by Sydney Gan
“Britney Spears, America’s most famous paradox in pink.”
—Diane Sawyer in a 2003 Primetime interview with Britney Spears
As of the 13th of August 2021, Jamie Spears has agreed to relinquish his position as Britney Spears’ conservator. This marks astounding progress to this heated legal battle between father and daughter, the issue initially gaining traction earlier this year. Britney Spears’ struggle within her oppressive conservatorship first attracted public attention through Framing Britney Spears, a documentary directed by Samatha Stark exposing the singer’s ill-treatment following her infamous breakdown in 2007. Bolstered by conspiratorial rumors that the singer was covertly pleading for help through videos of her dancing in TikTok, a light has been shone on this issue much more glaringly than it’s ever been in the last 13 years of her conservatorship. However, Jamie Spears’ agreement to step down is barely the end of the fight—it is crucial to reflect on the details of the conservatorship, and realize the extent of abuse Britney Spears suffered through this corrupt arrangement. This case has wider ramifications than what meets the eye, triggering the reevaluation of, amongst other things, normalized misogyny in media and disability rights.
WHAT IS A CONSERVATORSHIP?
A conservatorship in California is issued to the conservatee where they are deemed unfit to take care of themselves and their finances due to their disabilities. In their place, a guardian is appointed to take over and gains personal, economic, and legal decision-making power over the conservatee. This generally means that the conservator is in the position to make choices regarding the conservatee’s assets, such as to spend their money on their behalf for necessities like bills, or to decide what the conservatee should do regarding the property they own.
It has never been publicly revealed the details as to Britney Spears’ mental state that would make her eligible for such an arrangement, but as of 2008, her father James ‘Jamie’ Spears has been named as her conservator. Inhabiting this role, he has a responsibility to ensure his daughter’s wellbeing and that she comes to no harm by her own admission. In fact, this objective of care is the very essence of this legal structure, a point that invokes irony when you realize that the significant imbalance of standing between conservator and conservatee also allows for easy exploitation by the guardian. Matthew Rosengart, Britney Spears’ current self-appointed lawyer encapsulates this fragile relationship perfectly in the filing formally asking Jamie Spears to be removed as his daughter’s conservator: “(Jamie Spears) is a conservator and, as a conservator, his role is to be burdened by, rather than benefit from, the conservatorship,” He stresses that the true focal point of such an arrangement should always irrevocably be the conservatee. No conservatorship should be set up in a way that the conservator should gain anything but the wellbeing of their ward.
WHAT HAPPENED DURING BRITNEY SPEARS’ CONSERVATORSHIP?
Under the conservatorship, Britney Spears’ control over her life was significantly restricted. She lost the right to manage the majority of her finances, which her father took over on her behalf. Out of her $60 million net worth, the singer was reportedly only allowed a two-thousand-dollar weekly allowance. This is exacerbated by the fact that the money she was denied was money that she had made herself through tours, album releases and appearances in multiple variety shows (such as her $15 million engagement with The X Factor). According to Forbes, Jamie Spears has earned at least $5 million from the conservatorship, not including the exorbitant legal fees that Britney Spears had to pay for herself and her conservators. The singer herself has accused her family of having “lived off (her) conservatorship for 13 years” and expressed that she “just don’t like feeling like I work for the people who I pay” in her statement to Judge Brenda Penny.
Horrifically, Spears also claims in her testimony that she was forced to take lithium as medication after refusing to perform a show in Las Vegas. It was an abrupt and unwelcomed change to her normal prescription, which she had been taking for five years. As a conservatee, Britney Spears had no say regarding her treatment; anything that concerned her had to be approved by her father, something he took advantage of to further incapacitate her with. The effects of the mood stabilizer were severe, and it made the singer feel “drunk”. She claimed that the lithium made it so she could barely hold a proper conversation with her parents, much less stand up for herself.
Jamie Spears’ abusive authority extends further in allegations of his verbal abuse towards his conservatee. In attempts to get his daughter to cooperate with his plans for her comeback, he would “get all in her face” and viciously insult her into submission, in one report calling her a “terrible mother” and a “whore”. It was known by those associated with Britney Spears that her father would threaten her visiting rights over her children for her to obey his every word, something that she took seriously. Jamie Spears displayed a clear priority of Britney Spears’ fame and career over her mental wellbeing during her conservatorship. Jacqueline Butcher, a close friend of the family, testified to his callous attitude towards his daughter the first few days after she’d been released from her emergency psychiatric hold, where he insisted that she was “fat” and that he was going to put her up on a diet and a personal trainer in order to get into good shape for TV.
As part of the arrangement, the conservatorship also stands in the way of Britney Spears’ wish to remove her IUD (Intrauterine device), a contraceptive device that prevents her from having more children. In her appeal, she expressed her desire to get married and have a baby but said that the conservatorship prevented her from doing either. In a Los Angeles Times interview, Khiara M. Bridges, a law professor and faculty director of the Center on Reproductive Rights and Justice at UC Berkeley, stated that the conservators would have to have come to that decision based on either their protection of Spears’ financial wellbeing or health. It is likely they could make such connections, but she pointed out that it would still be an “incredible overreach of the decision-making power that they have as conservators of her estate”.
HOW DOES #FREEBRITNEY CONCERN DISABILITY RIGHTS?
This high-profile case is beginning to highlight issues that the disabled community has been struggling with for years. The community has long shared their disapproval over conservatorships, specifically the way in which the conservatee essentially loses their autonomy over their own life under the control of their conservators. In the National Council of Disability (NCD)’s Beyond Guardianship study, it was discovered that it is oftentimes the case that the disabled person’s capacity for reasonable decision-making is not assessed on a sufficient scientific or evidentiary basis. This indicates that most guardianship arrangements are concluded based on the assumption that those with disabilities are inherently unfit to navigate their finances and their health, rather than determined case-to-case. It was also pointed out that even though there are around 1.3 million people under conservatorships in America, courts often lack the necessary resources, infrastructure, and training to hold conservators accountable and protect the conservatees from unjust exploitation. It makes this legal structure an irresponsible practice, especially considering the fact that conservatorship itself is not an insignificant arrangement and heavily restricts and hinders the life of those living with disabilities.
Another point touched upon earlier is the issue of disability reproductive rights. The World Health Organization defines reproductive rights as rights for couples to decide freely on reproduction, the right to attain the highest standard of sexual and reproductive health, as well as to make such decisions free of discrimination, coercion, and violence. Alarmingly, the violation of such a right is not uncommon in the United States, especially amongst the disability community. Forcible sterilization—the prevention of parents to give birth against their will—was made legal in Buck v. Bell in 1927, where it was decided that the sterilization of a “feeble-minded” woman was justifiable to contribute to societal welfare. This puts disabled women in a precarious position, where their basic reproductive rights are not protected and easily disregarded on account of their disability. Further criticism can be drawn regarding the intersectionality of the advocation of such rights. Social justice lawyer Leah Goodridge commented on the fact that if someone as privileged from her wealth, career, and race as Britney Spears could be caught in such heinous violation of rights, there is little to doubt over the suffering of marginalized women of color in similar situations.
HOW DOES #FREEBRITNEY CONCERN THE TREATMENT OF WOMEN IN MEDIA?
It is worth mentioning the media’s response to Britney Spears’ very public meltdown in the early 2000s. The topic of the singer’s conservatorship and her overall reputation has not always been what it is today – before her mistreatment was given proper examination, Spears was a cautionary tale. She was the epitome of a good girl gone bad—a young cast member of Walt Disney’s All-New Mickey Mouse Club to the hyper-sexualized caricature of a schoolgirl in the ‘…Baby, One More Time’ music video, to the woman who, with her impulsively shaved head, attacked a paparazzi’s car with an umbrella. What was lost between these narratives was how relentlessly harassed she was throughout most of her career, by the public, by hounding paparazzo, and by the media.
One notable example can be seen in the aftermath of her shattering break-up with Justin Timberlake, her former Mickey Mouse Club castmate. The split was rumored to be due to Spears’ unfaithfulness and as a result, Timberlake wrote and released ‘Cry Me A River’, a song allegedly inspired by their tumultuous relationship. The song’s music video features a Britney Spears lookalike, adding fuel to the fire of the media frenzy around the end of their relationship and effectively villainizing her in the eyes of the public. Her sex life started to be put under intense scrutiny and she was shamed on national television for her suggestive clothing and ‘indecent’ lifestyle. As all of this discourse added to Spears’ notoriety, Justin Timberlake went on to win a Grammy for the song and his album, Justified (2002). This is not the only incident in which Timberlake was part of where he has, in his own words, “benefit(ed) from others being pulled down”. In the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show, he and singer Janet Jackson were involved in a “wardrobe malfunction” which ended with Jackson being blacklisted and CBS forcibly withdrawing her as a presenter in the 46th Grammy Awards. Timberlake, on the other hand, was welcomed to the ceremony granted he read out a scripted apology and, to put his music career on pause to escape the controversy, started a relatively successful film career. Although Timberlake has issued an apology in 2021, it does not erase the fact that Britney Spears is not the first, nor is she the last female performer in the industry who has been painted in a derisive light to pave the way for their male counterparts’ career.
Now that the media fervor around Britney Spears’ conservatorship is beginning to dwindle as her case slowly resolves, the traction around this movement of disability rights, hopefully, will not end with it. Lawmakers are starting to champion changes made to conservatorship laws in the US, starting first with reform proposed by assembly member Evan Low. He suggests tighter scrutiny over non-professional conservators who are overseeing estates worth greater than $1 million to prevent exploitation, as well as a bill to amend lacking areas in due process that would support the conservatees’ rights to choose and appoint their own legal counsel.
The process of law reform is long and often fruitless, but Britney Spears’ prominent case has publicized the blatant issues inherent in the legal structure of conservatorships in a way that has never been promoted before. The impact of her tireless fight against her conservatorship, no matter what the outcome, is a worthwhile effort to fight for and defend disability rights across the United States.