The pop icon Britney Spears is free. She endured a 13-year-long conservatorship under her father, Jamie Spears, that shines a light on the mental health of celebrities and how they are viewed by the public.
The “Free Britney” movement has been getting a lot of publicity recently, but supporters know Queen B best for shaping the 2000s pop industry and inspiring a generation of fans to be themselves. Since 1998 when she released her first single, “Baby One More Time,” Spears has been a major celebrity.
Spears’ fame was not all positive. Her mental health struggles and breakdowns in the years 2007 and 2008 were publicized and led to psychiatric evaluations and hospitalizations.
In 2008, Britney Spears’ mental health struggles led her father to file for temporary, later permanent, conservatorship over his daughter.
A conservatorship is a court appointed status which allows a person to have control over another person’s financial and personal business. These usually occur when a person becomes incapacitated and is unable to manage their own affairs. Conservatorships often place serious limitations on a person’s freedom and therefore are typically a last resort.
Britney Spears’ conservatorship allowed her father, Jamie Spears, to control almost every aspect of the star’s life: when she would work and how she could spend her money. He even kept her involuntarily on birth control. Since her father had legal control over her, she did not have the ability to enter into contracts, taking away the ability for her to manage her own career.
photo courtesy of Wikimedia Public Domain
Kate Hoffner ’23 said, “It’s really sad that somebody who is able to make their own decisions was being silenced.”
Jamie Spears has been criticized by Britney Spears, family members and fans for abusing his role as conservator.
Spears’ fans launched the Free Britney movement in 2009 to support her reclaiming her rights and control over her affairs. They used social media to spread information about her story and the complexities of conservatorships.
After Britney Spears’ active campaign for her freedom, tremendous support from her fanbase and heightened attention about the ethics of conservatorship by the media, the courts finally decided to free Britney Spears from her conservatorship on November 12, 2021. She had been under acute conservatorship for 13 years, from the time she was 26 until she was 39.
Britney Spears blames the California legal system for her long-lasting, abusive conservatorship.
Richard Shaw, child psychiatrist and expert legal witness, said, “In Britney’s case, if she was in treatment, not decompensating, taking her medications and was stable, it wouldn’t be fair to keep her conserved indefinitely.”
Shaw spoke about the legal process for people with mental health disorders being conserved. He believes that generally, the system for temporary conservatorships is fairly well balanced since judges and psychiatrists who evaluate the situations are assumed to be acting in the patient’s best interests.
Shaw said, “It seems in this case there was a conflict of interest with having a family member as a conservator. When you have a very wealthy person, this can cause conflict because the family conservator may have interests that are favoring themselves over their child.”
He added, “It might have been better to have a court appointed conservator, someone who is paid a certain amount of money to manage her financial affairs and has no prospect of benefiting from keeping her conserved.”
Throughout her life, and in her struggle for her freedom, Spears has been an inspiration for many.
Her ability to unapologetically be herself, even when enduring much criticism, made her stand out amongst celebrities.
At the 2000s VMAs, she stripped into a nude-colored, sequined outfit, giving the illusion that she was naked. This inspired a “naked style” movement amongst other celebrities.
Jake Kaplan, a Britney fan, said, “She was truly the queen of pop for that era (the 2000s). My first CD that I ever bought was ‘Oops!… I Did It Again’ when I was five or six-years-old.”
Kaplan said, “She has always been pushing the boundaries and she has never been afraid to be herself and give the performance she wanted to give, whether it’s holding a snake on her neck or wearing more provocative outfits that people would criticize her for, even though she is just being herself.”
Even though Spears arose on the pop scene two decades ago (the early 2000s), she never really fell off. Hoffner said, “She has gotten older but is still so influential and her music is still really big.”
photo courtesy of Wikimedia Public Domain
Kaplan agreed, saying, “Whenever I go anywhere I love to put on Britney’s albums because she always puts me in a better mood. Her music is part of the soundtrack of whatever I am going through.”
Spears and other influential female stars of the 2000s, such as Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian, were often not taken seriously by the public due to the media’s portrayal of them as “bad girls.”
The 2000s tabloids made money off of her personal struggles by plastering photos of her on magazine covers with phrases like “Help Me” or “Mommy’s Crying.”
Britney Spears was depicted as out of control and unprofessional. When Jamie Spears petitioned for conservatorship over his daughter, the public had been primed to trust that the conservatorship was necessary.
Maggie Scott, teaching assistant at LWHS, was a teenager at the peak of Spears’ fame. Scott shared that even though she was not particularly tuned in to pop culture at the time, Spears’ impact on broader culture for teenage girls shone through.
Scott said, “There was a way that these women were painted out as being trashy and bad role models by the media. I think that a lot of that had to do with misogyny and other negative ideas people have about young women.”
It took a while for the public to fairly and compassionately reevaluate their concept of Spears and recognize the injustice of her situation. It is hard to imagine a prominent male artist being controlled the same way Spears was; no matter how wild or unpredictable he seems to be, he would not be viewed as “hysterical” or “unstable.”
Kaplan said, “Many people who were not fans didn’t understand. They were used to hearing about the way she was portrayed in the media as being crazy, or whatever, but now people finally see that she was a victim of this terrible thing.”
