Womanizer… or Man-Eater?

Britney Spear's latest music video focuses more on showing off the Pop Princess's hot new body than confronting a cheating boyfriend.


The video for Spears's latest hit, “Womanizer,” is laden with sexual images ranging from a naked Spears lying in a sauna to Spears driving a cab while wearing a low-cut shirt.  Spears and her producer blatantly flash her reslenderized figure in nude scenes throughout the video, currently ranked No. 1 on the Billboard charts.  


The lyrics imply that men can no longer get away with cheating because Spears and all the other girls who've been cheated on are on to them and their unfaithful ways.  However, the message of the song has nothing to do with the video, which depicts Spears as an overtly sexual female aggressively pouncing on her “cheating man” in a bedroom, an office, a kitchen and the back seat of a cab.


Is this the image of a womanizer… or a manipulating woman who uses her body to get what she wants?


The video was considered “a little too hot for ABC, which premiered the clip on 20/20 on Friday night (October 10),” according to MTV.com writers Jocelyn Vena and Jem Asward.


Spears says “Womanizer” is “a girl anthem,” according to a September 26 interview with a New York radio station.  Most would agree that a song encouraging women to stand up for themselves delivers a noble message. But when that message, likely aimed at pre-teens, gets distorted into a parade of flesh scenes, the nobility disappears. 

 

Erin Brown is an intern at the Culture and Media Institute, a division of the Media Research Center.