On Tuesday, our favorite childhood icon and the patron saint of belly button piercings, one Miss Britney Spears, announced that she will be the new spokesmodel for Kenzo. If you’re unfamiliar with the Kenzo fashion label, that’s totally fair, because they appear to be about as well known as my college Thought Catalog account. I’m glad she’s doing so well! Britney Spears will be the new face of Kenzo’s La Collection Memento N°2 line—and by “new face” I mean she quite literally has an entirely new face. I know, I know. I’m just as outraged as you are by the accusation. Britney Lynn Spears, the girl who once walked barefoot into a truck stop bathroom, would never EVER be anything less than her ratchet self. I mean, if pop super-stardom couldn’t get her to stop shopping at a Louisiana Walmart for awards season, then nothing could. I thought all of this until fans took to Twitter to announce their support for Brit’s new business venture and I actually saw the face Kenzo was claiming to be Britney’s. In fact, here’s a literal reenactment of my reaction upon seeing the Kenzo ad for the first time:
WORLD: OMFG Britney has a new clothing line!!!
ME: *takes hard look at ad*
ALSO ME:
So here’s a new conspiracy theory to start your weekend off right: did Britney Spears get an entirely new face? Or did some 17-year-old Instagram thot-turned-Kenzo-marketing-intern just not recognize the 90s icon for who she really was and decided to Photoshop the shit out of her? As someone who takes any and all Britney Spears news v v seriously (they don’t call me It’s Britney, Betch for nothing), I’d say the evidence is very circumstantial quite damning. So let’s take a closer look at that evidence, shall we?
Exhibit A
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bgl1QzqB3Fq/?taken-by=kenzo
Seriously. She’s, like, fucking unrecognizable. This looks less like Britney Spears and more like a long-lost Wirkus triplet. Am I really to believe that this is the same person who inspired millions of girls all over America to defile their navels and dress up as naughty school girls for every Halloween, mixer, and frat party of their adolescent lives?? And for those of you who are clinging to the belief that Britney Spears—the girl for whom autotune was literally created—would never be anything other than her real, authentic self, let’s just look at the side-by-side for a moment:
Exhibit B
The image on the right is taken from Britney’s campaign with Kenzo, while the image on the left is from Britney’s own Instagram, taken last December. I’m not going to say which is which, but one side looks like Britney Spears, and one side looks like a girl who answered a casting call for Go Go Dancer #2 in next week’s episode of Law & Order: SVU. And if you’re thinking to yourself, “well maybe it’s not really Britney. Maybe she was too busy performing in Vegas for European men who wear bedazzled jeans and like to vacation in Sin City her fans.” To which I would just like to say, please turn your attention to exhibit C.
Exhibit C
https://www.instagram.com/p/BgjKFJfFQb_/?taken-by=britneyspears
For those of you who don’t recognize that symbol just above Britney’s ass, that’s what we children of the 90s refer to as a “tramp stamp” which used to be the ways girls expressed their abandonment issues before they added cameras to cell phones. The more you know. And no one was more revered for her tramp stamp then Little Miss “Oops I Did It Again” Britney Spears. This is definitive proof that the woman in the photo is, in fact, Britney—even if her face more closely resembles the woman ahead of me in line at Starbucks this morning than her own.
So there you have it. Whether the people at Kenzo are better Photoshoppers than the girl who runs Kylie Jenner’s Instagram account or she just got an entirely new face for the campaign is unclear. Betches is still waiting to hear from Brit’s PR person for commentary. And by “still waiting to hear from” I mean I just wrote this article and am hoping I don’t get sued by her legal team. Obviously.
Images: Giphy (1); @kenzo / Instagram (2); @britneyspears /Instagram (2)
