Britney Spears.
Photo: Image Group LA / Walt Disney Television via Getty
Recently, a familiar refrain has reverberated online: a call to #FreeBritney Spears, from … what, exactly? Britney Spears isn’t currently free?
According to some fans, no; not as long as she remains under legal guardianship which, according to this faction, has held her hostage for more than a decade.
Since 2008, Spears, now 38, has been under his father’s tutelage, a decision attributed to his alleged “collapse” in the previous year. During the time that the agreement has been in force, some of her followers have tried to get her out of there. The hashtag itself is not new, but some believe that Spears has recently been sending encrypted messages through social media, pleading with her followers to help her escape. Now these fans are calling on the White House to end the conservatorship.
When a person is deemed unable to make his or her own decisions, usually due to a mental disability, a court can grant that authority to a conservator. Basically, this person functions as a guardian, assuming control over the person’s finances, or health matters, or, as in the case of Spears, full legal responsibility for the adult’s life. As such, Spears’ father Jamie and an attorney, Andrew Wallet, have controlled her approximately $ 60 million fortune. Jamie is also reportedly negotiating Britney’s business. Her court-appointed attorney, Stanton Stein, has insisted that Spears “is always involved in every career and business decision, period,” but some fans don’t buy it. Jamie Spears, who admitted last year that her relationship with Britney “has always been tense,” has the power to control the visitors her daughter receives. So, right now, the goal of the #FreeBritney movement is to lift the guardianship when it’s considered, on August 22, or at least put it in a position to hire your own attorney.
In 2007, Spears finalized her divorce from Kevin Federline, who applied for and obtained custody of their two children. Federline claimed that Spears had behaved erratically, shaving his head; breaking the window of a paparazzo car; a series of highly publicized emotional incidents, apparently triggered by intense and unrelenting scrutiny by the media and substance abuse. In January 2008, Spears was involuntarily admitted to a psychiatric hospital for the second time. Her father and Wallet obtained a temporary conservatorship in February of that year, which eventually became permanent. Jamie left office in 2019, for “personal health reasons,” and passed to her care manager, Jodi Montgomery.
Only Britney Spears really knows how Britney Spears feels, but she has recently insisted that she is totally fine. In 2008, however, a recording captured by Rolling Stone Spears was in the background, saying, “Basically I want to get my life back … I want to be able to drive my car.” I want to be able to live in my house alone. I want to be able to say who my security guard will be. “And in 2009, she reportedly traveled to a lawyer’s office with a Pollockzzo, intending to fight the conservatorship.
But in recent years, Spears’ career has undergone a kind of transformation, thanks in part to a successful residency in Las Vegas. In 2016, the New York Times He reported that his conservatorship had become more akin to a “protective bubble” than a “cage.” The deal has become an “accepted fact of life,” people close to the pop star said, allowing her to focus on her music and her family. And a three-month investigation by Los Angeles Times In 2019, which certainly did not include comments from his “inner circle,” he found “no independent evidence that Spears was being harmed.” In an April Instagram post that year, Spears asked her concerned fans to withdraw: “You may not know this about me,” she wrote, “but I’m strong and stand up for what I want!”
But since 2008, he has recorded and released new music: multiple studio albums and, more recently, the single. Mood ring – I did a massive world tour and took concerts. As Nylon points out, this all points to a functional and functional artist who is doing well, thanks. And yet, Spears has been indebted to other adults, supposedly even when she wants to do something as simple as leaving her home.
More or less as soon as the guardianship was put in place, Spears fans started coming together to reverse it. More than a decade later, that movement (yes, it is a movement; its members appear in court hearings in person, holding posters and organizing something) is strengthening, having regained momentum in 2019.
Earlier that year, as Vulture reported, Spears canceled his residency at “Britney: Domination” in Las Vegas, explaining that his father’s recent hospitalization for a broken colon, which Spears said nearly killed him, meant he needed to be with his family. This announcement appeared on her normally active Instagram account, which was later obscured. Wallet then requested revocation of her guardianship, warning of possible harm to Spears if her name remained in the settlement. AND! In April, Spears returned to Instagram, shared a post on self-care, and took “a little time.” Later that day, fans learned that she had been in a mental health center for a week, having (allegedly) verified “emotional distress” herself in the wake of her father’s health problems.
Soon after, an anonymous paralegal who claimed to have worked at the Spears conservatorship leaked a different story to the podcast. Britney’s Gram. What really happened, this person said, was that Jamie Spears withdrew Britney from the residency trial when she stopped taking her medication and placed her in the mental health center months earlier than reports suggested. Britney subsequently returned to Instagram to tell fans “everything is fine,” but for the subset that she doesn’t think is allowed to make her own content or post freely, those guarantees were not uniformly compelling.
Throughout the quarantine, fans believe that Spears has been sending encrypted messages through social media. The singer has been active (as always) for the past few months, posting dance routines and exercise videos (remember: the one where she burned her gym) and inspirational quotes, and the #FreeBritney contingent claims she is asking for help. As NME reports, Spears has responded to fans’ prompts on a few occasions. For example, when she posted the following video of herself … mostly walking back and forth in a yellow top, soon after a fan told her to “wear a yellow shirt in your next video if you need help.”
Similarly, someone also left a comment on one of his Instagrams telling him to “post pigeons if you were in trouble,” and then posted this. Of course, Spears’ posts generate thousands of comments, and who knows how many (if any) really look.
And then his former photographer leaked a letter saying Spears wrote to him in 2009, claiming that his father “lied and cheated on him.”
In addition to all of this, the conservatorship is reviewed on August 22, and Lynne Spears, Britney’s mother, has also filed a formal request for greater participation in her daughter’s financial decisions. At least, it seems like #FreeBritney will be with us for a little bit longer.
