A toxic situation: Why the Britney Spears conservatorship saga tells a bigger story

Too ill to run her own life but well enough to perform for thousands? Rosemary McLeod shares her thoughts on Britney Spears’ fight for freedom.

Britney Spears became an “unperson” after a public mental health crisis. Thirteen years ago, at the age of 26, she became like Rapunzel, locked up and guarded by her father, under a peculiar Californian law that may change because of her case.

No one saw her current moment of public rebellion coming, and it seems no one saw the pitfalls in depriving her of her freedom through a conservatorship that has robbed her of her youth and important years of personal growth. You don’t grow when you’re stifled, and money means nothing if you’re not allowed to use it.

The Closest Thing to Conservatorship

The closest thing we have to conservatorship is power of attorney. Both usually involve people who can’t look after themselves due to old age or mental incompetence. In Britney’s case, her $60 million fortune was at stake, complicating things along with her family dynamics. One family friend heard her father, Jamie Spears, shouting, “I am Britney Spears!” when it all began.

This raises the question: Who was she? Who is anyone when they’re prevented from making mistakes?

Freedom and Mistakes

American show business is filled with extreme behavior. Johnny Depp, despite his recent court drama, remains the glamorous face of Dior’s Sauvage. Hard living and great wealth often go hand in hand. Stars rise high and fall low, just as we do.

Freedom includes making mistakes, taking drugs, going broke, being arrogant, throwing public tantrums, smashing paparazzi cameras, or shaving your head—as Britney once did, as did Sinead O’Connor before her. It must include the freedom to have your IUD removed, which Britney says she’s forbidden to do, even though she’d like another baby.

Britney’s Protests

Her current boyfriend has lasted five years; he had to be vetted by her father before they got seriously involved. She protests having her friends vetted, being made to take medication, and seeing mental health workers chosen for her. She protests having to get permission to do anything at all—who wouldn’t?

Stardom involves freedoms, like her first marriage, which lasted 55 hours, and her second, with two children in the space of a year. She filed for divorce after the second child was born, which is not a happy story but surely not uncommon in a world full of single mothers and divorce.

An Unexplained Paradox

An unexplained paradox in Britney’s story is that while she’s been judged too ill to run her own life and fortune, she’s been deemed well enough to produce hit recordings, perform in front of large audiences on world tours, and generate significant income from business deals.

That money pays a retinue of people, starting with her father, lawyers (she pays for his as well as hers), and mental health workers who haven’t done a brilliant job if they don’t think she’s fit for real life after all these years in their care.

The company in charge of Britney’s money has now asked the court to be removed from that responsibility. Her father says he’s withdrawn from close monitoring of his daughter and given that role to a woman. That woman says she wants out now that she’s heard Britney say she doesn’t want her.

No one, it seems, asked Britney what she wanted, or maybe heard what she said. When people are put into care—jailed, in welfare homes, poor, addicted, homeless, or judged to have mental illness—they lose their voice and with it, the right to answer.

Without freedom, like Britney, we are unpeopled.