As Framing Britney Spears debuts in India on Discovery+, examining the era of so-called 'train wrecks' with renewed accountability

In 2007, Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton were apparently fueling enough of a debate among parents about children and “values” for Newsweek to publish a cover story titled The Girls Gone Wild Effect. At the same time, a litany of other female celebrities of the ’90s and aughts are being — or perhaps ought to be — reexamined: Lohan, now out of the spotlight and living in Dubai, where for the first time in her life, she has said, she feels safe; Hilton, who in a 2020 documentary detailed emotional and physical abuse she suffered as a teenager; Janet Jackson, who was blacklisted after the 2004 Super Bowl “wardrobe malfunction” that left her breast exposed, while the man who exposed it, Justin Timberlake, went on to further fame. While white women were scrutinised on the covers of magazines, Black artists were told, as Beyoncé was, that they’d never get covers at all — “because Black people did not sell.” A still from Framing Britney Spears – Behind the scenes during the shoot for the “Lucky” music video in 2000. “You’re a level-headed girl,” she told her back then, “and I hope you stay that way.” ‘We’re All Collateral Damage’ In recent years, there have been Hollywood reappraisals of Anita Hill, a law professor who now leads the Hollywood Commission on sexual harassment, decades after her own high-profile case was dismissed; Tonya Harding, the former Olympic figure skater whose rivalry with Nancy Kerrigan and its violent climax was cast against a story of childhood abuse; and Lorena Bobbitt, whose physical harm of her husband has been reframed in the context of years of domestic abuse.