Let’s Make Sure Britney Is Able to Enjoy Her Freedom This Time

A legal arrangement called a conservatorship has isolated Britney Spears from the world and constricted her decisions for 13 years. But it hasn’t, apparently, shielded her from what people say about her. On her legendary Instagram feed, selfies and ice-cream pics have sometimes come with captions aimed at rude commenters. One time, she shared a rebuke—KISS MY ASS EAT SHIT AND STEP ON LEGOS—for anyone who thought it was weird how often she uploaded videos of herself dancing alone. Another post, about the glory of New York City doors, contained this note: “Some will say I’m crazy for sharing that but most say that anyways.”

Crazy was the word that chased Spears around, in TMZ headlines and talk-show chatter, for the first decade of her career. As the teen star grew up in public, she did impulsive things: got hitched in Las Vegas, shaved her head, umbrella-thwacked a paparazzo’s car. In retrospect, many of these actions seem intentionally defiant or harmlessly tacky. But at the time, observers tittered with concern and condemnation, creating a doom spiral: Spears’s thrashing against her critics only caused them to criticize her more. Then, in 2008, two psychiatric hospitalizations led to the establishment of the conservatorship that still rules her life and finances today.

[Read: There’s never been a story like Britney Spears’s]

Spears’s diagnoses weren’t made public, and the media narrativeforbidden her from improvising in public, whether giving or making . But the peaceful facade shattered in when Spears spent more than 20 minutes in court lambasting the conservatorship as abusive. Her father initially pushed back by indicating Spears was unwell, yet this month his lawyer filed a petition stating that if Spears “wants to terminate the conservatorship and believes that she can handle her own life … she should get that chance.”