Chains, Charges, and Change: What The Britney Spears Story Reveals About Our Society’s Shifting Values
For a long time, Britney Spears was the butt of pop-culture jokes. She was a reference, a symbol, and an icon - but rarely was she represented as an actual woman. Or, to put it more bluntly, it was rare for her to be portrayed as a real, individual person. Someone living life and making her own human choices and decisions based on the path in front of her.
Society dehumanized her. Now, we’re asking why that was ever allowed to happen. Here’s what we’re learning from the Britney Spears story and its revelation in the New York Times’ recent mini-doc, Framed.
Ms. Spears is an award-winning artist and pop inspiration for millions of fans across the globe (photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
Accountability Is A Conversation We Only Recently Began To Have
When we talk about accountability, we are often referring to something much deeper than words or even court appearances. Accountability is a measure of dependable, expected consequences for one’s actions.
It can also be very complicated. Britney’s story raises some profound questions that we are all on the hook for answering. Can consumers be made personally accountable for their actions - or the lack thereof? Who holds courts, parents, and cultural norms accountable? Who holds powerful men accountable when they use their power to seize narratives and go through life unquestioned and unapologetic for that theft?
Belated accountability is better than no accountability but better than that is the ability to ask these questions, answer them, and draw those answers into the way we view people’s stories and personal experiences as they play out on a public stage.
At this point, Mrs. Spears is, presumably, trying to find balance in her life. Accountability, in this case, is more a matter of apologies and sincere discussions - with a dash of overturned court cases and the heinous discrimination they represent.
This brings us to the next lesson Britney’s story has to teach us.
Women Are Abused In Many Ways - The Weaponization Of The Courts, The Culture, and The Experience Of Motherhood
Say the word ‘weapon,’ and we picture guns, crowbars, and other objects used to do bodily harm. Maybe we even picture an umbrella wielded against a pack of harassers, or the back of a hand used to strike someone when they are vulnerable.
The truth is that most of the weapons used against women are not so tangible as these. As we saw through Britney’s absolutely unimaginable experiences with losing her children to the husband who, it certainly appears, took them to punish her, or with her loss of human dignity and freedom via an immoral conservatorship, the courts are a potent weapon against women of all statures.
Alongside the court’s ability to be used in this way is our social norms’ culpability in demonizing, harassing, and dismissing women’s experiences and struggles under cruel, shallow labels. A man’s mental health crisis is a tragedy, but a woman’s crisis makes her “crazy,” “unfit,” and “reckless.”
When that woman is also a mother, the results can be horrifying. The European Convention on Human Rights stated that mothers and families have the right to be together and not to fear being torn apart for any reason, whether political, social, religious or otherwise.
This is to protect society from the weaponization of the experience of motherhood (or parenthood in general) and it acknowledges that this experience - that children - have been and will be used against their mothers as a method of punishment and discrimination against them and their social group(s).
The courts weaponized Britney’s children against her multiple times by not only removing them from her care without due proof of her mental unfitness but also by subsequently increasing her alienation from them at the behest of her estranged husband and his attorneys. Her human rights were violated.
Images were taken out of context, harassment was excused by celebrity labels, relationship narratives were seized and driven by men whose culpability was suspect from the start, and a woman’s personhood was suspended in the name of an unfolding drama that never should have occurred in the first place.
Understanding how this can happen - and admitting that it has happened - is the first step in addressing the unconscionable fact of women’s vulnerability before weapons like the law, family bonds, and cultural expectations and preventing them from continuing to be used in this way. Britney’s story is a call to action and a warning to everyone who believes in justice and the protection of our common humanity.
When it comes to women in the public eye, abuse can take on whole new - and much larger - dimension (photo courtesy of Stephen Lavoie)
Sisterhood Isn’t A Synonym For Saintliness: Sometimes Women Hurt Each Other, And Feminism Isn’t A Band-Aid
There’s a special kind of discomfort reserved for situations in which one woman betrays the trust and safety of another. As feminism has become more widespread, many of us have retreated into the image of a world where women always protect one another, support each other, and speak out on behalf of their sisters.
This is not always the case. Women betray other women, and sometimes in profoundly misogynistic ways. Britney’s story demonstrates this in a variety of ways, not least of all via the comments, questions, and assumptions of female interviewers and media personalities. Female judges let her down, too, as did female voices in the halls of government and in the back halls of studios.
These sorts of betrayals are complicated in their implications, and understanding the forces at play behind them goes beyond the scope of this article. In a general sense, Britney’s lack of female support has been a wake-up call to those of us who feel tempted to idealize femininity as a flawless alliance that never fails us. It isn’t, and it does, and if we ignore that fact then we ignore the very real consequences it can have on people’s lives and wellbeing.
The comments of MD first lady Kendel Ehrlich - who stated at a domestic violence conference that, if given the chance, she would shoot Britney Spears for being an allegedly poor role model to young women - and those of journalist Diane Sawyer, who supported sexist narratives placing Ms. Spears at fault for everything from her ex-boyfriend’s choices to the raising of children in America, are shocking.
It is shocking that few women seemed to fight for Britney’s wellbeing on the public stage during her mental health crisis or the events that followed. It is shocking that so many women publicly, enthusiastically, and baselessly ripped Ms. Spears apart for any number of unsupportable reasons, most of them deeply rooted in misogyny.
Questioning the words and actions of other women is an integral part of being a true feminist. Britney Spears’ story demonstrates precisely why such questions are urgent and necessary if we are to protect ourselves and others from abuse.
Repeat Victimization Is Common, And It Can Happen On A Grand Scale As Well As A Private One (And Often At The Same Time)
It’s well understood within the social work community that a person who has been abused or victimized once is at much greater risk for it to happen again. There are many factors that feed into this fact, many of them misunderstood by the wider society we live in.
When Britney Spears began to be sexualized at a very young age - see the comments of certain male interviewers when she was aged ten and eleven - she was being groomed, in a sense, for a life of victimization.
Grooming is not always something that happens on an individual-to-individual scale. In the case of child stars like Ms. Spears, it can happen in a broader sense, and it can be done by a culturally supported network of men and women who give their support to abusive norms and behaviors.
Britney was essentially raised by the attitudes and assumptions made about her. Her ‘handlers’ and guardians were almost always part and parcel of those assumptions, and it becomes painfully clear how harmful that fact was when you review her interviews and appearances as a minor on various shows throughout the early 2000s.
Once a person is victimized - especially if they are a child at the time - a deeply damaging process begins. Viewpoints about appropriate behavior and personal autonomy shift in subtle ways and those shifts can have a ripple effect that grows stronger over time.
If a girl is brought up with a flawed understanding of her own self, rights, abilities, and entitlements, she is much more likely to fall into the hands of opportunistic predators who will use that flawed understanding to use her. Britney’s traumatic experiences are simply one more example of how this dynamic plays out, and of how little is done about it when it does. This is an important, painful realization that we need to have.
To stop the cycle of victimization, stories need to be told and abusers disciplined, no matter who they are or how they are perceived on television or in pop culture. We owe it to every child and every woman to protect them, collectively, whether they are celebrities or anonymous Jane Does. Britney’s suffering is not and was not okay - but if we learn from it and become more vigilant, it won’t have been in vain.
Britney Spears has largely removed herself from the spotlight, recently, and is by all accounts seeking a more peaceful, healthier, and safer life for herself and her family (photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
Lastly, A Cause For Optimism: Things Are Changing And We Get To Be A Part Of The Process
The fact that exposés like the recent New York Times episode are happening is cause for hope. When we choose to scrutinize the past and reflect upon it as a society, we actively engage in the processes of change, progress, and growth.
Britney Spears’ story, while shocking, is also a chance for us to deepen our values as a community. It’s our opportunity to affirm a deeper, more informed commitment to the safety and health of women and girls everywhere, and to reflect on ourselves and our own flaws as human beings living in a complex, nuanced world.
On a personal level, I view this conversation as a symbol of the changing times. We are consciously taking the time to look back and call out the abuse that was only recently commonplace and unrecognized - we are pulling back the veil on a reality many would have been content to ignore.
As Ms. Spears pursues a life of comfort, peace, and privacy, her story may yet serve a wider purpose for our daughters and the female public figures of the next generation. It may be uncomfortable, it may cause anger and tension, but this purpose is vital to our integrity as a nation.
Hopefully, we’ve all begun to learn how to navigate this and other problem areas in our social landscape. Let’s stop covering them up and start talking - this is only the beginning of a profound and lasting movement for change.
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