In an age where many celebrities run their social media through publicists, managers and brand consultants, Britney Spears is an uncensored and unconventional alternative. She posts everything from dance videos to inspirational quotes to throwback pictures to written reflections on her relationship with family members. At times, she also can get very philosophical, and that’s what she showed yesterday when she dropped a wordy and cryptic post that is part dance video set to Sheryl Crow and part musing on everything from her parents to Kabbalah to when her book is coming out.
Let’s start with the video, which is relatively straight ahead. It’s a compilation of recent videos Spears has posted in different outfits, and it’s set to “All I Wanna Do” by Sheryl Crow, which is honestly perfect. Every time Britney drops a new post of herself dancing or trying on different outfits, I think about how much fun she’s probably having while doing it. So, I’m on board with everything about that including the song choice which is fitting.
As for the caption, however, there’s a whole lot more to dive into than with the video. Spears’ reflection clocks in at more than 300 words and 10 emojis, and it is extremely cryptic. It also touches on a wide variety of different subjects and is very open to interpretation. If you look closely, however, I think the central point she’s trying to make is pretty clear. Before I get into trying to analyze it, though, you can check it out below…
The Kabbalah part is attracting the most attention because Spears has quite the history there. The pop legend was heavily rumored to be flirting with the religion when it became popular among celebrities in the early 2000s, but she distanced herself after a period of time, amidst rumors they were asking her for money. Here, she references sharing and restriction, which are two concepts important enough to the religion to have their own pages on its website. I think they’re the key to understanding the whole post, though there are still individual sentences that are beyond my grasp.
In general, I believe Spears is saying that we all are constantly deciding what to share and what to restrict when it comes to whether we speak our minds or not. As a celebrity under a constant microscope that’s especially true for her. Anything and everything she posts on social media attracts a ton of attention, but she likes sharing, and if that means sometimes she shares things she regrets later, she’s just going to live with that.
She further explores that point later in her paragraph when she infers that we’re all raised with an expectation we’ll respect our parents and keep our mouths shut. She, however, is someone who consistently chooses to share, rather than restrict, which means even with her parents, if they served her a dish that didn’t have enough salt, she was going to ask for more salt. She then asks if it was considered mean to disagree with her parents for 13 years, which is, of course, a reference to the length of the conservatorship she was under.
Spears concludes the post by telling people to “kiss (her) mother fucking ass” and reminding them her book is coming out. It’ll hit stores on October 24th and is almost guaranteed to be a bestseller. Exactly what it’ll contain, however, is still a mystery to fans. Rumors have been swirling about the publishing company allegedly asking her to remove some stories about A-list celebrities. Maybe they’ll be gone. Maybe they’ll still be there. Maybe we’ll get stories about Kabbalah. Maybe we don’t. We’ll all just have to buy it and see for ourselves.