Filed under: Britney Spears

Britney Spears, who was once featured on Rolling Stone as a half-naked teenager, is on the cover yet again — only this time, it’s her mental issues that have been laid bare.

Wow, I should write for Dateline. Couldn’t you hear Ann Curry saying that?

Anyway, back to Britney. The article talks about — what else? — Britney’s fall from pop princess to hot mess. To whet our insatiable appetite, Rolling Stone has posted an excerpt from the article about her recent trip to the Westfield Shopping Mall in the Valley, when her credit card was declined and she lost her little remaining marbles:

In person, Britney is shockingly beautiful — clear skin, ruby lips, a perfectly proportioned twenty-six-year-old porcelain doll with a nasty weave. She cuts through the crowd swiftly, the way she used to when 20,000 adoring fans mobbed her outside a concert, with her paparazzi boyfriend, Adnan Ghalib, trailing behind …. She ducks into [a Betsey Johnson] dressing room with Ghalib. He emerges with her black Am Ex. The card won’t go through, but they keep trying it.

“Please,” begs Ghalib, “get this done quickly.”

One of the girls runs to Britney’s dressing room, explaining the situation through a pink gauze curtain.

A wail emerges from the cubby — guttural, vile, the kind of base animalistic shriek only heard at a family member’s deathbed. “Fuck these bitches,” screams Britney, each word ringing out between sobs. “These idiots can’t do anything right!”

Ghalib dashes over to console her, but she’s already spitting, growling, throwing a big bottle of soda on the floor so that it begins to spill underneath the curtain, and then she’s got a box of tissues and is throwing them on top of the wet floor along with piles of discarded merchandise. A new card finally goes through, but by then Britney is out the door, leaving her shirt on the ground and replacing it with the red top. “Fuck you, fuck people, fuck, fuck, fuck,” she keeps screaming, her face splotchy and red as she crosses the interminable mall floor, the crowd behind her growing larger and larger. “Leave us alone!” yells Ghalib.

The siblings run after Britney to get a video to put up on YouTube, and some of the shopgirls run after her to hand off the merchandise she left behind, and there’s an entire bridal party wearing yellow T-shirts who have pulled out camera phones too. A crush of managers in black shirts and gold name tags try to keep the peace, but the crowd running after Britney gets larger, and now the shopgirls have ­started to catch up to her, one of them slipping spectacularly in her platform shoes, grazing her elbow. She pulls herself up, mustering the strength to tap Britney’s shoulder. “Um, I’m from the South too,” she mumbles, “and I was wondering if I could get a picture with you for my little sister.”

Britney turns to Ghalib and grabs his arm. “I don’t want her talking to me!” she screams. She whirls around and stares the girl deep in the eyes, her lips almost vibrating with anger. “I don’t know who you think I am, bitch,” she snarls, “but I’m not that person.”

Well, now we know what the soap opera writers have been doing during the strike — writing for Rolling Stone! Or maybe it was the comedy writers  — “clear skin”? Ha! Good one. Page Six also had a tidbit from the article, claiming that Brit got breast implants as a teenager and later regretted it because her chest was still growing, so she had them removed. And, it would appear, re-gifted them to fellow Mouseketeer Christina Aguilera.