Britney V. Christina Explored
Spears’s new memoir namechecks Aguilera five times. A 30+ year on-again, off-again relationship deserves some unpacking.
The Britney Spears v. Christina Aguilera feud feels incredibly played out and yet, thanks to Spears’s new memoir, The Woman in Me (out today), the conversation is back in rotation. Exhausting? Some would say yes. I actually think the 30+ year “feud” is quite fascinating. Was it a case of the media pitting women against women? Absolutely. But was there real beef below the surface? There was!
There are five mentions of Aguilera (to my count) in Spears’s new book. Spears first mentions “a girl friend from Pennsylvania named Christina Aguilera” during their final round of Mickey Mouse Club auditions. Aguilera is mentioned again shortly thereafter when Spears recounts who she shared a dressing room with during the show. Her most complimentary, albeit diplomatic, mention comes two-thirds of the way through the book when Spears remarks, “I think a lot of people are really professional on TV, like Christina Aguilera and Gwen Stefani.”
And then there are the other two mentions — and one notable omission. Two-thirds of the way through the book, Spears takes a random swipe at Aguilera: “The tours under the conservatorship were strictly sober, so we weren’t allowed to drink. Once, I ended up with most of the same dancers as Christina Aguilera. The dancers and I met up with Christina in Los Angeles. She seemed pretty messed up. But the dancers and I ended up swimming in a beautiful pool and sitting in a jacuzzi.”
But the most pointed indication that there’s still-simmering beef comes much earlier on page 95, when Spears says the following: “While the news about me was often not all that friendly, the entertainment press was full of positive stories about Justin Timberlake and Christina Aguilera. Justin was on the cover of Rolling Stone half naked. Christina was on the cover of Blender, dressed like a madam from the Old West. They were together on the cover of Rolling Stone, him in a black tank top, looking at her with sexy eyes, her looking out at the camera, wearing a lace-up black shirt. In that story, she said she thought Justin and I should get back together, which was just confusing, giving how negative she’d been elsewhere. Seeing people I knew so intimately talk about me that way in the press stung.”
I dug up the Aguilera quote from Rolling Stone in which she’s asked who she thinks Timberlake’s ideal mate is: “Britney. He and Britney made a great couple. I’ve known the both of them since that time, and they kind of had their little crushes even back then. Britney has known him for such a long time, too — before he was Justin Timberlake, the star; when he was just Justin, the kid on the Mickey Mouse Club. I have a feeling that there’s going to be some reconciliation. I know that they talk and everything, and that it’s cool. I don’t think it’s over.”
During her discussion of the VMA kiss that same year, Spears omits Aguilera’s name, stating simply, “It got us both a lot of attention,” in reference to herself and Madonna. Though the Rolling Stone interview ruffled feathers, it was the Blender interview that same year that was the true “shots fired moment” that likely cemented the fallout of their fractured relationship. Aguilera did not hold back one bit in that 2003 interview, saying the following: “Actually, I was up for kissing Britney, but Britney wasn’t. She seemed very distant, even during rehearsals. Every time I tried to start a conversation with her — well, let’s just say she seemed nervous the whole time. I wanted to reach out to her, because I feel she needs somebody in her life right now to help guide her… I feel I’ve grown a lot this year, and we did used to be friends once, after all. She seems to me like a lost little girl, someone who desperately needs guidance. But who knows — maybe I’m not the right person to offer it. We’re very different people, aren’t we? In our world, there are different types of entertainers. You have your artists and you have your regular performers. I’m an artist, and well...”
“How do you respond to Christina, ‘cause that’s kinda like a personal pot-shot?” Spears was later asked on Total Request Live. “You know what? I don’t want to say anything about her,” Spears replied, breaking into laughter mid-sentence as the crowd cheered. Then she added, “She has an amazing voice, she’s an amazing girl, but she says some things sometimes that are just kind of rude.”
Spears again fired back in her Blender interview shortly thereafter. “A lost girl? I think it’s probably the other way around. I can’t believe she said that about me. When someone has been rude to you so many times, it’s like, ‘You know what, Christina, I’m really not about the fake anymore.'”
During a 2004 TRL appearance, Aguilera explained that she wrote to Spears about the quote: “I wrote her a letter, I just want everyone to know, regarding the Blender article. I said, ‘I didn’t stand behind the article.’ But I have yet to hear back from Miss Brit. So Britney, if you hear this, I’d like a response.”
Now, if you roll the tape back, it wasn’t always this way.
In a 1999 Insider interview, Aguilera explained, “We had a lot of fun together, me and Brit — best friends. I miss her.” “There’s no rivalry between me and Britney Spears,” Aguilera reiterated a year later on MTV. “If I’m in competition with anybody, it’s myself.” That same year, in another interview: “There’s no need for jealousy. We’re musicians and we’re out there making music and doing what we love to do…. We’re just two completely different things regardless of similarities between age and background.” And though Britney’s debut album bested Aguilera’s in sales, it was Aguilera who took home the Grammy for Best New Artist, thus further feeding the tabloid machine pitting them against one another.
But there’s one thing that’s always been true: comparisons between the two abound. “I felt sorry for her because you couldn’t read an article about [Christina] without seeing Britney Spears,” Carson Daly observed in a 2000 interview. If Aguilera wasn’t being compared to Spears in the press, she was being asked about it in interviews. This continued for years. “There’s always that comparison thing, which is really old by now; I’m just bored with the topic” Aguilera stated in 2001. The only delineation the press seemed comfortable making was that of painting Britney as the angel and Christina as the devil. In a 2018 interview with Cosmopolitan, Aguilera remarked, "I remember being hurt by these commercials on MTV, pitting Britney as the good girl and me as the bad girl.”
Then there’s a rumored run-in that the pair had with Justin Timberlake in 2003 that is believed to be the final straw for Spears. According to Daily Mail: “It was said that Spears turned up at Hollywood haunt Joseph's one night when she heard that Justin was going to be there. Desperate for a reconciliation, she marched over to the VIP area — and found her ex-boyfriend and Christina in an embrace. Spears refused to listen to the couple's explanation: that it was an innocent kiss between two old friends.”
The feud was seemingly put to bed as their careers diverged and the media’s obsession with their faux-rivalry waned. Then came June 2021. Days after Spears gave her conservatorship testimony, her first time speaking about it publicly, Aguilera broke her silence about her feelings on Spears.
“These past few days I’ve been thinking about Britney and everything she is going through,” Aguilera wrote on social media. “It is unacceptable that any woman, or human, wanting to be in control of their own destiny might not be allowed to live life as they wish. To be silenced, ignored, bullied or denied support by those ‘close’ to you is the most depleting, devastating and demeaning thing imaginable. The harmful mental and emotional damage this can take on a human spirit is nothing to be taken lightly. Every woman must have the right to her own body, her own reproductive system, her own privacy, her own space, her own healing and her own happiness. While I am not behind the closed doors of this very layered & personal yet public conversation — all I can do is share from my heart on what I’ve heard, read and seen in the media. The conviction and desperation of this plea for freedom leads me to believe that this person I once knew has been living without compassion or decency from those in control. To a woman who has worked under conditions and pressure unimaginable to most, I promise you she deserves all of the freedom possible to live her happiest life. My heart goes out to Britney. She deserves all the TRUE love and support in the world.”
But all was not well between them.
In November 2021, Spears blasted Aguilera on social media. “I love and adore everyone who supported me,” Spears wrote on Instagram. “But refusing to speak when you know the truth, is equivalent to a lie !!!! 13 years being in a corrupt abusive system yet why is it such a hard topic for people to talk about ??? I’m the one who went through it !!!! All the supporters who spoke up and supported me, thank you… yes I do matter !!!!!” This came in response to Aguilera being asked about Spears on the red carpet of the Latin Grammy Awards. Aguilera was asked by a reporter if she had been in communication with Spears following the termination of her conservatorship when her publicist interjects, “No, we’re not doing that tonight. I’m sorry.”
A particularly icky moment happened in September of last year. Spears reposted a quote that read: “I found there was only one way to look thin: hang out with fat people." In her caption, she name-dropped Aguilera’s dancers, claiming "If I had Christina Aguilera’s dancers I would have looked extremely small." She continued: “I mean why not talk about it ?? Don’t you think my confidence would have been a bit better if I could choose where I lived, ate, whom I called on the phone, dated and who was on stage with me !!! It’s hard sometimes now I see how much of my womanhood was stripped away at that time and every person sat back and didn’t say a thing !!! Anyways ... I will be here talking bout things people NEVER talked about.”
After swift backlash online, she issued an apology. “By no means was I being critical of Christina’s beautiful body, it is what it is !!! I flew to see her show once and the main thing I noticed was the difference of our people on stage !!! “By no means did I even mention Christina, look at my post !!! I was inspired by her show and she is a beautiful woman of power ... Thank you @xtina for inspiring me !!!”
That was more or less the last flare-up, with Aguilera shrewdly and diplomatically fielding questions about Spears in the interim.
Then came Spears’s memoir, which both rehashed the events of 2003/2004 and gave context to Spears’s 2021 post about Aguilera.
This brings us to the present, when just last week Aguilera appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! to talk about her upcoming Las Vegas residency. Kimmel, no stranger to probing Aguilera on the topic of Spears, took the opportunity to ask a question that, let’s be honest, many of us were wondering: “Do you think you will be in it? Has she called you and said ‘Hey, uh, head’s up!’?” Kimmel asked, referring to The Woman in Me. “Dude, I don’t know,” Aguilera responded. “Are you hoping that you’re in it?” Kimmel further prodded. Aguilera, now better media-trained, laughed along with him. “I don’t know! Am I hoping? I mean, I’m hoping that everything is all good with her and everything’s beautiful. I think the future should be celebrated.”
Look, I don’t blame Jimmy Kimmel for stirring the pot. It’s his job! In fact, I’m impressed that he was able to get the question over the line, as I imagine there’s a strict “do not ask” around anything Britney-related when it comes to Christina. I realize my Instagram caption (“He tried it. She didn’t take the bait.”) might make it seem like he was wrong to have tried it, but any good touchdown needs a quarterback to help get the ball over the line. And look, Spears’s mentions of Aguilera in her book do indicate that there’s clearly something there.
Like the 2000 VMAs, which saw Britney and Christina presenting an award side by side, I think many (myself among them) desperately want a reconciliation in the hope that these two can maximize the power of their joint slay. Their decades-long history as both friends and enemies, their initially similar paths within the industry, the litany of comparisons between them — there’s just so much to this story, and yet a chapter that feels largely unwritten. It’s clear from what Britney just published that the pain still stings. One can understand why forgiveness might be difficult given everything Spears has gone through. It’s also impossible to know everything that went on behind the scenes in a 30+ year on-again-but-mostly-off-again friendship. Still, I can’t help but hold out hope that one day these two will reconcile, do an album of duets, tour together and move into a shared compound together that’s frequented by Mandy Moore and Jessica Simpson for jam sessions. Hey, a boy can dream!