April 2nd, 2001 As the Editor in Chief, it's important to me to keep my staff alert, mentally agile, and able to nimbly banter about current events at the fund raisers and cocktail parties that we don't get invited to. To this end, I sometimes send out surprise questions to the team to find out where they stand on the staircase of media savvy. Invariably, misinformer places somewhere on the graph of social awareness between "guy who wipes the tables at Denny's" and "bowl of cinnamon oatmeal." This week's question was simple. Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera: Who do you like better, and why? The answers I got ranged from "There's a difference? They're like clones of each other," to "Well, I think Britney would suck a meaner dick, and my dick is mean enough to put Stalin to shame." After banging my head into the Marcus' head shaped dent in the wall of my office, I sat down and wrote up this guide for the staff's future guidance. This will go in the misinformer reference binder that I'm putting together, on the page right after "10 Reasons You Can't Touch Yourself in Public." At the end of the lesson is a quiz, so pay attention. Know Your Teen Queens: A field guide to Britney and Christina By Marcus #1: Understanding Media Clichés The press loves to think that they're clever. They're not. If they were so damn clever, they'd have their own late night talk show. Entertainment Weekly is the worst offender, cramming more puns into each and every issue than Soupy Sales packed into the entirety of the 1960s. "Rome If You Want To: Russell crows for Gladiator Oscar." But I digress. A technician repairs a blown servo motor in Christina's abdomen. Fortunately for you, the media's empty wit provides you with the first and easiest line of defense in determining if the nubile young popstar glaring at you from that Rolling Stone cover is Britney or Christina. The rules are simple. Any headline in any venue featuring the words "what a girl wants" or "genie in a bottle" are about Christina. Period. It doesn't matter if it says "Coca-Cola lets out their own genie in a bottle with new ad campaign," or "Supreme Court rules that what a girl wants is the freedom to choose," if you read those words, you're in Christina's world. The same rules apply to Britney, but are employed with far less precision by sloppy copy editors. If you see a teenage girl surrounded by any three or more words from the phrase "oops, I did it again," you've probably got yourself a big bunch of Britney. For example, two AP wires that are guaranteed to be about Britney Spears are: "Oops! She did it again! Pop star shows nip at the Grammys," or "It looks bleak for peace, as Middle East talks collapse again. Oops!" I know that one's hard, but don't let it spook you. If you see anything, ANYTHING, containing the phrase "baby, one more time," be it the side of a Virgin Megastore or an anti-pregnancy ad campaign, you're seeing Spears. To help you remember all of this, I've come up with a simple mnemonic device. It's like how you learned "Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally" in algebra class to help you remember what to say when senile old Aunt Sally busted out a big wet fart in front of your friends. Commit this to memory, and you'll be ready next time you're questioned about this week's Teen People in the grocery checkout lane: Wide Asses Grow Within Internet Cafes, But Only Men Tinkle In Bathrobes. ("What A Girl Wants" Is Christina, "Baby One More Time" Is Britney.) #2: Tits and Abs Rule #1 only gets you so far. Sometimes Britney and Christina are on television, or t-shirts or in fast moving convertibles screaming some nonsense about calling the police, and you don't have the luxury of a caption under their pearly grin to guide you to identifying them. Quick, look at these pictures! What do you see?! That's right. Skin. It doesn't matter if they're doing a photo shoot on a glacier or from the Space Shuttle Endeavor, the two confusable chorines are always giving the camera a little flesh to share with the folks at home. The crucial difference is which flesh. Christina's midriff is like the Fonz's leather jacket, or Linus' blanket, or Robert Downey, Jr.'s crack. If you see any of these people without their "thing," you're immediately suspicious that they've been kidnapped and replaced with a pod person who didn't do their homework. Christina understands the whole concept of "if you've got it, flaunt it." She's got the kind of tummy that grown men want to spend a day licking like ice cream, and she uses it to her advantage. It's part of the whole empowering message that both little divas are sending out to young girls. The message that women are strong and able, and that sexuality can be used as a powerful tool and weapon to achieve your goals. Of course, if you're a young ugly girl, well, you're pretty much fucked. Better get used to getting somebody coffee and picking up dry cleaning, Rover. Apparently nobody ever told Britney the old adage, "If it ain't broke, don't surgically insert bags of silicon in it." Remember back in the old days? Back in the late 90s, when Britney was just a pretty teenage girl, before she sold a million albums and went all brick house on us? Back when she really was sweet, and... well... okay, I'll go into that later. Unlike Christina, who said "So guys like to look at my navel? Weird! Well, okay then, let's get rid of all of the bottoms of my shirts," Britney said, "So guys like my breasts? Well then, logic would dictate that if they were FOUR TIMES this size, they would LOVE my breasts! They would CHEW OFF their own HANDS just to get a chance to SMELL them! HA hahahahaha! My mighty golden bozos and I shall rule the pop scene for generations to come. I'll crush Christina and her pathetic little belly. Somebody get Angelyne's people on the horn, we've got work to do." Before long everybody and their friend Rosy Palm are putting up "Titney Spears" web sites. The people at Entertainment Weekly are just upset Christina wasn't named "Kelly Aguilera." I've got another mnemonic for you: Spears has got the spheres that drive all the men to tears, and Aguilera's got the... bare-a... midsection-a... crap. #3: The Foreign Thing If you've come this far and you still don't know who's agent you should be sending your ransom note to, it's time to start picking up on the more subtle identity clues. Britney is America's sweetheart. Actually, Britney was America's sweetheart for two terms from 1998-2000 when she was replaced in office by Survivor's Colleen Haskell. Regardless, Britney comes from Kentwood, Louisiana, a fact that her web page flaunts as if it's a Nobel Prize for Bombassitude. Her publicity people seem to like to slip that fact into promotional materials to keep her from looking like a Hollywood brat. "Between endorsements, European tours, and the occasional invasive surgical manipulation of her own physique, Britney likes to spend time with her family in Kentwood, Louisiana. At the end of the day, Britney is just a normal, down home, middle American girl like you. If you aren't a girl, then keep in mind that being from the small town of Kentwood, Louisiana, Britney isn't just the "girl next door" type, but she was actually literally the girl next door to two different people." See? Puerto Rico. That's in a different country. Christina, on the other hand, has this whole multi-cultural thing going on. You know, I was just about to write something about how she was born in Venezuela or Chile or something, and then she immigrated to Los Angeles where she appeared on the Mickey Mouse Club and became all famous and stuff and blah blah blah blah. Instead, I decided to actually do a little research for a change, and I was shocked to discover that Christina was actually born in Staten Island and grew up in Pennsylvania. What a rip! Now I'm confused. I mean, I've been copying and pasting the word "Aguilera" this whole feature, because I'll never be able to spell it correctly. Doesn't that make her kinda foreign by default? How can Billboard's Junior Latin All Star Diva be from New Yawk? Well, let's just say this: For all intents and purposes, Christina Aguilera boldly came to this country through Ellis Island in 1984. She was on the same boat as Balki Bartokomous. Christina is a Cuban. Or an Australian. Or a Bavarian. It doesn't matter. She's the pop star equivalent of Cinco De Mayo, canals for streets, and million year old pyramids. What's important is that she ain't from around here, and she most certainly ain't from Kentwood, Louisiana. Oh get off of me, koalas aren't bears and tomatoes aren't vegetables. Nothing is as it seems. Just stay with the program, Mr. Skeptic. #4: The Ex-Files Okay, I admit, this one is kind of personal, and I wouldn't expect all of our readers to pick up on it. You misinformants, however, are beyond excuse. This is just another thing for me to add to the list in the little lockbox of my psyche that I'm gonna open on you one of these days in a teary rampage, ending in a newscaster saying "and then the crazed shooter turned the gun on himself." You guys never pay any damn attention to me, or anything I do, and I'm sick of it. For Christ's sakes people, I DATED BRITNEY FOR EIGHT MONTHS! Timb, you're the worst. We were renting the SAME HOUSE at the time! Am I invisible to you? Am I merely an obstacle in your path on your way to the Surge and Sour Cream and Vinegar chips? I mean, I know we were kind of estranged roommates back then, and we did what we could to avoid eye contact, but didn't you ever notice her playing the Super Pac Man machine or sweeping up the cigarette butts from the driveway? Even though I pretended I didn't, at least I knew when you were THERE! Gary, don't you remember when that girl and I helped you move all of your crap out of your dorm at the end of your first junior year? That was Britney. You even made a comment about what a nice name she had, and how you'd like to squeeze it firmly. I didn't know what you meant then, and I still don't, but I thought you would have made the connection. I mean, it's only been like, three years. Are you on drugs? Spunky? Two words. Figure model. So I guess this rule applies only to misinformants and other personal friends, but if you're in doubt as to whether you're dealing with Britney or Christina, think to yourself, "Is this the girl that kissed Marcus after graduation?" or "That time that my car broke down on Longboat Key, is this the girl that picked me up and brought me home?" (TIMB!), or "Does this sound like that psycho girl who wouldn't stop leaving all those desperate messages on the answering machine back at Heaving Hills Estates?" If the answer to any of these questions is "yes," then it's Britney. I've never met Christina, though I hear she's very nice. Oh, and if you're wondering, I don't usually bring all this up because it was a painful time in my life. I told Britney that she was talented enough to be a big success without getting rid of her glasses and screwing up her already beautiful body with all that plastic garbage, but she just wouldn't listen. I finally had to break up with her, and we went our separate ways. Not that I'm still bitter or anything, but I just wanted to add that Britney snores like a chainsaw and has toenails like a tree sloth. #5: Scraping the Bottom of the Barrel If you've reached step 5 and you still cant tell the difference between Britney and Christina, then I'm not sure that I can help you. Let me ask you a few baseline questions to get a feel for your abilities. In recent memory, have you been confused as to which person was your mom and which was your dad? Are you blind as a result of looking at the sun through your lunar telescope? Have you ever tried to unlock a car that you later realize is not the same make, model, or color of the car that you currently own? If you answered "yes" to all of these questions, you need not worry about differentiating between Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. You should be more concerned with figuring out which object is your underpants and which is a red hot fireplace poker. Right now you're probably wondering why there's a misinformer feature written all over your basketball. Just close your eyes and wait for somebody to come help you. I don't want you to get hurt. If you said "no" to any of the questions, then you've proven that you don't have a brain tumor that keeps you from telling random things apart from one another, and there's still hope on the songstress front. Here's what's left. Endorsements - Britney sings for Pepsi. Christina hawks Coke. All four have too much sugar and make you belch if used properly. That Wasn't Really Them - Christina didn't really do that "Will the Real Slim Shady Please Shut Up" parody. That wasn't really Britney in the mpeg movie. You know the one I'm talking about. Eyes - Christina's eyes are clear and full of innocent awe for the world around her. They've also usually got a crapload too much makeup on them. Britney's eyes have the jaded glare of a power hungry dominatrix who will do anything to get to the top. Oh, and I guess their eyes are different colors too. Music - If you can't tell them apart by now, you sure as hell aren't going to be able to tell them apart by their music. I think Christina sings in Spanish sometimes, being from Colombia and all, but besides that, you're pretty much up a creek. The Quiz Alright, I hope you got all that, because it's time for the quiz. What do you mean, "What quiz?" I told you right at the beginning. Oh for... nobody ever listens to me... Take the Quiz All content © 1999-2007 misinformer.com.   FUN FACT! Britney has a picture of Brad Pitt that she kisses every morning!