Ditto: Spears' mental illness "empowering"

We're not sure we quite follow Beth Ditto's delight at Britney's illness, but see if you can:

Beth also says she is proud of troubled pop pin-up BRITNEY SPEARS for shaving off all her hair.

She said: “I’m loving it. If you think what her hair meant to her and what it did to a generation of little girls — she did really turn out a generation of little Britneys.

“And for this to happen is one of the most radical things ever.

“It’s sad and she is sick, but it can also be amazing and empowering. I am going to post her a copy of Rebel Girl lyrics by US punk band BIKINI KILL.”

We suspect, to be fair to Ditto, that the "US punk band" was slipped in by Sun subs, anxious that casual readers might have seen the words Bikini Kill and thought there was a swimwear illness spreading through the nation.

Even, though, if you leave aside the worrying notion that Ditto says, in effect, "yeah, it's a shame you've got a serious mental problem which may result in you losing your family and have, apparently, tried to take your own life, but you're so rad, girlfriend" does she really believe that Britney shaving her own hair off is "one of the most radical things ever"? If only Trotsky had invested in a Remington Home Barber kit, eh? Martin Luther shouldn't have bothered with nailing his demands to the church door - he ought to have just cut out a picture from HairStyles Today and asked his salon to do it "a bit like that." Black Panthers? Chartists? Luddites? Stonewall? Knocked into a cocked hat by ten minutes with the clippers set to number one.

For an act to be radical, doesn't the revolutionary need to be aware of what they're doing? If the Luddites had stood next to a mashed-up Spinning Jenny muttering "well... I thought it was full of lice", wouldn't that somewhat undercut their radicalism?