Beyond Britney

Teen star Avril Lavigne, whose trademark is a necktie (sometimes a very conservative, Republican-type rep tie), rocks the cover of the current YM. A few generations post-Madonna, she's a correction to the current crop of implanted, hair-extended clones in hussywear. "We love that Avril refuses to wear cheesy midriff-baring tops and display butt cleavage!'' declares the YM editor's letter. A diminutive skateboarding, former hockey-playing Canadian, Avril plays guitar, writes her own songs, yells, doesn't lip sync, jumps around the stage with her band and doesn't follow choreographed steps. She usually wears the tie over a tank top (also known as a wife beater) with camouflage cargo pants, accessorizing with studded leather wrist bracelets.It's a gender-blender look that is equal parts muscle, corporate and military-buildup—street punk with a tiny bit of Dilbert. Add a bit of Annie Hall and Frank Sinatra, tie loosened, singing "My Way," for good measure. "I won't wear skanky clothes that show my booty, my belly or my boobs,'' she tells YM. "If I were selling my body, I would wear that stuff, but I'm selling my music.'' In short, being anti-booty, she's the anti-Britney."Thong feminism"—comedian Jan eane Garofalo's term for the idea that dressing scantily and acting like a pole dancer is empowering—is beginning to snap (dating shows with women in hot tubs aside). "It's less conventional, less proc essed, less feminized," says Teen People editor Barbara O'Dair of the images being adopted by a new breed of teen stars. "Young women feel more comfortable being powerful and assertive than they used to." The new bad girl? O'Dair cites the recent Levi's spot from Bartle Bogle Hegarty in which a young woman boldly steals her car back from a chop shop. And with "cool" represented by women as hard to pigeonhole as Pink and Kelly Os bourne, there's no one image of femininity. The only constant is a clear-eyed, intelligent self-possession.After ushering in every manner of '80s- and '90s-style aggressive sexuality, including bomber bras, crotch-grabbing, cross-dressing and just plain posing nakey, Madonna has her own new mishmash look. The devoted mom of two appears on the cover of Vanity Fair in a leather shirt and lace-up skirt, her hair in tight blonde curls underneath a wacky car-hop cap. Having exhausted other looks and decades, the ex-Material Girl channels a Marlene Diet rich, Berlin-between-wars-scenario. Maybe it was the unlikely combo of the wash-and-set style hair with the ice-blue gaze, but one wag thought she looks like Golden Girl Betty White. I could see another Bette: Midler in her '70s "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B" period, combined with Carol Lombard during her USO days. Madge is still a step ahead of the culture: This Madame War Bonds in leather hit newsstands just as we're considering attacking Iraq! More effective than a speech in front of the U.N., she's an army of one, and all she needs to do is salute.That's the beauty of constant self-reinvention: One can always up date and clear the slate. But everything has sped up since her days of "Like a Virgin." As if with time-lapse photography, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera have each lived several major soft-porn career makeovers in front of our eyes, simply in aging from 17 to 21. (Are porn years like dog years?) Most recently Britney showed up at the MTV Video Music Awards as Bondage Barbie; Christina, in micro mini, tied a scarf around her breasts, an unconscious homage to J-Lo's Ver sace number and Spears' live-snake act from previous award shows. As former Disney workhorses, do they see this as control, rebellion, power? It's not that Avril's style means the end to belly buttons as we know them. And, of course, we've seen this kind of rocker rebellion before, from Joan Jett to Alanis Morissette. But the new generation of commercial female art ists is more varied than ever before, says Roll ing Stone music editor Joe Levy. "This is a transitional time, the twilight of teen pop. All the big breakthroughs in the last two years have been women artists," he says, mentioning Norah Jones, Ashanti, Alicia Keys, Nelly Furtado and Pink. "Young women have the big gest commercial impact on the industry. "What all these women have in common," Levy adds, "is that they participate in the writing of their own songs." Why this outpouring of female talent? "The teen girl audience does not find itself adequately represented in the rest of the culture," he says, pointing out that there is no female equivalent to Tom Green or Johnny "Jack Ass'' Knox ville (thank God).Pink, an R&B singer and rapper, wears her low-rise pants with a B-boy swagger—differently than Britney. "If she doesn't break all the rules," says Levy, "she at least bends them." Also in that vein: Kelly Os bourne. "[She] is a girlie-girl, but not typically,'' says O'Dair. "She is not the shape of a model and wears funny lipstick and exaggerated hair."Certainly, Osbourne defies most standards. She recently appeared in a print ad for Candie's shoes, a brand that traditionally has relied on bad-girl, power-slut-itude. In a pearl tie necklace, untied bowling-style shoes, black capris and a tailored jacket the same bright pink as her hair, Osbourne looks airbrushed and a bit bewildered, like her dad—she's the embodiment of a Japanese anime character. And in her very strangeness, she seems to purify the brand. This tension between the good and the badass, the rough and the tender, the tough tomboy and the girlie girl is what's keeping the flames of S&M alive in mainstream fashion, movies and advertising. (Why slog away at issues of gender equality when it's so much easier to be master and slave?) Secretary, a film billed as an "S&M office ro mance," opens this week. The passion starts when a boss spanks his secretary for making spelling errors. Similarly in fashion, Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent and Alexander Mc Queen are all showing luxe clothing with elaborate lacing and corsetry-style details, and this bondage motif is especially true of this year's boots and shoes. (I imagine going into Gucci in the near future and finding separate departments for evening bondage, morning stiletto play and light afternoon humiliationwear.)What makes this trend exciting commercially (when little else is selling) is the idea that what is firmly bound can be undone. And that's exactly true of the image pendulum—tight, loose, tight, loose—in cycling through from Britney to Avril. What teen girls are slowly learning, we hope, is that it is possible to combine both ends of the spectrum: golden girl and she-bitch commando.

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Beyond Britney

Barbara Lippert

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Barbara Lippert