Barbara Lippert's Critique

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Back in the ’80s, Jovan Musk asked, “What is sexy?” The response was literal: pictures of skin on skin, set to throbbing music.

Last month, Pepsi answered the same question in a breakout production number starring Britney Spears. The spot could have come off the same conveyor belt used in the ad. It mirrored the Britney persona—manufactured, eye-pleasing and empty. True to form, she and Pepsi have it both ways. Head shots of Britney as a sweet-faced, smiling ingénue intercut with major moments of midriff and crotch bumping.

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