Nothing says freedom like being naked. So, it makes sense that after Britney Spears' oppressive conservatorship came to an end, she celebrated by posting a nude photo to Instagram.
‘Free woman energy has never felt better,’ Spears told her fans as she posed in the mirror wearing nothing but a pair of white knee-high socks and a matching choker.
Thanks to the Free Britney movement, the pop icon can finally drive her own car, control her own finances, get married or have another child if she wants to.
When the conservatorship ended, the world partied in the street. Yet, because Spears instead used her freedom to post a nude photo, people have begun to question her sanity.
‘Anyone else think Britney Spears is actually having another breakdown?’ one user questioned on Twitter. ‘She really is batsh*t crazy,’ added another. ‘Free Woman Energy? Mental breakdown energy’ a third riffed on her caption.
But surely it's important to see it all in the context of what Britney's been through: people have been taking and sharing photos of her body without her consent for decades. Any time she got in or out of a car in the early 2000s a slew of upskirt photos, which would now be entirely illegal, littered the pages of the tabloids without a shred of consent.
Pictures of Spears’ bare vagina and nipples are still readily available across the internet thanks to invasive photographers that tormented her while she was in the midst of a mental health collapse that led to forced hospitalisation.
Former paparazzi Nick Stern told Glamour he quit the industry after one photographer ‘got a photograph up Britney’s skirt with her bloodstained underwear,’ amid rumours she was pregnant. ‘They put the picture out and the caption was, “Britney is not pregnant…Period.”’
If even your period isn’t private, then how much of yourself is truly yours?
Spears' naked body has been commodified to sell magazines, newspapers, and even her own albums. This woman has been sexualised for her entire career, including the years she was underage.
‘I used to know someone who processed film for magazine shoots, back when processing film was a real thing,’ wrote author Sady Doyle on Twitter. ‘I remember them passing around photos of a shoot where Britney’s shirt had slipped and a nipple was hanging out. This shoot, I think. She would’ve been 19 or 20.
‘When I told someone — an older woman — about it, her first question was “was it a slip, or did she do it on purpose?”,’ Doyle continued.
It's easy to see why some feel that Britney's body has been treated like public property, and she has been blamed for it, ever since she was a teenager.
While nothing can stop the onslaught of tabloid commentary of Spears' latest nude, she has somewhat protected herself by turning off the comments on the post. ‘It’s like sending a messy text then putting your phone on silent and going to sleep,’ said one fan on Twitter of the tactic. ‘Absolute queen behaviour.’
Spears' body has been through a lot. And now it is legally under her control again, surely she should celebrate that any way she sees fit?
There is nothing 'insane' about a naked photo - and if people don’t like it, they can always hit the unfollow button.
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