It’s November 2021 and #FreeBritney is no more.
Britney is free.
After a long battle with her family, Britney has finally been released from her conservatorship. In 2008, Britney was put under conservatorship after a public breakdown. From 2008-2021, her family controlled her finances, movements, relationships and more. In that time, she was raking in cash by making music and performing in Vegas…making money for the estate but having no real freedom to enjoy the fruits of her labor. According to court documents, her conservators even forced her to be on birth control even though she wanted to start a family.
In the last few years, fans grew more concerned about Britney’s well-being and expressed their support via the #FreeBritney hashtag. They scrutinized Britney’s posts on Instagram and came up with theories (some of which turned out to be true). The movement caught on. This year, in the middle of a pandemic, fans even protested outside the courthouse, to try to convince the judge to release her.
It’s a lot.
It has a happy ending though. Britney is free after 13 years.
I think her battle was so long partly because of the narrative that the media created around her. Initially, It was not that easy to sympathize with Britney because of how she was portrayed by the media:
It is crazy to think about these headlines now. Clearly, the late 90s/early 00s were an awful time to be a female celebrity. The media had an unhealthy fascination on the female body (tons of beach photos), celebutants (they even called these young female celebs celebutards), feuds, dating histories and celebrity mums and babies (those first celeb baby pics can fetch millions):
But worst of all, the media seemed to be obsessed with female suffering:
Paparazzi and gossip magazines made an empire off the backs of these women.
These camera men and media outlets held a lot of the power over these celebrities. There was no Instagram or Twitter then. If People magazine or TMZ did not feature you, nobody knew you existed. Paparazzi would follow and harass celebrities on the streets. Celebrities had no protections against them, and the media created lots of negative stereotypes of women then (the bimbo, the homewrecker, the crazy one, the anorexic one etc.).
After the Me Too and Times Up! movements, people are looking back and thinking: Wow, we’ve really let those women down. People have more awareness about abuses on women and feel more sympathy towards celebrities like Britney. Since then, laws (some of which were laid down after Britney’s encounters with the paparazzi) have been passed protect celebrities from being harassed by media. And social media has enabled celebrities to control their narrative, release their own images and connect with fans.
Social media has even enabled celebrities and regular people to call out injustice. In Britney’s case, her fans were using the #FreeBritney hashtag to show their support and exposing instances where Britney was maligned. When Britney was granted a hearing, fans even turned up to protest outside of the courthouse. The #FreeBritney movement was just too big to ignore. It was no longer just one strange fan yelling ‘Leave Britney Alone!!!!!!!’ Mainstream media also took note of the movement, and people worldwide became invested in Britney’s quest for freedom.
Of course, it is no Arab Spring, but this episode showed the power of social media. More than the freeing of a single person, the discussions around Britney’s Conservatorship Saga brought a lot of issues into the public consciousness such as:
-The commodification/exploitation of women by the media
-Holes in the American legal system (people were also calling for a re-examination of other conservatorship cases, like that of Amanda Bynes)
-How the paparazzi machine could have contributed to the suffering and even deaths of some famous people (Princess Diana, Amy Winehouse etc)
-Hacktivism
…and more
It is definitely worth (re-)examining, from a feminist or a public spheres perspective. A cursory glance at the comments in a recent Youtube video about Britney’s battle reveals a lot of sympathy from the public (‘I feel so sorry’ ‘We’ve let her down’ etc) and assigning blame on the paparazzi. Perhaps when I know more about feminism, public spheres and text analysis, I can write a paper / thesis worthy of Britney Spears!
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