Today, Explained - #FreeBritney

Episode Date: February 13, 2021

The movement to liberate Britney Spears from her conservatorship may not succeed, but it’s revealing a lot about how we treat young women. Vox’s Constance Grady explains. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. It's Today Explained. And today, February 12th, 2021, Justin Timberlake publicly apologized to Britney Spears, even though their relationship ended like 20 years ago. The apology has a lot less to do with their bygone romance and much more to do with a reckoning over how this country treats its famous young women. And Britney Spears has gone from something of a villain in this story to something much more closely resembling a hero.

The Free Britney movement deserves much of the credit for that transformation. It's a fan-driven campaign which hopes to liberate Britney from her conservatorship. Constance Grady has been covering Free Britney for Vox. So a conservatorship is a legal solution for what happens if you're an adult, but you can't make decisions for your life in your best interests. So this is something that is used if you have a mental health condition or a brain injury or maybe you're older and you're developing dementia and you're unable to care for yourself so a court will assign someone to do that for you. So Brittany went under conservatorship in 2008 and under the terms of her conservatorship in 2008. And under the terms of her conservatorship, she's not in control of her finances or her business or her personal life. So for about two years now, going back actually to

the point that the conservatorship was set in place in 2008, but most intensely for the past two years, and especially now since the release of the new documentary framing Britney Spears, fans have been speculating that the conservatorship has left Britney Spears as a prisoner in her life and that she might need to be rescued. Okay, well, let's go back to 2008 and talk about why Britney Spears was placed under this conservatorship. So if you think back to 2008, you might remember that there was just nonstop gossip coverage of Britney Spears that year. Where you going, Britney? And in 2007, especially as well, there were paparazzi following her around all the time. They would like wait outside her limo when she was going to clubs to take upskirt photos of her. And then the entire internet would discuss her underwear.

And she was starting to react back to them in increasingly more bizarre ways. She started yelling at the paparazzi in a British accent. Once she attacked a paparazzi's car with an umbrella. Don't, guys. Please, please, guys, don't do this. Don't, oh, God. Fuck you! Fuck yourself! She shaved her own head.

Chris, what happened to the hair? Which was all photographed by paparazzi. It's gone on the floor, huh? Come on! There were very famous pictures of her sort of grinning and holding up a razor to her scalp. She went in and out of rehab a few times. They photographed that too. The pictures were all over TMZ and Perez Hilton. She performed at the VMAs in 2007 in this kind of infamous

performance where she was sort of sleepwalking through it. The press discussed whether she was fat now a lot. There was just a lot going on for her. It was not a good year. So she's placed under psychiatric hold twice. What does that mean? She's put in a mental hospital and not allowed to leave. What happened? I think that one angle of what happened to Brittany that we have to hit on here is that the media industry is incredibly sexist, right? And even more so when she was coming up. There's one subject we didn't discuss.

What was that? Everyone's talking about it. Why? Well, your breasts. There is that whole narrative about whether Brittany was a real virgin and that some, like, grown adults would ask her at press conferences. Am I a virgin? And I think especially when she was with Justin Timberlake

and they never really cared about Justin Timberlake's virginity because who would? It was just about Britney in her schoolgirl uniform. And, you know, is she actually a good girl? There was this intense, very sexualized focus on her life that just wasn't there in quite the same way for her male cohort, no matter how famous they were. It's hard to imagine that that did anything good for her. And then how does the conservatorship come about? So a month after the second psychiatric

hold, her father says, these are not working long term. She'll go under a hold. A doctor will say, okay, you're fit to live your own life now. She'll go out and then she'll just spiral and it happens again. So he asked the courts for emergency temporary conservatorship over Britney. The courts grant that order and then it becomes permanent. What's Britney Spears' relationship like with her father is a weird question I never thought I'd be asking on this show, but just asked you. So we don't know tons about this for sure because Britney does not talk about her conservatorship or her relationship with her dad on the record. In fact, if you are a member of the press and you want to talk to Britney, you have to agree not to ask certain questions, including what's up with your conservatorship? How do you feel about that? But in August 2020, Britney Spears, through her lawyer, filed a petition with the court to have her father

removed as conservator and replaced with a professional caregiver. The court ended up denying that request in November 2020, and her lawyer made a statement to the court saying that Spears had told him that she was afraid of her father. Because? Yeah, they did not elaborate on that. So that's not something we necessarily know the answer to. Stuff that is public knowledge is he had some sort of physical altercation with one of his grandkids, one of Britney Spears' children in 2019, which is part of why he took a temporary leave from her conservatorship and she had a professional guardian looking after her

instead. And there are a lot of rumors flying around within Free Britney that he's had her involuntarily committed and that he's holding her captive and she's being forced to perform in order to enrich him. A lot of rumors that we really don't have any basis for necessarily, but that fans were very quick to connect that statement from her lawyer too. How does this conservatorship go from like a temporary thing to a thing that's lasted, what is it, like over a decade now? Yeah, it's been 13 years. So essentially, the conservatorship is considered a big success case, right? Are you ready for one more Vegas?

Within months of her entering this conservatorship, she's working again. She is guest starring on How I Met Your Mother. Sir, please don't yell at me, because when people yell at me, I have a tendency to start crying. Please don't do it. Abby, she's holding down these Vegas residencies. She's being a judge on The X Factor. I have one word for your performance. Hot, hot, hot.

And she's able to see her kids again. She doesn't have to worry about the custody battles that she was caught up in. So from the judge's perspective, every time that this case has been reviewed, they've said like, wow, this is such a success story. She's doing really well. Let's keep doing what we're doing. Floor, DJ, what you, what you waiting for? Has she ever spoken out directly about this 10-plus year conservatorship? The only time Britney has talked about her conservatorship on the record was in her documentary in 2008, which is aptly titled Britney for the Record. What she said then was that it was worse than being in jail. Even when you go to jail,

there's always the time that you know that you're going to get out, you know. But in this situation, it's never ending. There's no excitement. There's no... This conservatorship ended up back in court this week, just yesterday on Thursday. Did anything change for Brittany? So things changed very slightly for Brittany this week. What happened is back in November, a judge had appointed a financial group called Bessemer Trust to her conservatorship to manage the financial aspect of her life. And this week, the judge ruled that they would have equal power with her father in managing the financial aspect of her life. Britney has requested that her father be removed, and that is not happening right now. But he is going to have to share his responsibilities and his power over her finances with this specific group that she's requested. So for anyone out there, the Britney Spears nation,

who was hoping that this week might have been the week where this finally ended for her, didn't happen. Basically, no. And Britney's fans are not overjoyed about that. You know, I've received a bunch of angry emails from Free Britney advocates saying that, you know, the fight will continue and there needs to be more done to protect Britney from her dad. I hope that she is truly okay and that we are here to support her no matter what, no matter what she wants to do, we will support her.

I mean, I think it's a basic human rights case at the end of the day. When do we want her? Now! Her song is called, Give Me More for a reason because all you people want is more, more, more, more, more! Leave her alone! Leave, leave, leave, leave You're lucky she even performed for you, bastard! Leave Billy alone!

Please Please Leave Billy alone! Please, please me more, give me more. one digital photo frame by Wirecutter. Aura frames make it easy to share unlimited photos and videos directly from your phone to the frame. When you give an Aura frame as a gift, you can personalize it. You can preload it with a thoughtful message, maybe your favorite photos. Our colleague Andrew tried an Aura frame for himself. So setup was super simple. In my case, we were celebrating my grandmother's birthday and she's very fortunate. She's got 10 grandkids. And so we wanted to surprise her with the Aura Frame.

And because she's a little bit older, it was just easier for us to source all the images together and have them uploaded to the frame itself. And because we're all connected over text message, it was just so easy

to send a link to everybody. You can save on the perfect gift by visiting aururaFrames.com to get $35 off Aura's best-selling Carvermat frames with promo code EXPLAINED at checkout. That's A-U-R-A-Frames.com promo code EXPLAINED. This deal is exclusive to listeners and available just in time for the holidays. Terms and conditions do apply. Itance, when exactly does the free Britney hashtag sort of get going online? So there have been posts under the free Britney hashtag going back, I think, to like 2009 or something very, very early. But it doesn't become like a thing that is regularly trending until April 2019. So that is when this podcast called Britney's Gram, it's hosted by

two comedians, Tess Barker and Barbara Gray. It's focused on Britney Spears' Instagram. They receive a voicemail from someone who said that he used to be a paralegal at the law firm handling Britney Spears' conservatorship. And this guy alleges that Britney is being held captive by her family. And what is happening is disturbing to say the least. Now, I should say that no journalist has ever been able to review the claims this guy made. Tess Barker and Barbara Gray, the hosts of this podcast, said that they checked him out separately and he seemed legit to them. But no one else has ever really been able to source this

particular claim. But it really caught fire and just started spreading around the internet. This idea that Britney Spears is not a success story, that her professional work since her conservatorship began in 2008 is not like someone getting her life back on track, but someone being forced to work when she doesn't necessarily want to. Since April 2019, there have been protests in Los Angeles outside. Yes, there are literal protests during the pandemic outside of the Los Angeles courthouse where the hearings on her conservatorship happens. Fans out in force to support their favorite singer. It's the battle over Britney.

Pop star Britney Spears' parents faced off in court as they fight over conservatorship of their daughter. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. People feel very, very strongly about this. But this isn't just random fans, right? There are also like fellow celebrities getting in on this. Yeah. So the celebrity interest in the Britney Spears case really picks up in summer 2020 as this starts to become more of a subject getting discussed on celebrity gossip blogs and social media. There was a celebrity gossip Instagram called Diaprata that put together a really big post about the Free Britney movement this summer that went viral. And as that starts to go around, all of these big deal celebrities

start to discuss it. You know, Miley Cyrus is yelling free Britney at the end of her concert. Rose McGowan, who was a big deal during Me Too and advocating for that, starts to talk about how she wants to go rescue Britney. TMZ starts covering this in a lot more intensity. And as all of this is ramping up, finally, just a week ago, we get the release of the New York Times documentary, Framing Britney Spears.

She's living the life of a busy pop singer. And yet, we're also being told that she's at risk constantly. And that really pushes this issue front and center in a lot of people's minds in a way that it hadn't been before. And also, I think it adds some legitimacy to this conversation. Now it's not just happening in anonymous celebrity gossip Instagrams, right? It's happening in a documentary made by the New York Times. So all of a sudden you get people like Sarah Jessica Parker and Bette Midler tweeting out free Britney. You get someone like Billy Eichner who during the height of Britney's meltdown was pretty critical of her in public, start saying things like, wow, we're all complicit in what happened to Britney and talking about how much he regrets

the way he spoke about her before. It becomes really the center of celebrity attention in a way that it never really has been before. And this sort of culminates today with her ex-boyfriend, Justin Timberlake, coming out and apologizing to Britney. For what exactly is he apologizing? So Justin and Britney were dating for a while and they were like a power couple of the early aughts. There's that iconic photo of them in like matching all denim ensembles on a red carpet. They were everywhere. And then eventually they break up around the same time that Justin is also leaving NSYNC to begin his solo career. And then he releases a song called Cry Me a River.

And Cry Me a River is about a woman who is heavily implied to be Britney Spears, who cheats on the main character, who is heavily implied to be Justin, and breaks his heart and betrays him, and it's all just terrible. So this song becomes a huge deal and effectively serves to launch Justin Timberlake into superstardom in his solo career, and in part that's because of this sort of salacious celebrity gossip angle that, like, did Britney cheat on Justin? And this is also the point at which the press starts to really turn on Brittany. He's gone on television and pretty much said, you broke his heart. You did something that caused him so much pain, so much suffering.

What did you do? Around the same time, Justin is making the gossip show circuit, and he is talking about having slept with Britney, which is a very big deal at the time, because this is sort of the heyday of the pop star with the purity ring, right? And Britney had said on the record before that she was going to stay a virgin until she was married. So this was sort of bringing the lie to that and it was also creating a new opportunity for the media to slut shame britney in a way that it hadn't necessarily even before so this is where things start to get really dark for britney and the media turns on her oh my goodness hello ew strong brit, yeah, it was a weird time.

And in large part, it's turning on her using a script provided to it by Justin Timberlake. You know, thinking about Britney and Justin together, I mean, both of them start out as sort of like child entertainers in the Mickey Mouse Club when they're kids. And then Britney's a superstar at 17. And then she's immediately tormented by the media. And then it's straight into this conservatorship. Has she ever really been in control of her own life? Has she ever had autonomy? Yeah, I think that's a great question. And it's kind of the question that's at the center of Britney's life, right? Like way back when she first came up and that raucous question of like, is she just manufactured first was applied to her. The question was, is she in control of the material she's putting out? Is she actually making her own stuff? Is

she her own artist, right? And that question is kind of the same question that we're asking right now with her conservatorship. Is she actually in control of her own life? Does she like what she's doing? Is someone else making her choices for her? Those are the questions we've been asking about Britney Spears since she was 16 years old, and we've just kept asking them ever since. Britney Spears was a really, really giant star to the point that you don't have to have been a fan of hers to be kind of attached to her, right? You know, you think about 1998, you're just going to hear Britney in your head whether you want to or not. So she's a person that millennials grew up with and think of her as someone who, you know, rebelled against the Disney Mickey Mouse Club and took control of her own life and was someone that you aspired to be like when you grow up. And then here we are

now all grown up and Britney Spears is in her 30s and having to answer to her dad which is just not the way the story is supposed to go right so I think people feel really outraged by the violating of that narrative and they want to protect Britney and put the story back to rights again there's just this like cacophony of of support right now around freeing britney spears but it feels kind of funny to me because we still aren't really hearing from britney spears do we have any sense of like how she feels about all of this maybe positive attention she's getting now yeah so britney's response to all of this is a little bit mysterious. It's not something that she talks about in public much, possibly not something she's

necessarily allowed to talk about in public much. What we know is she issued a statement through her lawyer back last year saying that she was welcoming renewed fan interest in what was happening to her. And since the documentary broke, she released a statement onto Instagram. She does not explicitly call out either the documentary or the conservatorship in this post. But in this Instagram post, she says,

I'll always love being on stage, but I am taking the time to learn and be a normal person. I love simply enjoying the basics of everyday life. Each person has their story and their take on other people's stories. Remember, no matter what we think we know about a person's life, it is nothing compared to the actual person living behind the lens. So who really knows what she means by that? No one knows. That's the mystery of Britney Spears. She is someone who we have been asking what she thinks about all of this for years and years and years for basically her entire career. And it remains a mystery to us. She is inaccessible and unknowable.

But maybe the upshot is that we get to know a bit more about ourselves through all of this, about how and maybe why we treated Britney Spears the way we did for whatever, 10, 20 years. And maybe now there's finally this reckoning about how wrong we were to do it. Yeah. So this is one of the things when we have a big celebrity superstar like Britney Spears, it's because she gives us a way to think about ourselves, right? She is someone that we can project onto all of these ideas about what we think femininity should look like and sex and virginity and how a woman should be in the world. And what we're discovering now by looking back at the way we talked about Britney back then is we had some really messed up ideas about what women

should be like when she was coming up. And we inflicted them all on her in this really giant blown up way. But we also kind of all inflicted them all on each other too at the same time. And now by looking back and seeing in hindsight what we did to Britney, we can sort of all inflicted them all on each other too at the same time. And now by looking back and seeing in hindsight what we did to Brittany, we can sort of see what we did to ourselves as well. And that's sort of part of why this re-examination is so compelling to so many people. Have we learned anything? Have we gotten better? Do we treat young women better now than we did then? I mean, I would love to think so, but I'm sure that in 10 years, someone will be looking back and being like, wow, Constance Grady wrote some messed up stuff about

women back in the day. It's just unavoidable to be trapped in the problems of your own time. I think one thing that has changed dramatically since Britney was coming up is that it's become much more diffuse the way we abuse women. It used to be coming out of these big, major, authoritative mouthpieces. But now, instead of coming from one big authoritative figure, it comes from a million tiny little nobodies talking on Twitter and Instagram and TikTok. All of these people who are not famous and who don't have a platform, but who have just enough presence to make their

ideas and feelings known and they sort of accumulate up over time. But conversely, there's also a million nobodies out there clamoring to Free Britney. Exactly. This is a story about a girl named Lucky. Constance Grady writes about culture at Vox. You can read more about Free Britney at Vox.com. I'm Sean Ramos for them. It's Today Explained. The team includes Amina Alsadi, Will Reed,

Cecilia Lay, Muj Zaydi, Halima Shah, and Noam Hassenfeld. Fact-checking by Lulu Orozco Perez. Welcome, Lulu. Our engineers, Afim Shapiro, Jillian Weinberger is our senior advisor. Music from Breakmaster Cylinder and Noam. And Liz Kelly Nelson is Vox's editorial director of podcasts. Today Explained is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. We're off Monday

for President's Day. Back Tuesday to talk about the news. This Hollywood girl She is so lucky But why does she cry? If there is nothing To strengthen her life Why do tears come alive She's a lucky girl She's a star But she cries, cries, cries

In her lonely heart