How do teen icons spell rebound? C-a-m-e-o.
Handlers of today’s troubled pop stars know the way to make amends to fans is to appear less on the L.A. party circuit and more on TV sitcoms.
The Britney Spears rehabilitation tour continues at 7:30 p.m. Monday on KCNC-Channel 4, when the troubled 26-year-old pop star has her second make-nice gig on CBS’s “How I Met Your Mother.”
Britney’s people called CBS’s people to set up the first cameo. Because the ratings proved positive — an extra 1 million people watched — she’s back as the dermatologist’s receptionist, intent on demonstrating she’s stable enough to handle the rigors of TV comedy.
The sight of Spears delivering lines without a meltdown apparently goes a long way toward undoing the damage she did her career during last year’s MTV Video Awards.
The former Mouseketeer’s ongoing child-custody hearings have been a pesky distraction. But the CBS connection is designed to put her earlier bizarre behaviors, documented by a passel of paparazzi, out of our collective memory.
Similarly hoping to counter bad publicity, Lindsay Lohan will appear on the “Ugly Betty” finale May 22 on (Disney-owned) ABC. She’s also slated for five episodes next season, playing Betty’s old school chum.
Seems like yesterday we were lauding Lohan’s twin performances in the 1998 “Parent Trap” remake. That adorable kid is a distant memory after a run of arrests, car accidents, party-girl excesses and the requisite trip to rehab.
The star of “Mean Girls” and “Freaky Friday,” Lohan was most recently seen in a police mug shot taken after her arrest on drunken-driving charges in L.A., used in an advertisement by a group opposed to ignition locks aimed at halting intoxicated drivers.
But look, she can laugh at herself as a mean girl on “Ugly Betty.”
Another young woman in the fishbowl of pop culture hasn’t fared as well lately.
The Miley Cyrus debacle- that-wasn’t, an overblown nonstory that got Lohan-level coverage recently, has prompted its own barrage of editorial thumb-suckers.
How does a faux scandal — an artful Annie Leibovitz depiction of a 15-year-old Disney icon showing a minimal amount of skin — end up getting more media attention than, say, the Defense Department’s admission that military “experts” on the Pentagon payroll were used by major media outlets to comment on how the war’s going?
A certain percentage of Disney’s tween stars are bound to grow up to cross the line. Predicting who’s in for a bumpy future is part of the appeal of the presexualized tween. The shift from fabricated squeaky-clean product to young adult is inevitably fraught.
Still, the marketing giant has some gall to “disavow” a portrait by a world-renowned artist. Art isn’t supposed to fit a marketing plan; beauty can’t be disavowed. Ultimately, the Cyrus photo was a Rorschach test: If you saw something wildly titillating in her draped back, that says more about you than the subject.
File that innocuous photo with the vintage sculptures infamously ordered draped by then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft: The Justice Department spent $8,000 on blue drapes to hide two topless art deco statues. Most Americans found the tab more obscene.
After Cyrus’ calculated apology, maybe Disney’s teen moneymaker needs a trip to ABC sitcom rehab.
Whatever else television may be, it’s clearly the teen icon’s favored route to restoration — of credibility if not purity. It’s the place for young girls’ second chances.
Television welcomes young stars with paparazzi problems, police records, pubescent mistakes and something to prove.
On the infinitely forgiving medium, redemption is only a sitcom guest role away.
Joanne Ostrow’s column appears Tuesday, Friday and Sunday: 303-954-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com.
