Britney is free, but millions of disabled people are not
As someone who grew up in the 90s and early 2000s, I was always listening to Britney Spears and flipping through the pages of magazines at my grandfather’s dairy to see what she was up to. Though I didn’t understand it at the time, most of what I saw depicted of her was rooted in misogyny, bullying, slut-shaming, and claims that she is ‘crazy’.
Fast forward to now, I find myself listening to every podcast, watching every documentary, and reading every article to find out how one of the most successful popstars of our childhood got to this point.
A conservatorship is when someone has been given full rights to make your financial and medical decisions if the court decides you are no longer fit to do so yourself. The closest equivalent in New Zealand is the ‘Power of Attorney’. In theory, it should be a last resort and appointed to someone who you can wholeheartedly trust to always act in your best interest. But if someone as famous as Britney Spears can be abused in her conservatorship, it can happen to anyone. We can’t separate it from the very real injustices committed against disabled people. A conservatorship is a disability issue because only the elderly, and people who live with disabilities and/or mental illness are deemed incapable of making their own decisions.
We can’t read about her life without reading about her very public breakdown of 2007 where she shaved her head and attacked the paparazzi who were preying on her every move. Instead of looking at the forces that put her in a position where she genuinely felt like she had nowhere to go, her family used all the resources they could to take advantage of her vulnerability and then control of everything she had. As women, we are often punished for the injustices committed against us.
Alyssa Mass is a marital and family therapist based in California and she had this to say: "And what we define, as a society, as mental illness is constantly in flux. What the public saw, years ago, was clearly a young person experiencing an enormous amount of pain. Ultimately, in a case like Britney's, you have to wonder who was her advocate? Did she have one? Because if it's not in the best interest of those running the conservatorship to end it well…then why would they? And you have a clear, and very tragic, abuse of power."
Britney Spears - Image source unknown
Control over Britney was at the point where she didn’t have the keys to her car, didn’t have cash in her hand, was not allowed to remove her IUD, and was forced to perform against her will to line her father’s pockets. While the statistical data in New Zealand is hard to find, anecdotal evidence shows how easy it is for disabled women to be put in the same position and how hard it is to prove abuse of power.
Given ableist power structures around pay equity, education, medical coercion, lack of access to legal representation, and social isolation that many disabled people live with, this extent of power and control is quite easy to achieve. All they need to do is catch you in your most vulnerable state and convince the courts - sometimes the individual - that they are unable to make decisions for themselves. More than 1 million Americans currently live under some type of conservatorship.
“And what we define, as a society, as mental illness is constantly in flux. What the public saw, years ago, was clearly a young person experiencing an enormous amount of pain. Ultimately, in a case like Britney’s, you have to wonder who was her advocate? Did she have one? ”
There are multiple ways that systems and institutions ensure disabled people don’t live independent and fulfilling lives, such as changes to their marital status. In most countries, including New Zealand, if a disabled person’s spouse earns above a certain amount, any benefits they may receive to cover the cost of their disability (there are a lot) get cut. This makes them unnecessarily financially dependent on that person.
I, like everyone, jumped for joy when Britney was freed. But she herself announced on her Instagram that she will advocate for people with disabilities and illnesses who are locked into abusive conservatorships. No one should lose their personhood and all bodily autonomy. If we believed in freedom for Britney, we need to believe in freedom for everyone.
Words — Latifa Daud
