Putting Britney Spears’ “breakdown” into context: why it doesn’t prove she’s mentally unstable
Less than a year ago, I published a blog post overviewing the on-going drama surrounding Britney Spears’ conservatorship. At the time, we were months into the #FreeBritney movement’s peak* and I was trying to sort through all the bullshit and suspicious activity to explain why Britney’s then 11-year (now 12-year) long conservatorship was concerning: though legally deemed incapable of taking care of herself, and therefore in need of a conservator (a legal guardian) to make all her major life decisions, her career had taken no real breaks since…well ever. By 2019, people around her began indicating problems with her team, her own rights to defend herself in court had seemingly been blocked for years, and thousands of people were still making an obscene amount of money off her work, maybe benefiting directly from her captivity.
What’s hard about discussing the life and conservatorship of Britney Spears is that her entire life, especially the last 12 years, has been shrouded in so much mystery that it’s impossible to organize any pieces of it into a reasonable narrative. We just don’t know what’s been going on, but fans who’ve seen enough to become critical of the situation have tried to connect all the dots for themselves.
This is why the #FreeBritney movement is somewhat of a mess. There are so few hard facts to lean on that fans are forced to speculate which can lead to some wild conclusions that cost the rest of the movement credibility.
With such little concrete evidence, I understand why mainstream journalists wouldn’t want to touch this topic with a ten-foot pole, especially as we get into murky territory regarding Britney’s privacy and the way we talk about mental illness (which many stans–not all–in the #FreeBritney fight have not been totally sensitive to); but as Britney’s conservatorship goes on and coverage on her continues referencing it, no mainstream publication has done a deep-dive contextualizing the events that led up to the conservatorship being put in place, despite this information being far more widely available than events post-conservatorship.
Every explainer piece you read about #FreeBritney and the conservatorship takes the issue of how Britney was placed into one for granted: we all remember 2007, so what else is there to talk about? She shaved her head, got 5150’d, sometimes spoke in bad British accents, and voila: conservatorship.
The popular conclusion is that Britney went “crazy,” and of course people took drastic actions to protect her, but the truth is much more complicated.
I don’t want to speculate on what mental illness Britney has, if she has one at all, but if we’re going to question what warrants such a strict guardianship, we should try to get a clear idea of the circumstances of Britney’s most public struggles. If 2007 prompted many to decide that Britney was “crazy,” we should, at the very least, question that narrative–not to prove that she does or doesn’t have a mental illness, but to speculate on if her public struggles actually justified the removal of her rights given what we know of the external factors of her “breakdown.”
The first thing to acknowledge is how Britney’s career started. After years on The Mickey Mouse Club as a child, “…Baby One More Time” became an international hit when Britney was just 16 years old. Even before the conservatorship, questions of control have plagued Britney’s career since the beginning, becoming a star as a minor under the legal authority of her parents.
What fame and questionable autonomy have done for Britney Spears’ mental health is still up for debate. This is especially true when we consider the sexualization of Britney from a young age–first in the “…Baby One More Time” video, dressed up as a sexy schoolgirl, then most notably on the cover of Rolling Stone, where a then-17-year-old Britney graced her first cover in nothing but underwear whilst holding a stuffed Teletubby (other pictures from the photoshoot include a lingerie-clad Britney standing in front of her dolls and stuffed animals, or next to a tiny pink bicycle with the word “Baby” printed on the back of her absolutely tiny white shorts).
The article amongst the photos begins:
“Britney Spears extends a honeyed thigh across the length of the sofa, keeping one foot on the floor as she does so. Her blond-streaked hair is piled high,exposing two little diamond earrings on each ear lobe; her face is fully made-up, down to carefully applied lip liner. The BABY PHAT logo of Spears’ pink T-shirt is distended by her ample chest,and her silky white shorts — with dark blue piping — cling snugly to her hips. She cocks her head and smiles receptively.”
Iconic as the interview and images are, there is something a little worrying about Britney Spears arriving onto the scene as a simultaneous child star and sex symbol, and this is where the narratives spun by Britney’s team became suspect. Unwilling to take responsibility for the fact that the adults around her allowed Britney to cultivate a sexualized image whilst underage, the alleged story behind the photoshoot has always been that the whole thing was Britney’s idea; a narrative of her locking her parents and manager out of the shoot has become somewhat of a folktale within the Britney standom.
Let’s put aside the fact that teams of fully-grown adults still had to approve of the photos for them to be published, Britney’s later statements challenge the original account, telling GQ in 2003,
“[David LaChapelle] came in and did the photos and totally tricked me… They were really cool but I really didn’t know what the hell I was doing. And, to be totally honest with you, at the time I was 16, so I really didn’t. I was back in my bedroom and I had my little sweater on and he was like, ‘Undo your sweater a little bit more.’ The whole thing was about me being into dolls and in my naive mind, I was like, ‘Here are my dolls!’ and now I look back and I’m like ‘Oh my gosh, what the hell?’ But he did a very good job of portraying me that way. It certainly wasn’t peaches and cream.”
Britney’s discomfort with her image and trouble adjusting to newfound fame wasn’t all that hidden. In the first Rolling Stone story, she admits to sleeping in her mother’s bed due to fans lurking outside her bedroom window. A following Rolling Stone article and interview reveals more unease:
“‘I’ve been finding that there are a lot of older guys in the audience lately…The other night we had a show, and I was walking around before I go off, and this guy jumps up on the stage, takes his shirt off and comes running. I think the crowd thought it was supposed to happen, but security jumped on the stage and got him off.’...
So you ask Spears, the girl, what she thinks of older men who respond to her more sexual image.
‘I don’t like to think about that…I don’t think about that. I don’t want to be part of someone’s Lolita thing. It kind of freaks me out.’”
When Britney stated early on that she was planning to wait until marriage for sex, much of her media coverage revolved around her alleged virginity and (adult) interviewers weren’t shy in asking her about it–even while she was a minor.
Once disgruntled ex Justin Timberlake revealed in 2002 that Britney had, in fact, been sexually active, her relationship with the media changed forever. Outlets once obsessed with covering her fetishized abstinence became even more frighteningly obsessed with twisting Britney’s persona into that of a tabloid villain. Rumors of extreme partying, including accusations of drug use, were gradually dirtying her public image, and the slut-shaming that followed Timberlake’s break-up song, “Cry Me a River,” worsened Britney’s reputation with reports that Britney was enjoying the company of men in less committal ways.
On January 3rd, 2003, following a long night of partying, Britney got hitched in Vegas to a childhood friend, Jason Alexander, from her hometown of Kentwood, Louisiana. The whole thing, from signing the wedding papers to finalizing the annulment, lasted barely over two full days, but the images of Britney at the alter in a crop top, ripped jeans, and a baseball cap standing next to a “nobody” from Louisiana plastered magazine covers far longer, confirming for many that Britney was just a trashy redneck after all.
When she met backup dancer Kevin Federline, Britney seemed immediately eager to walk down the aisle again. The early days of their love affair are exhaustingly documented in Britney’s brief reality show, Britney and Kevin: Chaotic.
By many standards, Chaotic, was not very good television. It was shot almost exclusively via handheld camera, with sloppy angles and unnecessary zooms that could make plenty of viewers nauseous. It also features no real storylines, every episode blending into one another like a collection of home videos rather than a narrative meant to be shared with an audience.
But that doesn’t mean all the criticisms were warranted.
Following roughly three years of public blunders, critics were ready to trash anything Britney, and reviews got nasty fast. Annie Barrett for Entertainment Weekly nitpicked a scene covering Britney’s fear of flying, writing “One time, Britney said, her plane ‘just dropped out of the sky!’ Okay, then how is she still alive?... She’s like really smart, y’all.” Ed Gonzalez for Slant wrote, “Britney has campaigned for Proactiv, but she’s unlikely to do so again after the folks at the anti-acne cream’s company take a look at what all that sweaty Federline sex has done to her face,” as well as, “Chaotic evokes a vagina devouring everything in its path,” whatever that means.
Britney and Kevin became engaged three months after meeting and married roughly three months after that. Her choice in men, the hot mess of Chaotic, and the fact that K-Fed had just left his then-pregnant girlfriend made Britney even bigger fodder for negative attention as a nitwit, washed-up celebrity, and homewrecker.
In August 2005, Britney gave birth to her first child, followed by a second a little over a year later. Media scrutiny continued, this time attacking Britney’s competence as a mother. Every move she made was criticized, even a short stumble on the street while holding her child. A post for the Daily Mail describes the incident as dramatically as possible:
“As she walked to her car, her trousers appeared to get tangled in her open-toed shoes just as she tried to step around a pothole, according to witnesses.
As Britney stumbled, her son's head whipped back in a ‘violent manner,’ his chubby arms desperately reached for his mother and his tiny hat was flung to the ground, according to the New York Post.
Significantly, she managed to avoid spilling even a drop of her drink.
Fortunately, Britney's quick-thinking bodyguard was on hand, and he caught Sean Preston before his head hit the floor.”
I implore you to watch one of the videos of her stumble because it’s as simple as that: a stumble–a stumble that happened, by the way, as Britney navigated her way through a sea of paparazzi, all flashing lights into her eyes and barely leaving a path two feet ahead of her (also note: her bodyguard did not save her son, as the Daily Mail claims. Britney caught him from falling all on her own, but it sells more magazines to paint her as a helpless, ineffective mother whose kids are only alive because a big strong man happened to be around to protect them from her mistakes).
By 2006, Chaotic was over. Britney hadn’t released music in three years or toured in two, and after the birth of her first son, she didn’t do any interviews for nine months. Her career was on a total hiatus, but coverage of her life was increasing daily. In June, Britney started voicing actual fear for her safety, telling Matt Lauer in a tell-all interview:
Britney: “It’s not just like how it used to be where they would just like take your picture, give you respect and then you’d walk by. It’s like scary. They just come out of nowhere. And you’re like… ‘oh my gosh.’”
Lauer: “Without giving anything away, you live in a house that’s surrounded by a fence. You have a gate. You’ve got security, you’ve got a detail— people who are here all the time. Without that, you would feel vulnerable.”
Britney: “And I still have helicopters that come twice a day.”
Lauer: “Just trying to get a picture of you at the pool?”
Britney: “Just anything. And they put the captions on their magazines, ‘Baby in danger’ and stuff like that, which is really silly. But I wouldn’t be in danger if I didn’t have, like, this impactful thing around me all the time… It’s kind of scary. I can’t really leave my home right now.”
Most of the reaction to this interview focused on how non-glamorous Britney looked, a hang-up many had about her transformation from sexed-up teen pop icon to a mother just trying to live her life.
Britney was likely sick of being a sexy pop idol and moved her attention to the thing that really mattered to her–her children–but the fantasy Britney had of her family came crashing down when her relationship with Kevin Federline dissolved mid-to-late 2006, with Britney filing for divorce from Kevin in November.
Britney says in For the Record:
“I handled [the breakup with Justin Timberlake] a lot better than the one with Kevin. With Kevin, ‘cause I had two children with him, I did not know what to do with myself. I built my dream home in Malibu, a huge house and a pool and a huge yard for the kids, and I did everything for them… My world was that… I think I married for the wrong reasons… Instead of following my heart, and like doing something that made me really happy, I just did it for the sake of the idea of everything. It just led me on a weird path… and when it ended, I felt so alone. I didn’t really wanna think about the reality of it… I never really faced it and I just ran.”
The strangest of Britney’s public behavior begins shortly after this period, fueled by a breakup, a heated custody battle, and nonstop public scrutiny.
By late 2006, Britney was regularly seen partying, often with other “bad girls” of trashy tabloids, like Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan. She explains in For the Record:
“I wanted to stay busy. I went to Miami, trying to find a place. I went here and there and people started thinking that I was doing drugs. And it didn’t help staying in LA, wherever I went, having two infant babies, 30 cars outside your house, I couldn’t go anywhere. It was: I’m either a prisoner in my home or I’m gonna travel to Miami or New York and get out for like a week or two and then come back.”
She was gaining a reputation as a party girl, but maybe her biggest infraction was how unashamed she was about it. In 2007, when Vanessa Hudgens became a victim of a hack that publicized private nude photographs of herself, she was issuing apologies and expressing “regret” regarding a situation she had no control over. When photographers shoved cameras up Britney Spears’ skirt, she made no such amends when caught without underwear, even portraying the paparazzi as “pervs” in a later music video.
Britney’s image had always been sexual, but the Britney of the late ‘90s was coy. In response to the “…Baby One More Time” sexy schoolgirl controversy, she acted as if the sexuality never occurred to her (and maybe it genuinely hadn’t), proclaiming, “All I did was tie up my shirt!”
By the mid-2000s, any feigned modesty was gone. If the world started turning on her in 2003 with the revelation she had had sex, things could only get worse once she was caught with ripped fishnets, a cigarette in her hand, and questionable company by her side.
Everything Britney did was being picked apart, big or small. A favorite example is from a 2007 US Weekly article, accusing Britney of having “failed as a mother,” while also taking issue with her choice, on three occasions, to wear a long shirt as a dress–you know, like a whore. Because of the increased fascination in discovering/inventing any and every fault in Britney Spears, coverage of her life became a round-the-clock business. Simple trips to the gas station became nearly impossible with swarms of camera-armed men there to cover her every move at every moment.
In January of 2007, Britney lost her aunt Sandra to ovarian cancer. Lynne Spears described Sandra as a “second mom” to Britney in Lynne’s book, someone Britney often sought refuge with as a child when her parents’ marriage became increasingly toxic. Following Sandra’s death, Britney was estranged from her family and there was no refuge from the chaos surrounding her.
In February 2007, Britney shaved her head at a salon in Tarzana, California. No one exactly knows why. One theory is that her extensions were too tight and her remedy was removing all her hair; others think it was done to avoid a hair follicle drug test in her custody case. The latter explanation would make sense if she did it in the privacy of her own home, but she didn’t. It was a public spectacle in full view of the paparazzi; the salon’s owner even claims her bodyguards opened the blinds for paps to get better photos. Britney allegedly told paparazzi outside the salon, “I did this because of you.”
A year later, Britney said in For The Record:
“Like I was going through so much artificial stuff with my kids and with Kevin and all that stuff at the time and he had just left me and I was devastated, you know. And people thought that it was me going crazy and stuff like that but people shave their heads all the time. I was going through a lot but it was just kind of like me feeling a form of a little bit of rebellion or feeling free or you know shedding stuff that had happened.”
Britney may have been slightly off in claiming people shave their heads “all the time,” but a drastic hair change during a transitional period of someone’s life is so not-uncommon it’s become a whole movie trope.
How the public has fixated on this incident as an indicator of Britney’s “mental breakdown” has little to do with a loss of Britney’s sanity and much to do with the loss of her once pristine image. She wasn’t a hot, young, blonde sex symbol anymore, but only because she chose not to be–a choice the public and media were quick to label as “crazy.”
Her strange behavior continued throughout the year, the next big incident coming a few days later when Britney attacked a paparazzo's car with an umbrella.
The images of a newly-bald Britney physically lashing out at a photographer of course did more damage to her reputation and convinced many that she had lost her mind, but most who published the photos chose to omit their context: the man whose car Britney attacked had followed her, among other photographers, for hours. Britney and her cousin begged them to leave her alone as Britney drove to her ex-husband’s house during a custody dispute. When Britney was denied entry into K-Fed’s house, she snapped, and it’s hard to blame her for lashing out at a man literally stalking her to document her humiliation.
Months later, she wrote a sarcastic apology on her website,
“I apologize to the pap for a stunt that was done 4 months ago regarding an umbrella. I was preparing my character for a role in a movie where the husband never plays his part so they switch places accidentally. I take all my roles very seriously and got a little carried away. Unfortunately I didn’t get the part.”
By the end of March, things were not looking good for Britney. She was fully estranged from most of her family, and while Britney and Kevin briefly agreed to 50/50 custody, Britney’s time was steadily decreased following traffic violations and accusations of drug use.
Around this time, Britney met Sam Lutfi–a man who deserves the bulk of attention when discussing Britney’s “breakdown,” yet rarely gets it.
What Lutfi was before Britney is unclear. He has two production credits pre-2007 on IMDb, but as far as I know, he’s never been known as a producer. Lutfi seems to just become whatever he is when he meets Britney, and the circumstances of even this are a mystery. Most sources say they met in a nightclub in 2007, presumably becoming close after that. Eventually, Lutfi wiggled his way into becoming known as Britney’s “manager,” however no physical contract between the two was ever signed and the control Lutfi took of Britney’s life reached far past her career.
Lynne Spears writes in her book,
“Sam Lutfi came into my daughter’s life when she was at her most vulnerable. Brokenhearted after losing custody of her precious boys, she was sad, floundering, ripe (if you ask me) for a predator to come along… defenseless and exposed, she was much more open than she ever would have been to this man, who rode in on a white horse, personable, charming, and with an air of authority, promising her he would help her get her kids back, that he would get her life back on track.”
Lutfi’s purported duties became keeping Britney sober, controlling who she could and couldn’t associate with, overseeing her medications, and stopping her from leaving her house unattended. In a way, he was like her first unofficial conservator but more obviously abusive.
Especially after the revitalization of #FreeBritney, Lutfi has tried to portray himself as a positive influence in Britney’s circle. According to him, when the two met, Britney’s life was spiraling out of control, dominantly caused by Britney’s alleged substance abuse, though Britney’s drug use has never been proven.
Lutfi claims to have come up with a “system” altering Britney’s relationship to the press, essentially making deals with photographers in which he would inform paparazzi of where Britney would be and when, and in return, they would agree to stay outside a certain distance of Britney’s home and always leave her a parking space wherever they were informed to meet her.
Lynne refers to paparazzi in her book as “footsoldiers” for Lutfi, stating of his influence:
“Sam was in complete control of her life, labeling himself her friend, her manager, her life coach. Everyone deferred to him–Britney’s business manager, her record company, her lawyers–they had no choice.”
Lynne goes on to make even more serious allegations, claiming that Lutfi would hide Britney’s cell phones (as well as hide her chargers and cut the house phone wires) to control her contact with the outside world. He also allegedly disabled several of Britney’s cars to prevent her from leaving her home without approval. On occasion, Lutfi would allegedly hide Britney’s dog, London, then bring the dog out of hiding “and act like some kind of savior” once Britney began crying. Even more disturbing, Lutfi has been accused of drugging Britney without her consent or knowledge. After meeting with Britney to mend their relationship, Lynne recounts:
“Britney was so agitated she couldn’t stop moving. She cleaned the house. She changed her clothes, many times. She also changed her three dogs’ clothes several times. We talked, but it was as if she wasn’t really there. She spoke in a tone and with the level of understanding of a little girl.
Britney then picked up a bottle of pills and read part of the label. ‘What does insomnia mean?’ she asked. Sam told her that the pills will help her stay awake. Sam told Jackie and me that he grinds up Britney’s pills, which were on the counter, and included Risperdal and Seroquel, and puts them in her food. He said that was the reason she had been quiet for the last three days. She had been drugged and asleep. He said that her doctor was trying to get her into a sleep-induced coma so that they could give her other drugs to treat her…
Maybe Sam could see I was distressed. He encouraged us to relax and ‘do tequila shots.’ Jackie [Lynne’s friend] and I protested. Britney seemed to follow our lead, but Sam kept pushing. He got out some wine and suggested that we ‘all do toasts.’ He offered us tumblers. We took the wine and went into another room, but Britney objected and said that she wanted a nicer glass with a long stem. She had caught onto the fact that if she drank something from his hand, she could sleep for days, so she was actually stalling. Sam found a proper wine glass and poured one for Britney while our backs were turned. They then joined us in the other room, but Britney refused to drink her wine and asked to drink mine.”
Months later, on January 4th of 2008, Britney was placed into an involuntary psychiatric hold. On this day, Britney was allowed monitored visitation with her sons, Jayden and Preston, until 7 pm when a bodyguard for Kevin Federline was scheduled to pick the children up. When the bodyguard arrived, sources claim the court-appointed child monitor placed Preston in a car, while Britney locked herself in a bathroom with Jayden, refusing to relinquish custody. After some time, the child-monitor called the police.
Shortly after, multiple police officers, as well as fire trucks, two ambulances, four helicopters, and a whole bunch of paparazzi, arrived onto the scene. Britney was put into an ambulance via gurney and taken to a hospital for psychiatric evaluation.
Recently, a letter allegedly written by Britney in the third person was leaked to the Daily Mail**, in which Britney apparently claims,
“Her behavior when her children got taken away because of her locking herself in the bathroom is understandable considering her friend at the door kept telling her the cops are leaving, don’t worry, stay in the bathroom. She was lied to and set up.”
Lynne claims something similar in her book, writing,
“[Lutfi] told me Britney had been visiting with the boys, but when it was time for them to go home to Kevin’s with Lonnie, their bodyguard, she locked herself and little Jayden in the bathroom. Later I found out Sam had told Britney that Kevin had called and told her she could keep the boys longer.”
Britney was released from the hospital after about 24 hours.
Later, on January 31st, Britney was taken in an ambulance on a 5150 hold again. Sources claim she was a danger to herself, however, what specifically triggered this decision is still a bit unclear.
Lynne Spears seems to have her own opinion concerning who’s responsible for this event. She writes in her book:
“When Sam called, he said he had been tipped off that somebody was coming to try to commit Britney again. ‘What are you talking about?’ I said. ‘They can’t take her like that.’
‘Yes they can,’ he said, acting as if it was out of his hands. But when I got to the house, Sam was nowhere to be found, something I thought was very odd at the time. In a flash of panic, I knew who was really behind this.
‘Britney, get out of here, now!’ I shouted to her. ‘Sam wants you to be committed again! He says there are people coming to get you!’ Sam showed up then and looked at me as if I had lost my mind. Poor Britney didn’t know who to believe.”
Implying Sam Lutfi orchestrated both of Britney’s 5150 holds is quite an accusation, but it’s not without merit. Not only do we have Lynne and Britney’s (alleged in Britney’s case) statements, Lutfi’s behavior outside his involvement with Britney paints the picture of a man incredibly manipulative and abusive.
Lutfi has a habit of involving, or attempting to involve, himself with “troubled” celebrities, unsuccessfully trying to insert himself into the lives of Lindsay Lohan and Paris Jackson and successfully inserting himself into the lives of Amanda Bynes and Courtney Love.
Courtney Love met Lutfi, we believe, around 2010, officially referring to him as her “manager” in 2012. Sources close to Love have alleged that Lutfi exercised similar control in Love’s life as he did in Britney’s:
“Everything Courtney is now doing business related in her life MUST go through Sam, Courtney is completely dependent on him for everything, just as Britney was during the time he was in her life. Sam is able to charm his way into emotionally vulnerable celebrities’ lives. He can be absolutely charming, but he has a much darker side and it’s very concerning that he is now essentially running Courtney’s life.”
Like Britney, Love was dealing, at the time, with estrangement from her family, especially her daughter, Francis Bean Cobain. Sources told Radar Online, “He knows how to push Courtney’s buttons and get the reaction he wants. Frances and Courtney have no relationship whatsoever, and that won’t change until the very least Sam is out of Courtney’s life.”
(There was also a whole thing where Cobain’s ex-husband sued both Love and Lutfi for kidnapping–which you can Google if you want.)
By 2019, Love, her sister, Jaimee King, and her daughter, Cobain, were granted restraining orders from Lutfi, preventing him from contacting any of the three women and going within 100 feet of themselves, their homes, or their workplaces, Cobain claiming to have blocked eight phone numbers associated with Lutfi and moving to a confidential location to be safe.
The case with even more similarities to Britney’s is Amanda Bynes, who likewise underwent a public breakdown resulting in an on-going conservatorship overseen by a parent.
Around 2013, in the peak of Byne’s public struggles, rumors that Sam Lutfi was attempting to befriend Bynes began circulating. We don’t know how close Lutfi and Bynes became; at one point, Bynes tweeted that he was “like a brother” to her, but I don’t believe he ever acted as her manager (Bynes was “retired” at the time).
What has been alleged is that Lutfi was responsible, alongside Byne’s parents, for placing Byne’s into an involuntary psychiatric hold in 2014.
TMZ reported the incident:
“He told Amanda her car would be making 2 stops. First, to the lawyer's office in Pasadena and then to the London Hotel in West Hollywood where she would confront her parents and tell them about the lawsuit.
She never got to London, because the driver went to a Pasadena hospital which looked like an office building. Amanda thought she was going to see the lawyer but when she walked inside she was surrounded by hospital staff.”
If we accept that Lutfi is capable of orchestrating this type of intervention, the accusations against him as possibly orchestrating Britney’s 5150s seem even more likely true.
The day after her second psychiatric hold, Britney was placed into a temporary conservatorship by her father, Jamie Spears. When we look at the circumstances of Britney’s situation, whether or not this was an appropriate reaction is questionable. Did Britney require the stripping of her civil rights due to a chronic mental illness, or did Britney simply need distance from the chronic abuse in her life?
In theory, all that is none of our business. The reasoning for Britney’s conservatorship is a private, family matter; however, in the 11 years following, Britney’s team has continued expecting her audience to fund their operation. For that, an inquiry into some of the major details is fair. Why should fans pay for a next album when Britney’s conservators seem unable to prove her situation is not unjust?
The fact is, for over a decade, Britney’s team has banked on the assumptions of the general public that Britney “went crazy” from 2006-2008, and the only way to stop her from hurting herself, or others, has been to take away her freedom completely. But we have no proof that this is the case.
Yes, much of Britney’s public behavior throughout this era was odd, but it’s hard to imagine someone acting emotionally balanced while being stalked by crowds of men on a daily basis, demonized across the media for public spectacle, and manipulated (and allegedly drugged) by those closest to her.
There was no reason to expect Britney Spears to act “normal” amidst the chaos of her life. Her circumstances were just too fucked to maintain the standards inflicted upon her as a teen pop-star. For that, the supposition that Britney has a mental illness so severe to warrant a conservatorship is relatively unfounded.
If Team Britney wants fans to continue spending their money on her music, her merch, and whatever other scheme they’ve come up with to profit off her name (hello, The Zone), they had better come through with more evidence of the conservatorship’s necessity beyond vague allusions to her “struggles.”
At the end of the day, the only thing we know about Britney Spears is not that she has a chronic, inescapable mental illness, but that she’s a victim of abuse–abuse by Sam Lutfi, possibly her conservators, and the insatiable appetite of American culture to treat her downfall as public sport.
*Ok, at the time I wrote this, it seemed like #FreeBritney was calming down, however in the past four months, coverage has become exceptionally more intense. 2019 no longer counts as the #FreeBritney “peak.”
**Since publishing this blog post, Andrew Gallery, a photographer who worked on the set of the 2008 documentary, Britney Spears: For the Record, has come forward as the person who leaked this letter from Britney Spears to the Daily Mail. He alleges that Britney wrote the letter in 2008/2009 and requested its release as a message to her fans. Gallery also claims Britney’s conservators destroyed the original letter, however, he was able to make a copy, which was released in May of 2019.