Like thousands of other college women, at 8:55 on Sunday night, I was crammed into a dorm room with my girlfriends, anxiously awaiting the opening act of the MTV Video Music Awards. I stopped caring about MTV or their stupid awards show years ago, but this year would be different. America's favorite trainwreck, Britney Spears, would be performing for the first time since she fell from grace, married trashbag Kevin Federline, spit out two kids in two years, stopped wearing underwear and shoes, went on a diet of Cheeto's, vodka and cigarettes and limited her bathing to once a week. Would she make a triumphant comeback or would she fall flat on her face? Either way, we knew it would be incredibly entertaining.
When the camera panned to Britney at 9:01, we all gasped. And then a funny thing happened. One of my friends said, "Oh my god, she looks so fat!" A few people murmured in agreement. I said, "She's lost so much weight recently, she looks great! But bad choice of outfit, she should've worn a corset." Another friend said, "I don't care what you guys think, I'd die to have her body." There we were, six self-identified feminists from a progressive women's college, dissecting every aspect of a woman's body. Our biggest complaint about the performance was that she was clearly hammered and wasn't giving an ounce of effort into dancing or pretending to sing, but the discussions about her body (along with her hideous weave and ugly costume) lasted far longer.

I didn't think much of it at the time, but the next morning when I read the headlines ("Lard and Clear," "PORKY POP–TARD BORES AND JIGGLES LIKE JELL-O") and heard people around campus talking about how awful Britney looked, I started getting depressed about the whole situation. Why was Britney's weight (which, to anyone familiar with paparazzi photos from the last year, was way down) the topic everyone fixated on? By most objective standards, her body looked pretty damn good, especially for a woman who's just had two babies in the last couple of years.
Maybe it's because Britney's career has been based entirely on her status as a sex symbol, with her looks and provocative outfits, dancing and lyrics pushing her to pop stardom. We've never discussed her in terms of talent, so why change the standard by which she's judged?
It might be because many of us (particularly women my age who reached adolescence during Britney's reign) always felt that we had to look or act like her to be considered sexy or beautiful, and we're relishing the turning of the tables, now that she knows what it's like to be judged on impossible beauty standards.
Perhaps women really are just as catty and competitive as the stereotypes suggest, and we'll jump on the opportunity to bring another woman down.
I'm not really sure which of these answers is correct, but I think it's probably a mixture of the three. What upsets me most about this situation though is the hypocrisy of it all. As women, we so often complain about the double standards placed on us by society. We resent that the world judges us based on our looks and that we're compared to the perfect bodies of Hollywood starlets, who have the advantage of unlimited time and money to spend on looking good. We're aware of the sad fact that being thinner, taller and more beautiful would give us a leg up in just about every aspect of our lives, and that if we were men, things would be different.
Yet it's often women, not men, who can be found judging other based on looks, making snide remarks about another woman's body and holding all other women up to the same unrealistic standards of beauty. Laughing at Britney is one thing, but how often have you said or heard someone else say, "She really shouldn't be wearing that outfit with her body," "Looks like someone put on a few pounds this summer," or "He is way too good looking to be dating her." If we're going to rage against society for judging us based on our looks, we've got to stop judging each other, whether it's Britney or the girl next door. The concept of sisterhood is an outdated one, but I think that our society's standards for women won't begin to change until women themselves stop contributing to the putting down of other women.