Britney Jean Spears shot to fame in the 1990s thanks to songs like ‘Hit me Baby One More Time’ and ‘Oops I Did it Again’. During her career to date she has sold more than 150 million records, winning countless awards and accolades. In 2007, she divorced from Kevin Ferderline, her second husband after she had married her childhood sweetheart, Jason Allen Alexander, in 2004. That marriage was annulled within 55 hours, with Spears then getting engaged to Federline and having two children with the dancer. After the divorce, Federline won custody of the pair’s two children, with Spears’ father being granted a conservatorship of her in January of 2008.
What Happened After the Conservatorship Was Cancelled?
At the time of the breakup with Federline, he accused Spears of erratic behaviour and of abusing substances, with pictures of her with a shaved head and smashing the window of a photographer’s car emerging not long after. She was involuntarily admitted to a psychiatric hospital for a second time, with her dad and an attorney named Andrew Wallet being granted a temporary conservatorship that ended up lasting until 2021. It meant that the singer then took control of her own assets for the first time in 13 years, being called a ‘monumental day for Britney Spears’ by her lawyer in the wake of the ruling.
In the months and years that followed, Spears got married again, this time to model-turn-actor, Sam Asghari. The marriage happened in June 2022, but the pair split 14 months later. Spears herself was estranged from her children and posted odd things to the social media platform Instagram, including admitting to suffering from anxiety and saying that keeping busy ‘saved my life’. She adopted a new pet called Snow, who came into her life not long after Asghari filed for divorce. In 2023, Spears released a memoir entitled The Woman in Me, which sold more than a million copies during its first week of sale.
Renewed Media Interest
The life of Britney Spears is one that is likely to forever be subject to media interest, but there is no question that that increased in the wake of the conservatorship being cancelled. In part, this was fulled by Spears’ own behaviour. You might think that deleting an Instagram account might not be all that important, but it was seen as a sign from her fans that something was wrong and the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office performed a welfare check after many of her most ardent supporters contacted them. She said on Twitter that she was fine and requested privacy, later releasing a single entitled ‘Mind Your Business’ with the rapper, will.i.am.
She returned to Instagram and in 2023 another welfare check was carried out after she released a video onto the platform of herself dancing with knives. She later said that the knives weren’t real after her security team told the attending officers that her safety was not in danger. Yet it was the revelations that were made in her autobiography that caught the attention of the press. She alleged, for example, that she had an abortion after Justin Timberlake said that he ‘wasn’t happy’ about her being pregnant when the pair were dating. She also alleged that he went on to name his dog the name she wanted to give a baby if they had one together.
The Asghari Marriage
Maybe it isn’t right to refer to a marriage as a sign of someone doing something a little bit crazy, but in the case of Britney Spears marriages haven’t gone well throughout her life. Her decision to marry Sam Asghari came in the wake of the singer suffering a miscarriage of his child, which is suggestive of her not really being in the best frame of mind. It is, perhaps, the manner of the marriage itself that is the most noteworthy. They married at her Thousand Oaks, Los Angeles home, yet none of her immediate family were in attendance for it. That is largely because her parents, sister and brother were not invited.
Her two sons, meanwhile, didn’t go to the wedding, meaning that she was not represented by any of her closest family at what should be one of the most important days of her life. Her first husband, Jason Alexander, did turn up, but he hadn’t been invited and had, in fact, broken into her home armed with a knife. He was soon arrested, with Spears having a three-year restraining order against him. On the 16th of August, 2023, it was confirmed that Spears and Asghari had separated after just 13 months of marriage. Marriages come and go, of course, but there is no question that Spears has struggled to pick the right person to settle down with.
People Have Long Interpreted Her Posts
It is difficult to know exactly how Britney Spears is choosing to use her Instagram account. It has long been the case that people have chosen to interpret everything she’s ever posted to her account, to the extent that her one-time social media manager, Cassie Petrey, had to say that things weren’t really that deep and definitely weren’t cries for help. Some people believed that she was using her accounts to ‘ask for help’ during the days of her conservatorship, which led to the development of the #FreeBritney hashtag. Petrey said,
There’s not some secret agenda to it. She’s just having a good time, and I hope this helps people see it for what it actually is.
The singer released a photo of a Scrabble board with letters on it, leading to her followers trying to find a secret code within them. There was a suggestion that she was looking for help, with some of the words on the board being the likes of ‘QUIT’ spelt backwards. Some fans suggested that she was ‘the queen of subliminal messages’ and the ‘queen of leaving us ‘breadcrumbs”. She also posted a video of herself dancing in front of a Christmas tree to a Justin Timberlake track, with one person saying,
Queen, I’m not judging that the tree is still up but it wasn’t up on the Dec. 28th soo that’s suspicious. You don’t need to answer to anyone but girl, we’re concerned.
It seemed as though the singer was keen to encourage such thoughts, however. One fan wrote a message on her page saying that if she needed help she should wear yellow in her next video. The next video she released was of her with a bunch of flowers, wearing a yellow top. She put the comment, “HOLY HOLY C**P My florist surprised me today by making the flower arrangement all different colors… I was so excited I threw on my favorite yellow shirt and just had to SHARE.” She also wore yellow in numerous other videos that she posted to her channel after that one, causing a furore amongst her fans.