On Britney’s Instagram, Selfies & the Mercurial Need to Be Perceived

I spend a fair amount of time defending women’s selfies in my head.

Whenever I see comments on Instagram photos accusing women of “just wanting attention” or being “attention whores” because of the photos they post of themselves. When selfies are maligned as nothing more than the preoccupation of self-centered teen girls and shallow women. Actually, anything disparaging the interests of teen girls tends to piss me off.

But nothing – nothing – gets my hackles up more than the comments I see on Britney Spears’ Instagram account.

If you’ve been living under a rock, you might not know that in 2021, Britney Spears finally succeeded in convincing a judge to terminate the conservatorship that had, for 13 years, legally permitted her father to control every single aspect of Britney’s life, from the food she ate, to the shows she was forced to perform, to the IUD she wasn’t allowed to get removed from her own body.

(I’m not going to get into the ins and outs of conservatorships, but here are a couple of articles if you want to know more.)

Since then, Britney has mostly remained out of the public eye, taking vacations and enjoying her newfound freedom, as well she should. She does, however, maintain an active Instagram account, where she often shares videos of herself dancing in different outfits, frolicking on beaches, and sometimes posing nude or partially naked – always looking joyful and healthy. Britney herself has stated in her memoir, The Woman In Me, that these whimsical posts are part of her healing process:

I know that a lot of people don’t understand why I love taking pictures of myself naked or in new dresses. But I think if they’d been photographed by other people thousands of times, prodded and posed for other people’s approval, they’d understand that I get a lot of joy from posting the way I feel sexy and taking my own picture.

It’s starkly clear that Britney is recovering from an incredibly traumatic experience, in part by turning the camera lens around and taking control of her own image. She’s expressing herself and reveling in her autonomy for the first time in more than a decade – and yet people continue to attempt to pathologize her behavior, to pathologize her nudes, for godsakes. When outlets run headlines like, “Britney Spears has fans concerned as she shares another nude photo amid strained relationship with sons,” they’re not only pathologizing her perfectly normal behavior, but also implying that it somehow makes her an unfit mother. “Concerned fans” have called the police over Britney’s Instagram posts, resulting in unnecessary “wellness checks” that only served to further violate and traumatize her.

Are we back in the Dark Ages? Are we back in Salem? In a world where a woman can be considered mentally ill for sharing a photo of her own body, it certainly feels like it.

To be perfectly clear: The desire to be seen as a complete and autonomous person after years of oppression—an experience most of us can’t even being to fathom, let alone understand the recovery process—is completely normal. That Britney sometimes chooses to show off her free and naked body, now, is more than understandable, and a perfectly healthy response to what she’s gone through. What’s more, loving one’s own body and taking pride in it is healthy for anyone, full stop.

Contrary to popular belief, the opposite of “wanting (a man’s) attention” is not the desire to blend into the background and become wallpaper, never to be noticed again. Many women, myself included, enjoy being seen as sexy or powerful, at least some of the time – but on our own terms. Not just by men, either, and—hold onto your hats, guys—often, men don’t factor into the decision at all.

Sometimes we just feel good about ourselves and want to be seen.

I can only begin to imagine what it was like to endure the life Britney did for so long, but I think all women know something about being controlled, albeit if on a smaller, more insidious scale. Women walk through the world under a level of surveillance that most men will never quite understand, and it starts so, so early. I can barely remember a time when I didn’t feel watched, stared at by the men around me, strangers on the street. From the time girls are very young, everything is policed, everything is commented on – from the clothes we wear to the very expressions on our faces.

Girls are catcalled, sexualized, and objectified, often before we’ve had our first periods, let alone any sexual experience. And you know what? After ten or twenty or thirty years, it fucking starts to grate.

In her memoir, Britney talks about feeling scrutinized and sexualized from a very early age: TV show hosts commenting on her breasts and asking if they were real, news outlets reporting on the alleged status of her virginity. Parents blamed her for not being a good enough “role model,” and a public official expressed, on the record, her fervent wish to shoot Britney for wearing crop tops. And this was all before the conservatorship.

In a society where women are relentlessly told not only how to dress and act and think, but also who we are based on how others happen to perceive – how they feel about – our clothes and opinions and decisions… it is liberating to control the lens. To show yourself exactly the way you want to, without anyone being able to comment on the process or controlling what you share or how you share it. Rest assured that when I post a photo I took of myself, I do want attention. I want you—not you, specifically, dear reader, but the larger, more general “you”—to pay attention to the parts of me (and I mean that both physically and also very much not) that I’m choosing to show in that photo. Choose being the operative word.

But along with the joy of sharing a part of yourself inevitably comes the pain of someone perceiving it differently than you hoped they would, or misinterpreting it entirely. Sometimes, and especially for women, those misinterpretations have real consequences.

To get to the crux of the crux of the issue: Why does our culture hate and punish women for wanting, daring, to show themselves in a sexual light? To show off our bodies in a free and confident way? We’re all sexual beings and we all have sexual sides, do we not? So why is a woman’s sexuality treated as particularly dangerous?

Of course, I know the answer. America is so brimming with shame and anxiety, it’s absolutely suffocating. Since the witch trials—since forever, probably, but I don’t feel like looking it up because the facts will only depress me further—men in power have sought to control women’s bodies. We see it in the laws that are passed here on the daily, and we see it in a culture that allowed one of the most famous women in the world to be a modern-day slave for 13 goddamn years right in front of our faces. A culture that gave so little credence to women, so little respect to our bodies and our stories. A culture that has only begun to reckon with these truths, and continues to take steps backwards.

I don’t have a straightforward solution, only a fierce love and protectiveness for my fellow women and a strong desire to shield others from the bullshit this misogynist society puts all of us through. So let’s start here – by not doing this shit to each other. Stop dismissing women and teen girls, and start listening to them. Stop policing women’s self-expression, and pay attention to rhetoric that only serves to reinforce puritanical values and demonize women who are open about enjoying their sexuality. Stop infantilizing adult women and questioning their capacity to control their own bodies. Just… stop. Beyond that, I hope you have the courage and the opportunity to live however you want, to do with your body everything you wish and nothing you don’t.

All women are Britney, to some degree. We are all stuck in this sinking boat together. In a different life, under slightly different circumstances… in a patriarchy, our autonomy is always under threat of being snatched away, and so we have to stick up for one another. Learn to be honest, outspoken, and fierce. Become a force to be reckoned with.

And in the infamous words of Chris Crocker: Leave Britney the fuck alone.