her from a pop princess into a “harlot who’d broken the heart of America’s golden boy.” This stated in her memoir The Woman In Me. A book that also takes pause to mention what the Versace butterfly dress and the trip to Milan that year meant to her, with Spears stating, “That trip invigorated me—it reminded me that there was still fun to be had in the world. That party was really the first thing I did to put myself out there after the breakup with Justin—on my own, innocent.” A far cry from her declaration of being “not that innocent” in 2000. In any case, perhaps Lively choosing to home in on that particular aspect of her sartorial iconography felt, somehow, like an invasion of what the form-fitting gown signified to her: a newfound liberty—emerging from a chrysalis after being imprisoned in bubblegum pop/Timberlake land.
At the It Ends With Us premiere, Lively also mentioned, “When this dress was available I was like, ‘Yes, I need it!’ I’ve had it for almost a year now and I’ve been saving it for this.” Not just because one of Spears’ songs appears on the soundtrack, but because it does have a certain “floral-themed” quality to it that correlates with Lively’s flower shop-owning character, Lily Bloom. And while a few might question the relevance of the movie using Spears’ 2003 single, “Everytime,” during the ending credits of the film (performed, instead, by Ethel Cain), any millennial girl can tell you that the song was aimed at Timberlake. At the time when their relationship reigned supreme in the hearts and minds of America, the aftermath of that relationship proved just how, that’s right, toxic (to name another Britney single) the dynamic actually was. Much the same as Lily and Ryle’s (Justin Baldoni) in the movie. Or Lively and Justin Baldoni’s behind the scenes of making it.
In any event, like Halsey, Lively wasn’t deterred from continuing to express her love for Spears even after the “misunderstanding,” “hearting” Spears’ post about the updated version of her dress (the caption, in typical Spears style, was later deleted). A supportive move (in the wake of having cold water dumped on her enthusiasm) that was almost as uncaring and unbothered as Halsey saying, after Spears (or her “handler”) publicly declaring her disdain for “Lucky” 2.0, “I love Britney!!!! I always have and always will[,] you were the first person who ever made me realize what it means to feel inspired. And you continue to inspire me every day.”
Because, no matter what Spears tries to do to deter her original millennial fanbase, there is, evidently, no behavior she can engage in that would ever turn them away from her often uncouth responses to their expressions of love. Besides, when you’ve got a territorial dick to swing, you’ve got to swing it.
