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| | Photo: L. Busacca/WireImage | | The New York Times’ Framing Britney Spears documentary casts a spell. I am thinking specifically of the stretch that chronicles Spears’s rise as a teen idol, starting with the “Baby One More Time” video. I had not seen it since elementary school and was unsettled, as an adult, to watch a 16-year-old embody a schoolgirl fantasy. To make sense of the video’s popularity, the Times’ Wesley Morris suggests that, to the 12- and 13-year-olds watching the video when it came out, “It isn’t the sex part that seems cool. It’s the control and command over herself and her space that seems cool.” I felt unsure that younger me could distinguish the control from the sexiness. But before I could think too hard about it, Framing Britney Spears was making a compelling argument: Spears’s teen image was an expression of her sexuality, and questioning the kind of agency she had in it is misogynistic. | Never miss a story from the Cut: Subscribe now. | | |