Last Thursday, a day after she testified in the legal case to remove her controversial and “abusive” conservatorship, Britney Spears said sorry to her fans. “I apologise,” she wrote on Instagram, “for pretending like I’ve been OK the past two years… I did it because of my pride and I was embarrassed to share what happened to me… but honestly who doesn’t want to capture their Instagram in a fun light!!!!”
ritney went on to explain that pretending had in fact helped her, taking her mind off her reality. She recalled how, when Britney and her siblings were growing up, their mother Lynne “no matter how shitty a day was… always pretended that everything was OK”.
This was one of Lynne’s best traits, Britney recalls, but the parallel that she draws here between the keep-smiling-at-all costs behaviour of both mother and daughter is deeply sad, too.
Faking that everything is fine. Not wanting to rock the boat. Britney learnt the lesson that the show must go on from an early age.
Last Wednesday Britney gave her testimony in the case that she hopes will allow her regain control over her life, her career and her finances.
For the last 13 years, since she suffered a very public breakdown in 2008, her father Jamie has had legal authority over her life.
Most often, this kind of conservatorship is granted in cases where the person is much older and incapable of making decisions for themselves. While the latter may have been true of Britney in 2008, those campaigning for the end of her conservatorship say she, as a 39-year-old, is no longer in those dire straits.
Wednesday was the first time Britney has spoken in open court about her experience and she went on for 20 minutes on the phone to the judge, clearly emotional and vocally reluctant to let the conversation end as she’d then have to return to a life that is characterised by people saying no to her every request.
The life Britney laid out was far from glamorous: she cannot decide anything for herself, she said, from getting her nails done all the way up to removing a contraceptive coil should she want to have a baby. Her two teenage sons live full-time with their father.
She has no control over her money, despite continuing to earn millions. Her only exertion of free will seems to be her refusal to perform as long as the conservatorship continues, which is much like a goose refusing to lay the golden egg if you choose to read this situation as being more about money than concern for her welfare.
Jamie Spears, who said last week he worries for his daughter and misses her, is adamant it is the latter.
“In California,” Britney told the judge, “the only similar thing to this is sex trafficking, making anyone work against their will, taking all their possessions away, credit card, cash, phone, passport.”
It’s all far from the lives of the rich and famous as we all like to imagine them. Indeed Britney’s case is the ultimate dropping of the curtain, Wizard of Oz-style, when it comes to celebrity. It is the nadir of everyone thinking they own you in that Britney literally feels she owns nothing of herself and this is a result of her fame.
The saddest thing, however, is Britney as a child star is the ultimate example of how horribly that can go wrong.
One of the most bothersome aspects of the bothersome documentary Framing Britney Spears, on Sky Documentaries since February, was the hunger the star as an all-singing, all-dancing child had for fame.
It told how her talent was “evident” to everyone in the small town of McComb, Mississippi, by the time she was five. She was eight when she joined the Professional Performing Arts School in New York.
Little Britney, another documentary contributor said, “clawed her way” to the top.
It was the most excruciating example of how we should be careful what we wish for, with the thrills of getting to the top paling into insignificance as she was picked to pieces, with even her virginity as fair game, and stalked to the point of assault by the paparazzi.
The fall was hard and, it is argued, the conservatorship has never allowed her to move on from it.
Last Thursday, after her raw testimony of the day before, Britney’s Instagram apology spoke of someone who wants to put pretending behind her.
She’s sorry she has faked it but, at the same time, she can’t let it go.
It’s hard to stop the jazz hands and resist playing the trouper when that’s all you’ve ever known but for her own sake Britney needs to embrace a new role.