Britney Spears' Traumatizing Upbringing That Ruined Her Life: Her Public Scandals and Conservatorship
Britney Spears for Glory Days Album Photoshoot (2016)
Britney Spears will always be known as a legendary A++ celebrity. Unfortunately, that status is far from how her life actually went. With an insanely impressive career and explosive start in the industry, Britney was battling inner demons that were fueled by none other than her parents throwing her into the industry that ate her alive. Today, Britney is 39 years old and has no legal rights as she’s part of a conservatorship that is controlled by her father, Jamie Spears.
Welcome to our end of the year special! 2020 was one hell of a messy year, but I gotta say… I think Britney’s story is even messier. This is our first ever Britney post and veteran readers know the drill—let’s talk about their upbringing and how that affects them today before we go in deeper.
This is going to be an ongoing series on exposingsmg because 1. I can’t fit everything into one post and 2. if you’re reading this the day it’s published, you know it’s going up hours later because… I ain’t feeling too well (as I said on my personal Twitter account argenthearts). However, it is the end of the year special that thousands are looking forward to so the show must go on!
Britney’s Upbringing and Disturbing Childhood
I didn’t grow up with Britney Spears so when I did my research for this post… I was shocked, to say the least. Since Britney suffered a very public mental breakdown and was under several legal investigations, a lot of the skeletons in her closet were made public.
When discussing her story with a few of my sources, we all came to the conclusion that her mother, Lynne Spears, is the center of all of Britney’s problems and is the fueling factor behind what happened to her. We talk a lot about parental involvement on this blog when it comes to the topic of Dark Hollywood. Why? The industry is full of predators and these celebrities often start off very young. So if you’re not protecting your child, you’re setting them up for a lifetime of failure, abuse, and trauma. In the case of Britney, her mother used her to get out of their poor living situation.
If that meant letting her drink at 13 and lose her virginity at 14, do it!
And it happened.
Britney’s father and mother had a very toxic relationship that eventually led to them getting a divorce. Lynn (her mother) originally filed for divorce from Jamie and cited cheating as her reason to do so. Jamie had a drinking problem and Lynn was concerned with getting out of their poor living situation in Louisiana and she basically used her daughters to do exactly that. Jamie also had a gambling addiction so at one point, he wasn’t bringing any money in and Lynn felt that her only option was to utilize her daughters, Britney and Jamie-Lynn (aka Zoey from Zoey 101).
Britney, Jamie-Lynn, and their older brother Bryan, would have to escape from their trailer in the trailer park where they lived, and run to their aunt’s trailer when the fights would escalate and become widely physical between their parents.
When Britney first debuted in the industry, she had a wholesome image of “I’m an innocent good girl who’s also a virgin!” That was something that was highly romanticized in the industry and it made everyone want to work with her.
I don’t know if you guys remember, but in the early 2000s, Disney stars were always wearing “purity rings” which symbolized that they weren’t going to have sex until marriage. This was a notable feature with the Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus, and Selena Gomez. So back in the day, that innocent virgin idea was highly glorified.
I mean I don’t believe that a 14-year-old should be having sex at that age either, but the fact that the industry romanticized that idea shows that it was all about control for them. We’ve spoken about this before in the Dark Hollywood post concerning Miley and her dark Disney days.
“The purity movement was about conservative evangelicals keeping access to political power,” says Sara Moslener, author of Virgin Nation and professor of religion at Central Michigan University. “And it was young people, sexually pure young people, who could best make that case.”
“Do you want a Disney virgin or a cool sports car—which one is more elite?” Remember that sick analogy? Yep…
Lynn was using Britney as a stepping stool in her legacy. This brings us to how she encouraged her to have sex at 14. She was using her daughter’s beauty and “innocence” to secure connections. Her mother came up with the idea that Britney should date an older dude AND go all the way with him. If you’re having sex with a minor and it’s not physically ‘forced,’ it’s still considered statutory rape.
Britney with her mother / Barry King+Getty Images
As you can assume, boys were allowed to sleep over and “get it in.” Her mother portrayed a whole innocent virgin act for the cameras, but behind the scenes, that was not the case. And when Britney started dating Justin Timberlake, he was allowed the same privileges. In their case, Justin was a year older than Britney so it wasn’t that gruesome, but I mean she was still a minor encouraged to have sex.
Lynn actually wanted Justin and Britney to sleep together because she believed that it would be “good for her.” HUH?????
Lynn also allowed her kids to drink at the age of 13 and attend clubs. They were introduced into the party scene at a very young age which means you can fill in the dots as to what happened next. Being groomed? Doing drugs? Being taken advantage of? You name it.
One time, Britney was caught doing cocaine and smoking pot and her mother thought that this was normal teenage behavior. Pot is normalized nowadays, but back in the day it wasn’t. Even if it was… COCAINE??? AT 15????
And according to several sources, Britney developed a serious drug addiction.
When Britney was 12 years old, she worked on the set of the Mickey Mouse Club on Disney. One of her costars was Ryan Gosling who once revealed that he felt bad for seemingly corrupting Britney and Christina Aguilera because he led sex conversations on set. He would give them all the tea on the type of positions and basically bedroom tips.
I’m sure that her mother was aware of what was going on on set, but that wasn’t going to be too much of a concern if Britney was still bringing home that paycheck and saying her lines like a good girl.
As you can see, this was the foundation that Britney was brought up on and after understanding this, I’m sure we can all assume that it’s not that shocking now to see how she had very public mental breakdowns.
Even as a legal adult, Britney was still being taken advantage of as she continued in the industry.
For one, her former managers and agents have been accused of drugging Britney and taking advantage of her. At this point in time, Britney was 18 and dealing with severe mental health issues that weren’t properly medicated so she was taking anything that was being given to her.
Once Britney was drugged, she was even easier to control.
After all this sh!t happened and was provoked by her own mother, Lynn came out to say that she wishes Britney wasn’t branded as a sex object to sell records. Lynn was trashed by the media and so she released a “tell all” book to tell her side of the story.
That book was a painful defense argument for her where she says things like, “I wanted to be in denial, but I couldn’t deny the video footage unfolding in front of me. It was Britney, and she was shaving off her beautiful hair. All I could think of was, How could this be? She used to be the happiest girl in the world.” Girl… if you don’t get a grip.
Imagine encouraging your child to have sex at 14 and see them doing drugs at 15, but then question why they eventually led a public meltdown?
This brings us to the next part.
Britney’s Public Meltdowns
In January 2007, Britney’s aunt, Sandra Bridges Covington, died of ovarian cancer. Britney and Sandra were super close and Sandra was dubbed Britney’s “second mother.” In February of that year, Britney stayed at a rehab facility specializing in drugs for less than a day (she was supposed to stay for the 45 day program) before she left and shaved her head in the infamous scandal.
What most people don’t know is that after Britney left the rehab facility, she went to go see her ex-husband, Kevin Federline, at his home and demanded to see their kids, Sean and Jayden.
He didn’t let her.
Jon SooHoo, Getty Images
That’s when she drove to a hair salon and asked Esther Tognozz to shave her head. Knowing who the troubled pop star was, Esther said no. She told her, “You know maybe you're having a hormonal moment or something, and maybe tomorrow you'll feel differently about it. Let's talk about this." But as soon as her back was turned to speak with Britney’s bodyguard, Britney took the clippers and started shaving her own head.
Image: Bauer Griffin/MEGA
Esther said that “The only emotions that she showed was when she said her mom was going to be mad that she was doing this to her hair and she got a little bit teary eyed.” She even tried to make her feel better by saying that she’s starting a trend and everyone will soon follow.
When Esther was speaking to her bodyguards, she said that there were more than 70 paparazzi standing outside of the salon and snapping pictures of Britney; while her security did absolutely nothing.
Image: X17Online.com
Right after she shaved her head, Britney went to a nearby tattoo parlor and asked tattoo artist, Emily Wynne-Hug, to tat her up.
Emily recalls the night saying, “[I heard] an insane roaring sound outside. I wasn’t sure what was happening, if there was a riot outside and then the flashes came. I noticed her hair was gone. I remember asking here, 'why do you shave your head?'"
She then claims that Britney told her, “It was, you know, 'I just don't want anybody, anybody touching my head. I don't want anyone touching my hair. I'm sick of people touching my hair.'"
Just like Esther at the hair salon said, Emily claims that her security didn’t seem to care for Britney.
“It just didn't seem like they cared very much. I've felt this insane sense of anxiety and energy that felt so negative... It just seemed like everybody was waiting for the crash to happen."
There was also the incident where Britney started attacking a paparazzo’s car with an umbrella.
Collage by Callie Beusman
You would think that after all of that happened, Britney would take a break and heal from the Hollywood mess that she was in, right? Nope. She was forced to release her 5th studio album, Blackout, in October of 2007.
The month before the album release, she performed the lead single “Gimmie More” at the 2007 VMAs in what is regarded now as Britney’s worst performance.
You can even see celebrities in the audience just looking at her questionably because everyone knew that she wasn’t okay.
In that performance, you can see that she was totally out of it and was basically functioning on autopilot as if she has no control over her own body. Honestly, she looks drugged up.
Slowly, her rights continued being taken away
In October 2007, she lost physical custody of her sons to her ex-husband, Kevin.
In January of 2008, she refused to withdraw custody of her sons and then she was taken to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in an ambulance on January 3, 2008. It was then revealed that she was under the influence of an unknown substance and was being detained and evaluated at the hospital.
The following day, her visitation rights were suspended at an emergency court hearing and her ex-husband was given sole physical and legal custody of their children.
This situation is what resulted in the conservatorship that we see today.
After her visitation rights were suspended, she was committed to a psychiatric ward where she was put on a 5150 involuntary psychiatric hold under California state law. What a 5150 hold basically means is that you can be held involuntary for an evaluation for up to 72 hours. This happens if the individual shows that they can be a danger to themselves, or others, or is gravely disabled.
Due to this, the court placed her under a conservatorship that was led by her father, Jamie, and their attorney, Andrew Wallet. This resulted in them being in complete control of her assets.
She was then released 5 days later.
After everything that Britney went through with her mother, they became estranged for a while. Until this day, Lynn is fighting to be included in Britney’s finances. In May 2019, she tried to gain access to her conservatorship, but that didn’t work out. She filed another request in July 2020.
Despite the conservatorship and the obvious fact that she was unwell, Britney continued to work, tour, perform, guest star on shows, released perfumes, and release albums.
She went on to release Circus in 2008, Femme Fatale in 2011, Britney Jean in 2013, and Glory in 2016. She was touring constantly and served as a judge on X-Factor USA in 2012. This is just a brief summary of everything she was working on.
The beginning of 2019 is where everything starts going downhill again with Britney’s conservatorship and the Free Britney movement.
I want to dedicate a whole post to that because that is a whole story on its own with how Britney is acting on social media, celebrities being shut up when speaking about the Free Britney movement, her being forced into another mental health facility and then appearing looking unwell, her boyfriend Sam Asghari, and so on.
This was just an introductory post to the Britney Spears series so definitely ask me your questions that you want to be answered in the upcoming posts. I do plan on talking about her and Justin Timberlake in-depth as well, but there’s only so much we can discuss in one post, and hopefully next time I’m feeling better.
Before we end this, let’s discuss Dark Hollywood information.
Britney’s Involvement in Dark Hollywood
As we can see by everything I just spoke about in this post, Britney is a victim of greed by her parents and the industry. She was mentally unwell and yet continued to work and work so she can bring in money. The fact that she has no real rights made it easier to control Britney.
The reason why she’s forced to work is because of contractual obligations. Her entire life is highly controlled from her personal life to her work life.
When she shaved her head and tattooed her body, that was Britney rebelling against the people who handled and molded her.
She was controlled and used:
as a sex object
for weird fetishes by her groomers
as a larger distraction from what was going on in the public.
Britney’s public antics were publicized severely and used to distract the general public from any issue going on in the world at the time.
Britney has never experienced stable independence so her way of regaining control of her life was acting out in hurting herself in the process; which in turn was used against her in court as a way to control her assets and minimize her rights in her life.
Since her children were involved in the process, that strengthened any case building against Britney because she was deemed unfit to take care of herself and her children, and scarily enough, they thought she would hurt her children.
Britney’s music video “Break The Ice” which was on her album Blackout (the one she released after shaving her head and the public scandals) insinuated that she was trying to break free from everyone who controlled by ruining some sort of corporation and getting rid of all her “clones.”
For years, there has been a conspiracy that Britney is cloned. That’s not true, but her getting rid of her clones in the video seems like it was paying homepage to her getting rid of all the different versions of Britney that she was forced to be and what versions of her were utilized.
One of my sources believes that Britney underwent the same thing that Miley did when she was on Disney channel. We even said in that post that things like this was common to happen to young celebrities and judging from how gruesome the public information is on Birtney, I don’t think that the inside information is any different. If anything, it is worse.
There’s definitely a lot more to cover in this Britney series. I’m thinking that the second part of this post will be focused on her 2019-2020 legal conservatorship battle. What do you think about that? We can cover other topics such as her physical changes and relationship with Justin Timberlake in the following posts. Be mindful that it is a diverse topic that will be broken down.
I also want to discuss Britney’s typical diva behavior and relationship with her sister in the future.
Comment down below what are your thoughts on this post and any questions you have! What other topics do you want to be discussed in the future about Britney? You can comment anonymously so take advantage of that! We will be reading and replying back ;)
Tomorrow is our last post of 2020 and it will be focused on Elite Hollywood. See you then!