16 November 2021 - Britney Spears' conservatorship ends after 13 years
How Britney Spears got free, and what comes next
Ronan Farrow and Jia Tolentino (The New Yorker, 13/11/2021)
Britney Spears is free. Or, at least, after a court decision on Friday, Spears will be able to avail herself of rudimentary freedoms that most of us take for granted but that have been denied to her during the thirteen years she lived under a probate conservatorship. She will be able to make her own medical decisions, sign her own contracts, and spend her own money. She now faces a legal battle with those who once managed her life and money, including her father and former conservator, Jamie Spears, and her former business manager, Lou Taylor, who has, along with her company Tri Star, resisted efforts by Spears’s lawyer, Mathew Rosengart, to obtain her financial records.
The #FreeBritney movement finds its moment: ‘All the hard work was worth it’
Dani Anguiano (The Guardian, 14/11/2021)
Friday’s liberation of Britney Spears from her nearly 14-year conservatorship was a landmark moment for the pop star. It was also a once-unimaginable triumph for the #FreeBritney movement, the fan-led campaign that was largely dismissed by the public and that Spears’s father had called a “joke” run by “conspiracy theorists”.
Fans had been pushing to “free Britney” from the conservatorship for years, but the movement took off in 2019. With full-time jobs and no professional organizing background, they took it upon themselves to investigate the arrangement that controlled Spears’s life, scouring the star’s social media posts for clues, examining court documents, organizing online and holding demonstrations outside court hearings and concerts to raise awareness of what was going on.
Britney is finally free, but what about disabled people who aren’t famous?
Melissa Parker (The Independent, 13/11/2021)
Since 2008, Britney Spears has been under a conservatorship, a legal arrangement through which a third party is given the power to make decisions for those “who cannot care for himself or herself or manage his or her own finances”. On 12 November, that conservatorship finally ended.
Fans fear repeating history with Britney Spears post-conservatorship
Doha Madani (CNBC News, 14/11/2021)
Britney Spears is finally freed of her conservatorship, but observers and fans worry that society will fall back into the same behavior that helped put her there more than 13 years ago.
Spears’ conservatorship has been the subject of numerous documentaries, headlines and even a congressional hearing over the past year after her fans called attention to her situation through the #FreeBritney movement. The New York Times examined the social media campaign and Spears’ struggles under media scrutiny in a documentary this year, “Framing Britney Spears.”