The release of New York Times Presents: Framing Britney Spears caused a worldwide ripple as we watched in horror at the sheer scale of misogyny and abuse that Britney Spears suffered as a teenage popstar.
The no-holds-barred one-off documentary, which explored the singer’s controversial conservatorship, contained nearly an hour of footage detailing and discussing the outrageous sexism that the then 16-year-old faced after the huge success of her debut single Baby One More Time.
Reporters casually asked her about her breasts, her virginity and whether she was okay with someone saying they would like to “shoot” her, because she was a “bad influence” on children because she was setting “too sexual” of an example.
While the opening of the documentary rightly outraged both Britney fans and casual observers alike – seeing Sorry Britney trending worldwide on Twitter and causing us all the reassess our own part in Britney’s eventual 2007 breakdown – the footage is merely a superficial snippet of what the popstar faced on a daily basis. Director Samantha Stark, who put the acclaimed documentary together, told Radio Times that she could have put together “a ten hour supercut” of people being cruel to Britney, but chose to hold back in order not to traumatise the singer all over again.
“One thing that we didn’t include was this upskirt photo, where they take a picture up Britney’s skirt,” Sam explained. “Two things stand out about that. One, the criticism was with Britney for not wearing underwear. Not about the photographers who took a picture up a woman’s skirt, which would be illegal now. So many things that happened to Britney would be illegal if you conceptualise it differently. If one of the people were following her around as much as one of the paps were, that would be stalking.”
While we don’t know the full nature of Britney’s very public meltdown in 2007, which famously saw her shave her head and attack a paparazzo with an umbrella, it didn’t stop the toxic tabloid media of the early aughts debate and discuss Britney’s mental health in a crude and potentially damaging way. As much as the media had built her meteoric rise to fame, they were just as quick to destroy and abuse her at a time where she needed compassion and love the most.
There’s a heart-tugging scene in Framing Britney Spears where she tearfully confesses to an interviewer that her biggest wish is for the media to “leave her alone” (a wish that goes unheard, as pap photos for Britney are sold for up to $1 million at that time). But sympathy towards Britney soon turns to revulsion towards the media in one the documentary’s lowest moments, where there’s a clip from a 2008 episode of Family Feud, the American equivalent of Family Fortunes. The host asks contestants to name something “Britney Spears has lost” in the past year. The answers range from the crass (“her hair!”) to the tragic (“her sanity!”) to the downright crude (“her virginity”).
Of course, it’s easy to watch open-mouthed at what Britney went through, and quickly dismiss it as being symptomatic of a more toxic era. We can take solace knowing that a presenter simply just wouldn’t get away with asking a teenage girl (or anyone of any age, for that matter) about whether they’ve lost their virginity. Not even cheap gameshow quizzes could be so tasteless.
But while we can watch on loftily, it’s worth really thinking if things have really changed when it comes to talking about mental health.
The last decade, with the ongoing coronavirus pandemic in particular serving as a catalyst, has seen more and more people speaking openly about mental health, mental illnesses and wellbeing.
With stats from MQ revealing one in four people in the UK will experience mental illness every year, and with the Office of National Statistics revealing 39 per cent of people report feeling high levels of anxiety in the last year, it’s become less taboo and more acceptable to be candid about mental health struggles. Slogans like ‘it’s okay not to be okay’ have become increasingly commonplace, and the #BeKind movement (itself seeing a spike in popularity following the tragic suicide of presenter Caroline Flack last year) has stressed that people should be more considerate towards others as we do not know about their internal struggles.
However, while there seems to be more active attempts to care for one another on a public level, we don’t always extend this courtesy to those in the public eye.
We may not see media figures question other people on the showbiz circuit such lurid and shocking details of our sex lives, the cruelty directed at celebrities is still as apparent as we saw on the Britney documentary.
It’s social media that has spurred this, with numerous celebrities having public profiles which can allow people to engage with them whenever they want to. The ability to hide your identity leads to internet trolls harassing and bullying some stars to the point where they have to hide or delete their accounts.
It seems we still see celebrities as public property, with some people reserving the right to say whatever they like about someone as it’s considered part and parcel of being in the public eye.
“I think we should be asking ourselves whether the conversation and the manifestation of misogyny has, in the post MeToo-era, whether it has been eradicated, poof, whether or not it has diminished, or whether or not it has shape-shifted and changed forms,” Framing Britney Spears Executive Producer Mary Robertson told Radio Times.
“And you do certainly see a lot of women, journalists, get a lot of nasty and hostile responses that they often receive death threats that often happens in direct messages or semi-public facing forums, such as Reddit and TikTok. I think we’re less likely to see such explicit misogyny manifest on tabloid covers or newspaper covers or coming from the mouths of talk show hosts, but we are likely to see that on the semi-private formats online and it is us worth focusing on that too.”
While Britney, who has since said she will not work unless her father Jamie is removed from managing her conservatorship, is no longer harassed by the paps, the star is now facing a new sort of scrutiny. Now 39, Britney posts regularly on Instagram, sharing snippets of her family life with others and now has control of how much, and how little, we see of her narrative. We can be thankful that social media did not exist in the same form when Britney had her breakdown, so that she did not have to endure the constant vitriol in an even more intense form than she faced in the aughts. However, that’s not to say Britney is no longer under such intense scrutiny.
A series of recent Instagram posts show Britney dancing, sharing snaps of yaks and posing with her partner Sam Asghari. However, the thousands of comments are a flurry of fans, unconvinced Britney is really posting or trying to ascertain deeper meanings in her posts. Several comments beg for Britney to do a live video to prove it’s “really her” managing her Insta.
Even after all these years, and all the warnings we’ve had over our behaviour, we are still hungry for Britney’s every movement. And while it may be from a place of love, a mob of fans can be just as frightening as an army of papparazi.