At the peak of Britney Spears’ pop supremacy in the late Nineties and early Noughties, the singer’s megawatt grin was one of the most recognisable, photographed smiles in the world. Now, in certain corners of TikTok, it has become the subject of feverish speculation and mind-boggling theories. A subset of fans has begun to ask: is it, in fact, still the same smile? They place old red carpet photos of a teenage Britney alongside newer, grainier screen grabs from her Instagram account, honing in on a slight gap between her front teeth, even questioning whether she now has any bottom teeth at all.
Why the obsession with Britney’s teeth? And isn’t it quite normal for a smile to shift naturally over time, even if you’ve had some all-American orthodontia earlier in life? For the fans dissecting fuzzy photos of Britney’s “new” gums in quasi-forensic detail online, there’s another, much darker explanation. The change, they argue, is a glaring warning sign, proof that the Britney who we see dancing on Instagram is a fake. She might be a body double. She might be an AI creation – or perhaps a deepfake. The logistics are a little sketchy. But she definitely isn’t Britney Jean Spears, they claim, because the “real” Britney is elsewhere.
