Confession: I'm kind of obsessed with Amanda Bynes. When she was still Twitter-active, her tweets used to be my favorites to read. I learned many important vocabulary lessons (such as "book=something you read [if you don't know that there is no hope for you]), life mantras ("When You Have Money You Don't Care What Anybody Says About You"), and the struggles of being a celebrity ("I feel like I'm being punked by the amount of hate from ugly dudes and women. I don't know you and don't know what you're talking about!").
I'm still confused as to what exactly happened to Amanda Bynes. I remember her from "The Amanda Show," which was like SNL for the Nickelodeon generation and my all time favorite show as a child. Bynes was the star of this show and I'm not embarrassed to admit that I recently watched a couple of reruns and still giggled a bit when she demanded to bring in the dancing lobsters. And she wasn't just a Nickelodeon celebrity: she was also in some of my favorite chick-flicks, like "Sydney White" and "She's the Man."
For a while, she seemed like a fully functional, with-it celebrity. And then, at least from my perspective, she dropped off the face of the planet for a while, only to resurface as Hollywood's favorite basket case. All of a sudden, after a few Amanda-free years, I started hearing about her arrest for throwing a bong out a window and her dedication to plastic surgery. While none of these are necessarily positive things, I was nonetheless stoked to hear that this staple from my childhood was back in action.
My current obsession with Amanda stems half from the fact that her tweets are hilarious and half from the fact that I feel like I've known her (or rather, known of her) for so long. She can do pretty much anything - like tell Hollywood starlets that they're ugly over Twitter - and I'll still be on Team Amanda. This is strange for me, because loyalty to celebrities is usually not a top priority for me. I was over Justin Bieber the second he got a haircut (I am embarrassed to admit that I was, for a brief time, a Bieber fan). I was a Lady Gaga fan for a few weeks, but didn't have the attention span to keep that going for very long.
Celebrities I've "known" since childhood, on the other hand, will always have my fandom. Britney Spears' "Oops!... I did It Again" was the first CD I ever owned way back in 2000. I listened to it in its entirety too many times to count. Britney songs are still heavily featured on my workout playlist today in 2014. I admit, Spears hasn't always been the classiest and composed celebrity, but I can't abandon the person who gave the seven-year-old me "Baby One More Time" to dance around to in my living room. Just like I was on Team Amanda through every nasty Twitter fight, I was also on Team Britney through some of her less picturesque moments (i.e., her shaven head crisis circa 2007).
Being a sentimental person, I have a soft spot for the stars that entertained me as a child. I like to see their fame (or maybe, infamy) continue because it's what the nine-year-old me would have wanted to see. Yes, it's a bit unsettling to see Now and Then pictures of Amanda Bynes, but I'm glad to see that "The Amanda Show" legacy lives on in some, albeit very different, form. And hey, if Britney can make a comeback, so can Amanda.
Rebecca Hutchinson is a freshman majoring in international relations. She can be reached at rebecca.hutchinson@tufts.edu.
