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Britney Spears: With Great Responsibility Comes Great Power

Taking Responsibility For Ourselves

By Jasmine WolfePublished 3 years ago 7 min read
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VALERIE MACON/AFP via Getty Images

Any fans of Spiderman’s Uncle Ben out there? His dying words were ‘with great power comes great responsibility’. This philosophical quote is right up there with ‘absolute power corrupts absolutely’, and ‘power reveals’.

What The Hell Does This Have To Do With Britney Spears?

There’s a power struggle for taking responsibility for the career and personal life of Britney Spears and her father, Jamie Spears. It has been going on for over a decade. I found the timeline, here, to be interesting. I have also found it interesting how Britney – as bad as she got – never really compares to the antics of The Olsen Twins, Paris Hilton, or Lindsey Lohan and many, many other starlets. Yet, Britney is the one who finds herself under a conservatorship.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I am not a fan of Britney Spears. She is a pop princess and I’m into indie grunge. As simple as that. Yet, I am firmly on the #FreeBritney bandwagon – although for reasons you might not have thought of.

#FreeBritney is a social movement to help free Britney from a conservatorship placed on her by her father, Jamie Spears.

What Is A Conservatorship?

When you are physically or mentally unable to handle your own financial affairs (including old age) then there is a legal agreement – a conservatorship – to allow someone else to handle those affairs for you. They become your legal guardian.

Usually, competency is measured by how able you are in dressing, feeding, and holding on to stable home for yourself.

The power given to the legal guardian depends on the degree of one’s incapacity to care for oneself. E.g.: a temporary physical illness means a partial and temporary conservatorship. A permanent debilitating illness, such as dementia, means a full and permanent conservatorship.

It sounds logical. In theory.

A Conservatorship For Brittany Spears Was A Good Thing!

Unlike many Britney fans, I have the opinion the conservatorship was a good thing for her. Ten years ago. Not today.

Back in the early noughties, Britney was under a lot of unprecedented scrutiny. She could do nothing right, even with the best intentions. The public loved to hate everything about her. And she cracked.

I remember an Australian interview she had with our 60 Minutes, in which she was personally responsible for underage girls wanting (and being allowed by their parents) to wear her ‘hooker’ stage costumes at birthday parties (unlike American underage girls who wore her stage costumes at Halloween).

Despite being surrounded by an entourage of adults (including her parents) who apparently ought to have known better, Britney was personally responsible for dressing, acting, and dancing ‘like an underage stripper’.

I remember when Britney had multiple hate pages and it contained more followers than Saddam Hussain – talk about wrong priorities!

Britney then came under fire for losing her girlish frame and put on some womanly weight. Like she had any choice how her body developed. Then was criticised even further when she could not maintain weight even with the huge amounts of stress she was under.

19 years of age v. 28 years of age (after kids, a declining marriage, and just before her worst breakdown)

She was hounded by the paparazzi like no one else. In this male-dominated industry, this mob wanted to defend their rights to earn a living photographing her without any due consideration to her age, her personal boundaries, or personal feelings.

When a police officer came to her rescue once, Britney accidentally ran over his foot!

Britney was often starved of genuine love and affection which led her to make some terrible choices in her love life. Many women have fallen for the same 'knight in shining armour routine,' yet Britney was not going to be forgiven for it.

Under all this hatred for her and nitpicking her every small detail of her life Britney had her most public meltdown, in her mid-twenties. Far too young for the world to have driven her insane!

The older I get the more I understand this breakdown.

The press loved her downward spiral without taking any responsibility for their role in her deteriorating life.

A conservatorship was a good thing. It's likely to have saved her life. Saved her from bankruptcy which has happened to more performers than people realise. It likely saved her from the sycophants that encouraged her out of control drinking and acting-out behaviour. It seems to have protected her from the public, so far.

However ….

Since learning that Britney was able to regularly perform, without any personal breakdowns or acting out from the pressures of her career, then I believed the conservatorship ought to end.

Britney and the #FreeBritney movement has picked up momentum lately with the release of a documentary, Framing Britney Spears. I have not seen it yet, so I cannot comment on it, but many people are talking about how it concerns the conservatorship she is under.

Britney’s conservatorship is in the hands of her father, Jamie Spears. For the most part, I do think he’s done a good job at helping rehabilitate his daughter. However, the healthier Britney is, the less she needs anyone else looking after her.

#FreeBritney So Britney Spears Can Be An Adult

I am on the #FreeBritney bandwagon because I believe in the core value any adult, including the mentally ill, need to take as much responsibility for their lives as they can.

There comes a point for all of us to realise that blaming our parents for our upbringing only gets us so far. Today, Britney is 39 years old. On December 2nd, she will be in her milestone 40th year. Time to be an adult. Yet, she has somewhat valid reasons to remain immature in blaming her parents for her life. I say, #FreeBritney so she can evolve!

Britney is no different and needs to deal with the responsibilities of her life, her way. And the only way she will learn to do this is through making a lot of mistakes. Mistakes which her father has sheltered her from making.

In my opinion, if Jamie Spears he has done so well serving the conservatorship, then he ought to have passed his wisdom onto his daughter for the day she takes back the reins of her life.

Power Reveals

If given her freedom today, I suspect Britney would somehow mess it up. I don’t think she would be able to help herself because she hasn’t been given the opportunity to learn hard life lessons on her own.

I suspect that once Jamie Spears’ influence over Britney has ended, and he can no longer dictate the friends she makes, it could open her up to a new sycophant. Perhaps she will be over-dependent on her partner, or her siblings? They could embezzle her funds or outright steer her towards drugs and alcohol.

I can think of some terrifying examples in which Britney relapses to her most immature ways.

I wouldn’t want to predict any of this for Britney, but her sheltered life will steer her into the path of some predator.

All parents want the best for their children but all parents need to help their child take calculated risks, develop contingency plans, and hold them accountable for their words and actions.

And this is true when mental illness and one's finances are issues to grapple with.

Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely

When (not ‘if’) Britney wins her freedom it will take only one slip up for her inner circle to claim the conservatorship ought never to have ended.

One drunken public display. One bad performance. One run-in with the paparazzi. One tell-all interview from an intimate friend. And all of ‘them’ will be saying this is all the evidence ‘they’ need to wrest responsibility for her life away from her.

I wonder which friends and family members Britney will financially cut off? They will be the loudest to criticise her for being incompetent.

These will be the people who want Britney to be an eternally immature child. Taking no risks, not allowing her to grow into another direction to benefit herself, and will never be accountable for the most important aspects of her life.

With Great Responsibility Comes Great Power

When (and not ‘if’) Britney wins her freedom I would love to see what she does with herself. I can almost hear the future’s Independent Woman album… and cringe, because I’m not really a fan of her music, remember?

But, in all seriousness, the more responsibility Britney can take in her life the more accountability she will learn. And this can only benefit her. And this goes for me, you, and everybody with or without mental illness.

Stop blaming the parents (or whatever and whoever else’s ‘fault’ it is) and start being responsible for life. One day at a time. One decision at a time.

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About the Creator

Jasmine Wolfe

Australian Weird Fiction Author

Twitter & Instagram

jasminewolfefiction.blogspot.com

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