Pink Hated Being Pitted Against Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera Back in the Day
"None of us wanted that."
If you were a young female singer rising to fame in the early 2000s, you were expected to not get along with your famous female cohorts. Pink, who came into fame alongside Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, said that “it was so unfair” for all the women who were trying to chase their dreams in the music industry.
“None of us wanted that,” Pink told People in a May 13th interview, regarding the way media pitted her, Spears, and Aguilera against each other. Pink even remembers being marketed as an “anti-Britney” figure within the music industry.
I love Britney—she used to carry around my album, Pink said. I was like, ‘Dude, I’m a street punk, I just skateboard. That doesn’t have to be the anti-Britney. I don’t want to fight anybody.’
On the heels of the New York Times Presents documentary, Framing Britney Spears, the public has now become wholly aware of just how poorly Spears was treated by the press and paparazzi all so that tabloids could sell magazines. Female singers were pitted against each other and put into made-up feuds. Socialites like Paris Hilton were mocked for her lifestyle and prison time. And the declining mental health of all female celebrities was completely ignored and/or seen as profitable.
And as Pink told People, there was never any need for sparking feuds—the industry is big enough for everybody.
“One of the best things that [music executive] L.A. Reid ever told me was that this music business is big enough for everybody to win at the same time,” Pink continued. “There’s no such thing as competition.”
I think we navigated through it as good as a 20-year-old girl can, she said. Now I think it’s totally different.
It’s taken the public a while to see that there’s room for everyone in fame (and yes, it’s possible to stan more than one female singer!), but we’ve finally started to see the light. “Girls supporting girls is rad—I love to watch it,” Pink said. Same.