Britney Spears has been one of the most famous human beings on the planet since she was 16 years old. From the moment her debut single “...Baby One More Time” catapulted her into the pop culture stratosphere in 1998, she has experienced a level of constant attention that feels simply incomprehensible.
In the early 2000s, “Britney Spears” was for several years running the most frequently searched phrase on Google. It’s not that she was merely the most searched celebrity; out of every single possible topic on Earth, the thing that people were most curious about was a pop singer from Mississippi still not out of her early 20s. When Spears, now 44, was arrested in Ventura County, California Wednesday evening for driving under the influence, the Sheriff’s Office listed her occupation as: “Celebrity.” That is something of an understatement.
It is difficult, then, for the rest of us to imagine what it must be like to be Britney Spears. For many, the clearest image of what a toll her extreme celebrity was taking on her mental health came nearly two decades ago. On February 16, 2007, she famously walked into a hair salon in Tarzana and, after a stylist refused to shave her head, grabbed the clippers and did it herself.
She was, as she seemingly always was, surrounded by a ring of paparazzi. She was also engulfed in grief: over the death of her beloved aunt, and over a divorce that had pushed her into an ugly custody battle for the sons she adores more than anything. She had, clearly and publicly, reached a breaking point.
“I’d been eyeballed so much growing up,” Spears wrote in her 2023 memoir The Woman In Me. “I’d been looked up and down, had people telling me what they thought of my body, since I was a teenager... My long hair was a big part of what people liked – I knew that. I knew a lot of guys thought long hair was hot… shaving my head was a way of saying to the world: F*** you. You want me to be pretty for you? F*** you. You want me to be good for you? F*** you. You want me to be your dream girl? F*** you.”
Less than a year later, after refusing to relinquish her sons to her ex-husband Kevin Federline, Spears was institutionalized and Federline was granted full custody. The following month, her father Jamie filed a temporary conservatorship that granted himself and an attorney control of her affairs. This conservatorship was later extended indefinitely, and ultimately stayed in place until it was finally removed by a judge in November 2021.
That decision was greeted with widespread delight by her fans, who had created the high-profile “Free Britney” campaign to support her efforts to regain control of her life and business affairs. “Good God I love my fans so much it’s crazy!!! I think I’m gonna cry the rest of the day !!!!,” wrote Spears on Instagram at the time, using the hashtag “#FreedBritney”. She added: “Best day ever … praise the Lord … can I get an Amen????”
Less than five years on, the optimism of that moment has evaporated. For fans hoping the end of the conservatorship might herald a new era of personal peace or music from the star, there has been little to celebrate. Spears has again been divorced; her marriage to Sam Asghari fizzled out in 2023 after just 13 months. She devastatingly suffered a miscarriage in May 2022, just a month after the couple announced the pregnancy. If her frequent Instagram posts about babies are any indication, the loss of her “miracle baby” has permanently altered her.
Musically, she has not released a new album since 2016’s Glory, and there have been just two singles since the end of the conservatorship: a 2022 collaboration with Elton John, and a 2023 song with Will.I.Am. Neither were hits. Elton John said publicly he’d hoped he might be able to help revive her career. “She's been away so long – there's a lot of fear there because she's been betrayed so many times and she hasn't really been in the public eye officially for so long,” he said. “We've been holding her hand through the whole process, reassuring her that everything’s gonna be alright.”
Spears hasn’t performed live since finishing a tour in Austin, Texas in October 2018. In an Instagram post this January, she claimed that she will never perform in the United States again, citing mysterious and unspecified “extremely sensitive reasons.” Of course, for many fans the biggest hope and concern is not over whether she returns to her career, but simply that she is able to live healthily and happily. Certainly she does not need to work: in February this year, it was announced that Spears had sold the rights to her entire catalog to music company Primary Wave for a fee reportedly in the region of $200 million.
Whether even that fortune can get Spears the help she appears to need remains unclear. Her public appearances, mostly limited to erratic posts on Instagram, have often shown her scantily clad and dancing alone in her cavernous mansion. On Wednesday, just hours before she was arrested, Spears posted another video in keeping with that trend. She was alone again, dressed in purple lingerie, a heart-shaped emoji obscuring an exposed nipple. As she danced, she appeared to grimace. She captioned the post: “Song representing fragility be careful my friends when dealing with the queen of hearts.”
Following her arrest, fans noticed her Instagram account had been deleted again, as it is frequently. As troubling as news of the DUI incident is, the hope is that it will be a necessary shock to bring about the change she needs. In a statement to The Independent, a representative for Spears did not shy away from the seriousness of the moment those around her now find themselves in.
“This was an unfortunate incident that is completely inexcusable,” the representative said. “Britney is going to take the right steps and comply with the law and hopefully this can be the first step in long overdue change that needs to occur in Britney’s life. Hopefully, she can get the help and support she needs during this difficult time. Her boys are going to be spending time with her. Her loved ones are going to come up with an overdue needed plan to set her up for success for well being.”
The mention of the presence of her sons, Preston and Jayden, is particularly significant as Spears has repeatedly made it clear how much being separated from them has impacted her mental health. They are still young themselves, 20 and 19, but that is already older than their mother was when she found herself at the center of the world’s attention. Many of her hopes appear to revolve around them. At the same time she announced that she has no intention to perform in the United States ever again, she said that she would like to sing live with Jayden in the U.K. or Australia. “I hope to be sitting on a stool with a red rose in my hair, in a bun, performing with my son…,” she wrote.
That is a serene image of Spears, one a long way removed from the frantic energy of her recent social media posts. Whether or not that dream comes true on stage, she is long overdue that sort of peace.
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