Once upon a time girls hummed along to the catchy strains of Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive." Or joined Aretha, singing about "R-E-S-P-E-C-T." Turn on the radio, or television, these days and you'll hear young women singing a very different tune. In fact, chances are if you listen to any pop music station for more than an hour, your ears will be tormented by the grating Britney Spears single, "? Baby One More Time." As unbearably over-produced and juvenile as the song is, the absolute vileness of the music is probably the least disturbing part of the picture. What is more troublesome than even Britney's tarty schoolgirl costume is the two-word phrase that fills in the ellipses in the song title -- "Hit me." "Hit me baby, one more time"? The first time I forced myself to actually listen to the lyrics, I was stunned. That couldn't possibly be right, not in 1999. Not in the face of statistics demonstrating that millions of women suffer at the fists of lovers and husbands. Unfortunately, rock and roll hasn't ruined my hearing quite yet -- sure enough the buxom bit of jailbait was prancing about with a guileless look on her heavily painted face veritably begging, "Hit me baby, one more time." All my aesthetic and musical antipathy for little Britney focused into a kind of outraged disgust. A sort of boiling discontent that has yet to subside to a bitter simmer. Ordinarily I shrug off the sheer awfulness of MTV-fodder bands such as the Backstreet Boys, Brandi, Destiny's Child, etc. If kids are determined to listen to crap music, who's to interfere? But ". . . Baby One More Time" is another story all together. It is mind-boggling that any woman with an iota of self respect could stand up and sing "Hit me baby." What's next? "I deserved it, baby"? "I was asking for it, I'm sorry baby"? "Please take me back, I won't do it again, baby"? I can just see the follow-up single, "I'm black and blue, but I love you anyway, baby." It is as though society has passed through a bizarre time warp and somehow the '60s have been erased from our collective memory. Somehow the ideals of liberation, empowerment and feminine strength have been replaced with shameless self-exploitation and pandering to perceived male desires. What else could explain the hyper-popularity of Britney Spears, who through strategic use of make-up, tube tops and giggly chatter manages to never appear marginally intelligent? Of course, Britney insists that the dubious lyrics to her smash hit are quite innocent, explaining to Rolling Stone magazine that "it doesn't mean physically hit me -- it means just give me a sign, basically. I think it's funny that people would actually think that's what it means." Perhaps I'm too old -- at 19 -- to appreciate the joke. I don't find it funny at all. I keep imagining all Britney's wide-eyed little fans, probably in pigtails, singing gleefully along with their baby-doll roll model "Hit me baby, one more time." Has anyone told these girls not to take Spears' words literally? Has anyone told them that you don't have to say "hit me" to get attention? That you can stand up and demand some "R-E-S-P-E-C-T" instead? I have a sneaking suspicion that the answer is no. Today's adolescents have been suckered into idolizing vacuous celebrities neither older nor wiser than themselves. Instead of looking up to adults, and hearing messages promoting intellect and independence, girls are following in the footsteps of other girls -- the immature leading the inexperienced. And not in terribly positive directions, either. The message of Britney Spears and all her ilk is simple: be cute, guileless, compliant and happy-looking and people will like you. Which is, of course, all that matters. Who needs to be strong, smart, or willful when being a sexpot and/or a doormat will make you much more popular? One can only hope that Britney and the cult of the teenage trollop will fade, as fads are mercifully prone to do. And personally, I hope that years from now, after the strains of ". . . Baby One More Time" have disappeared into musical oblivion, a new generation of girls will have traded self-abnegation for self-celebration, and those damn schoolgirl outfits for boots that are made for walking.
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