“In fact, Bieber was a kind of Immaculate Conception, conceived while Pattie was on birth-control…
“In fact, Bieber was a kind of Immaculate Conception, conceived while Pattie was on birth-control pills.”
Vanessa Grigoriadis wrote a virtuosic profile of Justin Bieber that reframes the child-star-gone-bad narrative as “a kinky national ritual, our current form of pop-culture sadism,” defamiliarizing the perennially annoying young Bieber while also making him feel deeply, weirdly real:
Both of his parents drank heavily, were about 18 and unmarried when they had him, and split up shortly thereafter. In fact, Bieber was a kind of Immaculate Conception, conceived while Pattie was on birth-control pills. His father, Jeremy, a muay-Thai fighter, was minimally involved in his life, and bills were hard to pay for Pattie, a part-time big-box-store clerk who cleaned herself up only after a suicide attempt, a stay in a sanitarium, and finding God. Bieber, like a boy version of Little Orphan Annie, performed on street corners collecting change.
It is an excellent read. [NYMag]