Britney Spears and Her Long-Standing Battle With the Media

How many female musicians has the media scrutinized for seemingly no reason? I don’t think we can keep count.

From Britney Spears and Taylor Swift to Beyonce and Madonna, there is a different conversation in the media regarding men and women. While we like to think that our society has moved past the misogyny that is engrained in our culture, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

Britney Spears’ memoir, The Woman In Me, details the highs and lows of her music, performing, paparazzi, custody battles, and her infamous conservatorship. As I read the book, I couldn’t help but think of how tragic, yet familiar, stories like Spears’ are.

Many women, including Spears, find themselves victim to types of body and slut shaming that their male peers in the industry do not experience. Even at age 10, Spears recalled being a contestant on Star Search, where host Ed McMahon interrogated her about her relationship status. When Spears denied having a boyfriend, Ed followed up by asking if she thought he fit in that category. It is hard to ignore the oddity of a grown man questioning a little girl about boys so insistently on television.

When speaking about how the media treated her and NSYNC’s Justin Timberlake differently, Spears said, “I couldn’t help but notice that the questions he got asked by talk show hosts were different from the ones they asked me.”

“Everyone kept making strange comments about my breasts, wanting to know whether or not I’d had plastic surgery.”

The focus on her body and sexuality was relentless, Spears said that she was “relieved” when Timberlake told the press she was no longer a virgin. The media placed a lot of responsibility on Spears to be a role model for young children. When she was seen in a crop top or dancing on stage, she was criticized heavily for not being modest enough for young girls, even though this was not her job, but rather the parents.

“I was a teenage girl from the South. I signed my name with a heart. I liked looking cute. Why did everyone treat me, even when I was a teenager, like I was dangerous?” Spears said about the impossible expectations of her.

Following her breakup with Timberlake, Spears faced major depression as she faced significant backlash for cheating allegations, and at the same time, she lost her first love. Due to Timberlake’s song, “Cry Me A River,” featuring an actress who looked very similar to Spears, she speaks about how she couldn’t go in public without people booing her, even though Timberlake cheated on Spears multiple times.

This double standard extends to other female stars. The media subjects women to “…blatant misogyny, sexism, constant bullying, and relentless abuse…If you’re a girl, you have to play the game. What is that game? You’re allowed to be pretty, cute, and sexy. But don’t act too smart. Don’t have an opinion…” said Madonna while accepting her Billboard Woman of the Year award in 2016.

One of the most famous aspects of Spears’ struggle with fame is the constant harassment from the paparazzi. Spears details how she could not go anywhere without being followed by loud and abrasive men trying to get a rise out of her just for the camera.

When Spears’ first child was born, the paparazzi cornered her in a restaurant and continued taking photos of her as she sat with her child, crying. Anything she did translated to her being an unfit mother, or crazy, or any number of terrible descriptions. Paparazzi were lined up in the parking lot outside the hospital as Spears was giving birth, vying for the first chance to get a photo of her newborn children.

“Kevin and I had to devise strategies to cover them with blankets while making sure they could still breathe. Even without a blanket over me, I barely could” said Spears regarding the paparazzi’s competition for photographs of her sons.

During her divorce and custody battle with her now ex-husband, Kevin Federline, Spears was restricted from seeing her children, so in a moment of grief, she went to a hair salon and shaved her head. Spears said she knew people liked her long hair and as she struggled with many aspects of her life, she no longer wanted to be the “good girl” people wished for. The media only laughed.

In 2008, Spears was placed under a conservatorship by her father, Jamie Spears, due to claims that she was mentally unfit. Conservatorships are “usually reserved for people with no mental capacity, people who can’t do anything for themselves. But I was highly functional. I’d just done the best album of my career” said Spears.

This conservatorship went on for 13 years, with her father controlling her food, birth control, schedule, when she could see her children, and every other aspect of her life. Nobody fought for her and her family made her think there was absolutely nothing she could do to change the control they had over her.

After being placed in a mental institution and put on lithium, Spears learned from a nurse about the #FreeBritney movement. Spears said she felt overwhelmed by the support in the media because people were advocating for her. Fans were trying to decode messages, find out if somebody was holding her against her will, and wear t-shirts supporting the movement.

Spears has since gained her freedom and speaks on the joys of learning to be a woman for the first time in a long time, an ending we were all rooting for.

The Woman In Me is available now at Barnes & Noble and Spotify.