Consumer Products

Celebrity culture may seem ahistorical, but its roots reach deeply into the past four hundred years

Marilyn Monroe, from a publicity shot for The Asphalt Jungle, 1950. Photo: Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images

By Stephen Marche

1.The owners of Esther’s Haircutting Studio, the salon in Tarzana, California, where Britney Spears shaved herself bald in 2007, knew immediately that the relics of her breakdown were sacred. The sweepings from their floor…