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USA Today recently named Britney Spears as “Celebrity of the Year.” If you were unsure up to this point just how awful 2007 was, this should be the last piece of evidence needed. How this decision was reached seems dubious at best and probably should be avoided at all costs. Whatever the methodology, the result is sadly spot-on, and goes to great lengths to not only summarize 2007 but the entire decade.

To really understand why 2007 was the way that it was, and why it is the year that best represents the aughts, we need to revisit the previous decade, some would say the better decade: the nineties. More specifically, we should take the Way-Back Machine to see where our “Celebrity of the Year” was so that we can better understand where she is now and by extension where we are now. If we focus primarily on mass culture, Britney Spear completely embodies what we often think of as being “the nineties” (or at least late-nineties) despite the fact that she didn’t really explode in the music industry until 1999. Because of this we have to acknowledge that cultural eras aren’t particularly concerned with the Gregorian calendar. Need proof, look at that photo of you from 1991. Those tight-rolled jeans and neon bracelets scream 80s far more than grungy 90s. More after the jump…

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