Amy Winehouse: How She Gets Away With It

July 20, 2007 — -- When Britney Spears purchased a Yorkshire terrier for $3,000 recently, the Humane Society sent out a missive saying the pop princess had set "a dangerous example to the public." A predictable explosion ensued over the blogosphere and across celebrity news Web sites.

But when acclaimed singer Amy Winehouse -- whose album "Back to Black" is up for one of Britain's top music prizes -- spat on fans at a concert Tuesday, barely anyone batted an eye.

Why is it that bad girl celebrities like Britney and Lindsay Lohan can't buy a pooch -- or go partying -- without stirring outrage, while other celebs' drug, alcohol and sex issues -- like those of "Rehab" songbird Winehouse -- leave the media and public largely unfazed?

The answer rests as much in the past as in the present. Spears and Lohan spent years cultivating the good girl image, and now their sex-and-drugs lifestyle captures the public both for its hypocrisy and, more importantly, for the fall from grace it represents.

"People like a good train wreck. That's just the way it is," Harvey Levin, editor of TMZ.com said. "When somebody wholesome suddenly takes a bad turn and they're hanging off the edge of a cliff, people watch."

Celebrities like Winehouse and Courtney Love come onto the scene as tattooed and aggressive bad girls, not virginal sweethearts. Their transgressions are acceptable, if not expected. But Spears and Lohan kept the public's attention for years by playing the part of the innocent girl. Their actions today are the polar opposite of those when they were at the height of their pop stardom.

In Winehouse's first megahit, she sings, "They're trying to make me go to rehab/I said, no, no, no" -- quite different from the schoolgirl and bubblegum image of Britney's "Baby One More Time" music video, or the honesty and innocence of Lohan's "Mean Girls" character.

"Someone like Britney Spears began her career selling herself as the wholesome yet sexy pop star. You don't expect your wholesome yet sexy pop star shaving her head, going into rehab three times in one week, and going out partying," said Perez Hilton, editor of an eponymously titled celebrity blog. "It's kind of a double standard but quote unquote rock stars just play by a different set of rules. You're kind of expected to be wild and crazy."

What fans do not expect is the child movie star of "The Parent Trap" to drunkenly crash her car into shrubs on Sunset Boulevard, as Lohan did this past May. Just yesterday Lohan surrendered to police to face misdemeanor charges of hit and run.

What About Talent

That Winehouse is regarded as a genuine artist whereas Britney and Lindsay are seen more as products of a system -- in Hilton's words, "pure manufactured pop" -- than as talent in their own right also impacts how their transgressions play out in the media and the public consciousness.

Winehouse's successes distract from her sins, whereas for Britney and Lindsay, neither of whom have had a critically acclaimed album or film in some time, there is little else to distract the media's attention. "They've just become these tabloid figures that are more famous for messing up than what they actually do," Hilton explained.

And perhaps we have come to expect our society's true artists -- like Picasso, Van Gogh, and Warhol before them -- to be a bit eccentric, and so we chalk up the outlandish behavior of successful people like Winehouse to be a product of their genius. By contrast, the behavior of a Britney or a Lindsay is seen more as a consequence of their having been brought up under the spotlight, as "a byproduct of the machine," said Lisa Timmons, editor of SocialiteLife.com.

"Amy is tortured. Amy has this very difficult personal life, and creates these very torturous albums that are both popular and receive critical praise…[That's] how the public sees Winehouse," Timmons said.

Because Spears does not write her music or choreograph her dances, and because Lohan does not deliver Academy Award-worthy performance, they are not seen as true artists, and so they lose that excuse for their crazy behavior.