I was barely 7 years old when Britney Spears rose to fame in the late 90s, I remember everyone going crazy for her, she was the biggest thing back then. I was the youngest of my sisters who were in their preteen/teen years at the time so I joined in on their obsession of the teen pop star. We would hang out in my sisters’ room and sing along to her “Baby One More Time” album back to back in ’99 and in 2000 we tuned in to MTV every afternoon to wait for her “Oops! I did it again” video, reciting the iconic dialogue in the middle of the video:
“But I thought the old lady dropped it into the ocean in the end
Well baby, I went down and got it for you
Aww, you shouldn’t have”.
Though, I was too young to realize it at the time, Britney Spears was the ultimate teen pop star and no one ever came close to her. She sang, danced and even did a backflip or two onstage. She also was the epitome of the late 90s/early 2000s style: her hair, makeup, and clothes were everything. Every interview she gave, she was the sweetest, kindest, and most polite. I admit for whatever reason, after 2000, I didn’t follow her as much even though she was as famous as ever. In fact, I wasn’t even aware of the details of her messy break up with Justin Timberlake until I watched the documentary “Framing Britney Spears” earlier this year.
Watching the documentary, my heart hurt for her. It made me realize how far she’d fallen from grace through the media’s constant harassment and cruel portrayal of her during the breakup. Yet she took it in great strides, never bashing Justin for revealing the intimate parts of their relationship so he could build his solo career off of that. Watching her old videos also made me realize how animated and bight eyed she once was, she had the world at her fingertips and now has sadness in her eyes.
In her 2003 video of “Everytime” she paints us a picture of what she was truly feeling. It shows her in despair, being chased and abused by paparazzi, being ignored by a loved one and hurting herself, eventually committing suicide. In the video the only time she smiles is when she has passed away, as if a huge weight has been lifted off her shoulders. As chilling and heartbreaking as the video was, I am relieved she is still with us.
I truly am heartbroken for where she is today and imagine a parallel universe where she never dated Justin, never married Kevin, had a caring and loving family and never let anyone who didn’t deserve it have access to her like that because that’s what ultimately broke her spirit. I imagine a parallel universe where she had at least one person who was genuinely in her corner without an ulterior motive, someone who cared about her, unconditionally loved her enough then she wouldn’t have had that meltdown in 2007 and she wouldn’t have been forced into this abusive conservatorship.
I watch her old videos and see how sweet of a girl she is, sadly she wore her heart on her sleeves for the vultures to peck at. I also see how lonely she already was back then, how she ate lunch by herself on tour because her family or anyone her age wasn’t around and how in interviews she always longed for a family of her own at a young age. She looked for love from all the wrong people because she didn’t have that despite having the fame, money and adoring fans. I believe that’s why she married Kevin, thinking this is how she can make the dream of having her own family come true, a dream that was short-lived. It pains me how we all criminalized her in 2007 and called her crazy, how we went from loving and adoring her to looking down on her and making her the butt of all jokes. I am truly horrified at how we all treated her. Despite all the hardships she went through and still going through, she is still here, fighting and surviving.
I hope she gets her life back and her happy, fairytale ending. I hope she is able to have her own loving family and have her peace. I hope her conservatorship comes to an end and I sincerely hope to Free Britney. #FreeBritney
