CALLAHAN: Britney is proof. When women fall apart they're 'hysterical', men ... trends now
The question isn't, 'What's going on with Britney?' The question, I think, is, 'What's going on with us?'
Most of us have seen the video by now, Britney Spears seeming to have a mental health crisis in a restaurant.
Her husband has since denied that Spears was having any kind of meltdown. Spears was lucid enough to spot another diner surreptitiously recording her and hid behind a menu. In fact, a restaurant employee said, 'the disruptor wasn't Britney — it was the diner who taunted her by taking a video without consent.'
So much of Britney's life has centered on the very issue of consent. It was the basis for the #FreeBritney movement, one that grew from grassroots online activism to a New York Times documentary to a deep-dive New Yorker investigation to Spears's own harrowing testimony, in 2021, detailing her life under conservatorship.
That was the beginning of a nuanced and necessary conversation about mental health in America — or so we thought. When Britney Spears was first placed under conservatorship, it did seem necessary: She had clearly been in crisis, shaving her head, attacking a paparazzo's car with an umbrella, and suffering enough that she had been placed on a temporary involuntary psychiatric hold in Los Angeles in 2008.
As Spears testified in 2021, however, she became well enough to release several studio albums, go on world tours, perform on television and complete a massively successful Las Vegas residency., employing thousands of people in the process.
'I don't know why she still has a conservatorship,' one of her psychiatrists told The New Yorker.
The judge didn't either. Everyone, it seemed, was rooting for Britney and her freedom.
Most of us have seen the video by now, Britney Spears seeming to have a mental health crisis in a restaurant. Her husband has since denied that Spears was having any kind of meltdown.
But now that she has it, it seems we're all second-guessing her.
Does this feel fair? Just because Spears was found by a judge to be capable of making her own decisions, that doesn't mean her story ends with a nice little bow. It doesn't mean she might not still be suffering or struggling.
And really, after the trauma of being under such oppressive control for thirteen years — who wouldn't struggle?
Britney Spears was under that involuntary conservatorship for thirteen years. In her testimony before a judge in 2021 — testimony she argued should be public record — she talked of not being allowed to make a single decision for herself, whether that was replacing her kitchen cabinets or having her own cell phone or removing her IUD.
'I truly believe this conservatorship is abusive,' she told the judge in part. 'I want to be able to get married or have a baby. I was told right now in the conservatorship, I'm not able to get married or have a baby. I have an IUD inside of myself right now, so I don't get pregnant. I wanted to take the IUD out so I could start trying to have another baby. But this so-called team won't let me go to the doctor to take it out because they don't want me to have children — any more children.'
When it comes to women and mental illness, we still have a long way to go. The twentieth century is littered with examples of complicated women who were dismissed as crazy and institutionalized against their will, from
