Book Club: Jeff Weiss’s Waiting for Britney Spears

Over a thousand people were dying a day in the U.S., and our eyes were still glued to Britney. My wife was scrolling through Instagram at my parents’ house, where we were quarantined for a month in the insular summer of 2020. She gasped landing on a picture of the 2000s “princess of pop,” hair disheveled with an almost sinister stare directly into the camera. She noticed a number of concerned comments, looked back into Britney’s knowing eyes, and noticed that her eyelashes appeared to spell out the numerals “911.” She projected the image onto my family’s TV, where my mom, dad, sister, and brother-in-law all weighed in on the viral-bound debate over what, if anything, Britney was trying to communicate.