Sorry, Britney, we all failed you miserably
I shouldn’t have felt schadenfreude during Britney Spears’ public meltdown in 2007. None of us should have. I’m #sorrybritney, and I really mean it.
The new documentary “Framing Britney Spears” (produced by the New York Times and out now on Hulu) revisits that time in Spears’ life, making a case for how the collective culture failed her. In 2007, Spears was a 26yearold pop star who had been worldfamous for a decade. Hits such as “Baby One More Time” and “Oops! ... I Did It Again” allowed Spears to straddle a carefully crafted public image that was part girl next door, part sexualized male fantasy of the girl next door.
From the beginning of her music career, there was a debate about whether this teen pop star was wholesome enough. Those discussions intensified as she matured, took her first forays into dating and did other things the rest of us experience away from paparazzi. By 2007, she was a mother of two in the midst of a divorce and dealing with postpartum depression.
The era was the height of aughts tabloid culture, and her every public move was stalked. The narrative was that irresponsible Spears was suddenly biting the hand of the celebrity that fed her. Much of that coverage reeks of sexism, classism (owing to her family’s bluecollar roots) and nasty overall condescension.
The culmination of the star’s problems that year involved Spears’ publicly shaving her head and her father, Jamie, assuming legal authority over his daughter through a conservancy. Accusations that the conservancy was against Spears’ wishes led to the birth of the #freebritney movement, which the documentary also explores. A recent court decision sided with Spears’ petition to remove her father from making financial decisions over her holdings.
At the time, I had no patience for the Spears nonsense playing out on TMZ, in Us Weekly and even serious news networks. I was newly out of college and taking my first steps into adulthood: I was also encountering a lot of weird antiMillennial sentiment amid the “grownups.” My peers and I were dismissed demographically as unreliable, entitled and immature. When I saw photos of Spears partying hard with the other itcelebs of the time, including Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, driving with her baby on her lap or giving less than articulate interviews defending herself, I would think “Brit, this isn’t helping” and get frustrated that this was the most famous member of my generation. Once Spears hit bottom and was taken under conservancy, I did feel a kind of spiteful glee that the adults were now going to make her behave like the rest of us.
The timing of this documentary was perfect for many of us to have revelations about how we viewed Spears and other young female celebrities at the time. After #MeToo made us reevaluate how celebrity culture has treated women, some of us are rightly creeped out by how objectifying and exploitative the discussion was around young women in the spotlight. Some of this discussion was even to the women’s faces, as shown in clips of Matt Lauer’s patronizing 2006 interview with Spears and David Letterman’s meanspirited 2013 interview with Lohan, both recently shared widely online.
We’re also in a moment where, after a year of life under COVID, many of us have become more empathetic and aware of other people’s suffering, even celebrities. Hilton has also had a cultural reevaluation in recent months with the documentary “This Is Paris,” revealing details of the abuse Hilton was subjected to in boarding school, a trauma she feels shaped her media image.
But honestly, it shouldn’t have taken 14 years and a pandemic for us to acknowledge that these women did not deserve to be thrown like sacrifices onto the altar of toxic fame.
Britney, I really am sorry I followed the intrusive coverage of you at that time, and I’m even more sorry I judged you. I’m sorry that awful period is still impacting your life today. #Freebritney and every other young woman celebrity culture has tried to cannibalize.