Britney Spears: the fight for freedom in the age of celebrity ownership
What's happened?
In 2007, Chris Crocker, a former YouTuber and internet celebrity, uploaded a video pleading with the world to “Leave Britney Alone”. In it, Crocker – with his distinctly 2007 bleach blonde layers and thick eyeliner – asks his viewers, “do we really want to see a 25-year-old woman leave behind two children and die? Have we learned nothing from Anna Nicole Smith?” The video soon became one of the first viral YouTube videos and almost immediately, the “Leave Britney Alone” movement was born.
2007 was a year in which Spears first showed signs of personal struggles in public. Having filed for divorce from Kevin Federline in November 2006, by February 2007, Spears checked into rehab before checking out the next day. One day later, she shaved her head in a hair salon in front of paparazzi cameras. “I don’t want everybody touching me,” she reportedly said at the time. “I’m tired of everyone touching me.” Two more attempts at rehab and an attack on the paparazzi soon followed with TMZ calling it a “a “pop mom meltdown.” Spears then fired her manager and bodyguard in April, and her management firm and lawyer later resigned. A photo shoot with OK! magazine in July ended with the magazine releasing a statement about the experience, commenting: “What we experienced was a young girl who is desperately in need of help. And sadly she has surrounded herself with too many people who are pretending that nothing is wrong.” The photos were unusable but they put her on the cover anyway.
Then, in 2008, Spears was placed under a – first temporary, then permanent – conservatorship over her assets, estate and business affairs at the helm of her father, Jamie Spears. Despite making multiple “comebacks” since then – including the release of her album, Circus, in 2008, a years-long Las Vegas residency, and business ventures including successful perfume and lingerie lines – fans continued to vocalise their concern.
These events (and a prior decade of similar instances) culminated in a collective choice to see Spears as something vaguely amusing – a punchline, a lesson for young girls to learn from, and a bright star of celebrity to be mourned. “I know it’s hard to see Britney Spears as a person,” Crocker says in his video, holding back tears. “But trust me – she is.”
Where are we now?
As it turns out, Crocker’s message to “Leave Britney Alone” was the pre-cursor to the “Free Britney” movement, which was initially launched in 2009 but has gained global momentum over recent years, with Spears, now 39, in her thirteenth year under conservatorship.
However, on June 23 2021, the public finally heard from Spears after years spent in the shadows, where she spoke before a court as part of an attempt to regain ownership of her personal affairs and assets worth an estimated $US60 million. During her 24-minute address, Spears described the conservatorship as embarrassing and demoralising. “I truly believe this conservatorship is abusive,” Spears told the court, "It's not okay to force me to do anything I don't want to do.” She further expressed that her ultimate desire is to be able to make basic life decisions on her own, to go on a car ride with her long-term boyfriend, and to have another child, which she says she is not currently allowed to do.
Spears is entirely aware of the exploitation of her life by others, whom she refers to in her testimony as "they" – a clear reference to her family and management team, though one that could just easily be applied to all of us: the media, the general public, and even her fans who have been so aggressive in violating her life. Every intimate detail, every relationship, every friendship, the birth of both her children, her divorce, her "failed" performances and "attention-seeking" behaviour have been captured online; a whole existence as public exhibition, both revealing and concealing what we were so desperate to know.
What does it all mean?
In light of these recent events, Crocker’s initial comparison of Spears to Anna Nicole Smith was an insightful one, a reminder that, though the circumstances are unique, Spears’s ‘type’ of celebrity is not. She is one in a sequence of women who have had to face public scrutiny at every age, at every turn, to a point where it becomes unbearable. The key difference is the timing in which her rise to fame occurred, coinciding with the arrival of Perez Hilton, and a shrewder, meaner type of tabloid journalism made also available in the form of online message boards and comments sections on blogs. The exposure was greater, the commentary crueller and our appreciation of mental health almost non-existent. Spears was the ideal target.
Of course, this sort of easy access to celebrities has not disappeared. In fact, we’re now living in an age where the breakdown between ‘famous person’ and ‘normal person’ has never been clearer, largely due to social media's ability to grant us immediate and near constant access to the daily life of the people we collectively obsess over. But while platforms like Instagram and Tik Tok don't necessarily normalise celebrities, as traditional tabloid media becomes less and less prevalent, there is a greater sense of agency for the celebrities who are more able – and perhaps more willing – to tell their own story. The Kardashians come to mind; their tight grip on the media a reminder that, now, tabloids are more reliant on the participation of their subjects than they were 15 years ago.
Ultimately, it’s not clear whether we ought to be leaving Britney alone, as Crocker demanded, or campaigning for her freedom. It’s likely a mix of both. But what Spears herself has made abundantly clear is that she is a woman who no longer desires our attention, our input, our criticism, or our incessant greed for more from a woman who has already given so much. Perhaps she never did.