When I was four years old, I got my first CD: Oops! I Did It Again by Britney Spears. I played it over and over again on my cherry red CD player, my most prized possession. I’d lay on my bedroom floor on flower-shaped rugs that matched my butterfly curtains and concoct scenarios in my head to fit my childlike interpretations of the lyrics. Even at such a young age, this music wormed its way into my soul, weaving the bubblegum, the lonely, and the unflinching femininity of Britney’s second album into my DNA. My sticky fingers thumbed through the liner notes, admiring the pictures of Britney with the childhood innocence of wholehearted belief. To this day, that CD is tucked into my bookshelf, the creased album booklet worn and well-loved.
To many, that’s what Britney has become — a memory on a shelf, a cultural icon of the 1990s and 2000s.
Rather than a full-fledged messy, imperfect human being, to the media and general public, Britney Spears has become a figure who has been relegated to their dusty shelf of American trophies collecting cobwebs. A figure who is simply a piece of our collective pop culture zeitgeist, who exists as the schoolgirl in “Baby One More Time” and the “trainwreck” plastered across tabloids in the late 2000s. She’s a face and blonde hair and a signature “baby voice” and a representation of how fame can spin you around in its cyclone and spit you out raw.
Growing up, Britney was the kind of girl I wanted to become. She was it. She was the pinnacle of cool in the era of low-rise jeans and slick dance moves and belly button rings. I wanted to dance and sing like Britney, wear all the sleek, sparkly outfits like Britney, have the kind of magnetic smile that attracted people to you like Britney. Through my rose-colored glasses, Britney could do no wrong. And while this side of the idol pendulum can be just as damaging, what began to creep in was arguably worse.
Pre-conservatorship, in the early 2000s, my parents would record the TV shows that Britney was on for me on a VHS tape, and my most cherished one was a behind-the-scenes special about the making of her music video for “Stronger.” The video featured Britney breaking free in an aesthetically futuristic landscape, ending with her walking through the rain like it didn’t phase her and kicking a chair like it weighed nothing. She was powerful and independent, and when the cameras were off, she was kind and goofy and fun too.
This Britney was the perfect bait for the vultures that descended upon her and took the rest of us with her.
Today, we are witnessing the fallout. Ever since groundbreaking claims against her father and conservatorship team were made public in court, Britney Spears’ conservatorship and history in the media has been called to attention. The fight has forced the American public to reckon with the effects that media and public scrutiny have had on Britney, to rethink not only celebrity culture but how we treat female mental health.
Detailed in the documentary Framing Britney Spears on Hulu, the conservatorship was explained alongside a timeline of Britney’s rapid rise to success. A conservatorship, according to the California Courts official website, is the appointment of a person or organization, also known as the conservator, to care for another adult who is incapable of managing their own finances or caring for themself. For Britney, a conservatorship was put in place following a string of incidents that culminated in her “public breakdown” in 2008, after years of unrelenting paparazzi and the pressures of inappropriate media and, of course, fame. She was placed under a “5150” hold and evaluated in a psychiatric hospital, during which her father, Jamie Spears, was able to gain conservatorship “temporarily.” This conservatorship handed over Britney’s finances, health, personal life, and business, giving her virtually no freedom.
In Framing Britney Spears, frank discussions and explanations of Britney’s situation painted a picture that was new to many outside her passionate fanbase. To those who hadn’t been paying attention, everything laid out for examination was a wake-up call. After the documentary’s premiere, it even prompted the internet to demand an apology from Justin Timberlake for his misogynistic role in the demise of their relationship, including how “Cry Me A River” fueled rumors of Britney being unfaithful. Another past interview saw Timberlake exclaiming “Okay, I did it!” when asked if he’d slept with Spears, despite her previously stating her desire to wait until marriage.”
And then there was the media’s constant demeaning of Britney — with language like “trainwreck,” “out of control,” or “sick.” The barrage of negative coverage was near-constant, and the public played right into it, viewing her obvious struggle with mental illness as a spectacle and encasing it in amber forever in the form of memes. Instead of giving Britney a chance to recover or get help, she was pushed further and further by paparazzi and hateful public opinion with no empathy. Looking back, “Lucky” is even more poignant than ever, with lyrics such as “she’s so lucky, she’s a star/but she cry, cry, cries in her lonely heart, thinking/if there’s nothing missing in my life/then why do these tears come at night?”.
According to Showbiz Cheat Sheet, fellow female child star Lindsay Lohan’s father too attempted to take control of her life, while Amanda Bynes has been under a conservatorship for several years as well. Although these stars’ situations are each different and personal, they put a spotlight on a theme in Hollywood that’s hard to ignore. The exploitation of these three women began as children, and the intense tabloid exposure and 24/7 judgment of the public were rampant throughout their careers.
Growing up in the 2000s, my parents, who were not usually strict about what music I listened to, still filtered my Britney exposure. There were times I begged to watch the VMAs and was shut down not only for the content but in case Britney was wearing “a skimpy outfit.” Boys at school would tease the girls for liking Britney Spears, and adults would sneer at her music. By the time I was eight years old, I didn’t understand why people hated Britney Spears, but I understood that it seemed like the world around me wanted me to hate her too. Now, when I look back on these experiences and the general attitude surrounding Britney, it’s glaringly obvious that the root of it all was misogyny and sexism.
When “Toxic” came out, I vividly remember being scandalized by the music video. My friend and I, diehard Britney fans who dreamt of running away to meet her in Louisiana and become pop stars too, became sour toward our previous idol, shifting our focus to the next. By that point, the innocent admiration I’d held for her as a little girl was actively being tainted by the opinions around me as I became more aware of them. And that’s just the way it goes: four-year-old innocence doesn’t last, especially not as a young girl.
The older I got, the more I could read about Britney, the more I could understand, the more I was stricken with these words, these opinions. You don’t realize it as you internalize it, but these things cling to you like leeches. They hide in you as you get older, a tapeworm that sucks the empowerment, the beauty, the shine of it all, slowly, slowly, slowly. Until one day you’re sneering with disdain at a tabloid article painting a picture of this idol you used to hold close, not adhering to the unattainable image of perfection that was laid out for her to meet. You don’t understand the why. You don’t understand that this unraveling is a woman in pain, a woman who needs help. You don’t understand how one day she was on the top of the world with a snake around her neck, and now the snake has eaten her whole.
And then the whole thing repeats.
American celebrity culture will always have a new starlet to chew up and spit out, the jaws of misogyny unrelenting. When Miley Cyrus began to stray from the picture-perfect Disney Channel image she arrived with, the world erupted once again. Like so many others, I was a huge fan of Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus in the late 2000s. She was the cool, fresh new girl with the big, raspy voice, and I couldn’t decide if I wanted to be her or simply had a crush on her (spoiler alert: it was both). I loved her, and I listened to her music as religiously as I had Britney’s back in the day.
When Miley became the next target of the media, the next object of the public’s projection of their faults, things flipped once again. I was so angry that Miley was ruining her career just like Britney had done, that she wasn’t fitting into the mold of the fictional Miley Stewart. The media demonized her in a way that most male celebrities never experience, to the point where it’s still a shadow that follows her today, despite how much things have changed.
And that’s the issue: the way that misogyny bleeds into every corner of our society. The way it warps our view, stains the fabric of the things that shape us, tears apart women in the public eyepiece by piece. And although Miley came out strong on the other side, we need to acknowledge the ones who don’t and take responsibility for it. This is why Britney’s fight to end her conservatorship is so important to pay attention to. First and foremost because she deserves to live her life freely, as it’s way overdue, and secondly because we need to understand how things can get to a point like this and how we, as a whole, can do better.
Today, I’ve unlearned a lot of truths that turned out to be lies. I look back at what Britney endured and my heart aches for her. I wish I had been able to turn off all the noise and understand that what happened to her was never her fault. What she went through was never brought on by herself. I think four-year-old me would have gotten it. She would have seen the hurt, and she would have wanted the world to leave Britney alone.
While we’ve made huge strides, especially with the double-edged sword that is social media, there’s still so much work to be done to dismantle the misogyny that’s threaded through the seams of our society. Fortunately, women in the public eye don’t face the same level of disgusting invasiveness that Britney did. Or at least, not in the same paparazzi-laden, aggressively physically claustrophobic way of our past. Times have changed, but we have to keep working on moving forward.
We have to recognize the damage that the media’s treatment of Britney Spears did to her personal life and to the lives of the girls who looked up to her. At the heart of all the attention is a woman who just wants a life that’s much simpler than the one that became a tornado around her.
During a rare court appearance in June, as fans listened and supported from outside, Britney said, “I just want my life back.” She went on to detail how she had been drugged, forced to perform and work, forbidden from everyday tasks like driving her own car, and prevented from making decisions about her birth control. These things have been going on for more than 13 years. As fans listened to her testimony, many cried at the sound of Britney’s strong, clear voice. This voice that hadn’t been heard in so long, much different from the seemingly rehearsed and carefully controlled Britney of Instagram. This voice was reminiscent of a younger Britney, a Britney who was reclaiming herself.
And even now, as such important topics are brought to light through the likes of Framing Britney Spears and modern media coverage, we have to ask ourselves, how fair is it? While Britney Spears is an important figure for so many, Britney the person has the simple plea of wanting to live her life, fully and quietly. In a post, she said the Framing Britney Spears documentary left her “embarrassed” and she “cried for two weeks.” So while this conversation is extremely important, we have to remember that she is a person, not just a matter of discourse.
As of now, Britney Spears has been able to her own lawyer and has made the step forward of removing her father from his position within her conservatorship. Her ultimate goal is still freedom altogether, but these small steps are huge for a woman who has just been able to purchase her first iPad. Soon, the court will consider the motion to remove Jamie Spears, and the many fans and supporters of Britney will continue to fight for her voice to be heard.
So, loud and clear, FREE BRITNEY — and in the process, let’s keep freeing ourselves too.
