Guest Post: Russ Martin on How Britney Spears Is Finally Taking Control of Her Own Story
By Russ Martin
Image: Shutterstock
This week’s newsletter is a guest post from writer and producer (and my favourite Britney scholar) Russ Martin.
In the lead-up to the release of Britney Spears’ blockbuster memoir The Woman In Me on Tuesday, the pop star did not sit for a single interview. There was no Rolling Stone cover story, no hour-long sit down with Oprah Winfrey. No journalists were invited to her home or to walk reflectively with her along a private strip of beach in Malibu or to meet Britney for dinner in a cozy, private corner of the back room of a trendy Beverly Hills restaurant.
Spears answered a handful of questions, by email, for a single publication, the celeb-friendly People. The resulting cover story, the first with her participation in five years, is based mostly on excerpts from the book. The photo that graces the cover, of Spears on the beach in a floral sundress, was, according to the story, shot in Tahiti, but is credited to “Britney Brands” rather than a photographer and is so awkwardly photoshopped that readers would be forgiven for thinking the magazine downloaded something from her Instagram and slapped it on the cover.
It was not a publicity roll-out befitting the scale of anticipation for this book, marketed not only as publishing’s marquee fall release but also as the 41-year-old’s first chance to tell her story since being freed from the conservatorship she was under for the majority of her adult life. Not that the PR plan mattered—Simon & Schuster could have sent the book to stores without so much as issuing a press release and it would have spawned thousands of news pieces in every medium imaginable all across the globe.
Julia Fox, Jada Pinkett Smith and Ziwe each did an extensive press tour in support of their new books this fall, but Spears prompted a mountain of press clippings without so much as a phoner. Entertainment Tonight has run 15 Spears stories this month. Rolling Stone, 13. Us has published a staggering amount—more than 60. Interest is so high that Spears doesn’t need to speak to the press if she doesn’t want to. And in The Woman in Me, Spears makes clear why she doesn’t want to. She writes at length about the ways journalists have made her feel uncomfortable. About how paparazzi made her feel unsafe. About the unfair, misogynistic coverage she has received. Much has been made of Spears’ revelations in the book about her breakup from fellow pop star Justin Timberlake, their joint decision to have an abortion (she felt pressure from him) and her decision to shave her head (“I was simply out of my mind with grief. My children had been taken away from me.”). But alongside almost every revelation in this book is also a reflection on the tabloid and press narratives that accompanied each stage of her life. The Woman in Me is her attempt to correct her public record.
Britney Spears has been a media sensation since she first tapped her pencil on a textbook in the music video for her 1998 debut single, “...Baby One More Time.” Released the year after Adrian Lyne's film Lolita, the video arrived amidst a moral panic over the sexualization of young girls. In her Catholic school girl uniform, Spears was a lightning rod (in the book, she confirms the outfit was her idea). She was just 16, but she’d already been asked uncomfortable questions on a public stage. The very first interview she recounts in The Woman in Me is when she was 10, standing in front of a male broadcaster, Ed McMahon, then nearing 70, filming an episode of Star Search. McMahon commented on her “adorable, pretty eyes” and asked her if she had a boyfriend. Polite and Southern, she said “No, sir.” Though far less excruciating than the questions she’d later be asked, the early television appearance set the template for how Spears would be framed by journalists and broadcasters: first by her looks, then by her relation to a man.
The man in question, most frequently, is Timberlake, famous in his own right as a member of the boy band NSYNC. She clocked how differently they were treated. “The questions he got asked by talk show hosts were different from the ones they asked me. Everyone kept making strange comments about my breasts, wanting to know whether or not I’d had plastic surgery.”
Spears was made to answer for her body, but also for her perceived provocations—in early cases, mostly showing midriff and being a person who has breasts. After the 2000 Video Music Awards, during which Britney performed in a rhinestone bra and pants, the network that put her on stage asked her to answer for wardrobe: “MTV sat me down in front of a monitor and made me watch strangers in Times Square give their opinions of my performance…They said I was dressing ‘too sexy,’ and thereby setting a bad example for kids. The cameras were trained on me, waiting to see how I would react to this criticism, if I would take it well or if I would cry.”
She describes her “completely humiliating” 2003 interview with Diane Sawyer as a breaking point. “I didn’t owe the media details of my breakup,” Spears writes. “I shouldn’t have been forced to speak on national TV, forced to cry in front of this stranger, a woman who was relentlessly going after me with harsh question after harsh question… I felt like I had been exploited, set up in front of the whole world.”
Of her infamous interview with Matt Lauer (now infamous in his own right following sexual assault allegations) for Dateline, Spears writes, “He said that people were asking questions about me, including: ‘Is Britney a bad mom?’ He never said who was asking them. Everyone, apparently.”
Even Ryan Seacrest, known for softball red carpet interviews (and the subject of his own sexual abuse allegation), is called out for a 2007 interview framed as promotion for Blackout. “Ryan Seacrest asked me questions like, ‘How do you respond to those who criticize you as a mom?’ and ‘Do you feel like you’re doing everything you can for your kids?’ and ‘How often will you see them’? It felt like that was the only thing people wanted to talk about: whether or not I was a fit mother. Not about how I’d made such a strong album while holding two babies on my hips and being pursued by dozens of dangerous men all day every day.”
As of writing, none of these journalists have responded or apologized. Several years ago, while still employed by NBC, Lauer defended his interview, saying he was “doing his job.” To follow his logic: That episode of Dateline aired in June 2006; Spears was between albums and had recently appeared in a reality show about her marriage, Britney and Kevin: Chaotic. Her personal life was certainly news. But there’s a difference between the public interest (as in: relating to the welfare of the public) and things the public finds interesting (as in: literally everything about Britney Spears). Lauer hammered questions towards a pop star like her parenting was a matter of national safety, not national fascination. Also, he was being an asshole. There’s a world between, “What’s it like to parent in the public eye?” and ‘Is Britney a bad mom?’”
The celebrity profile can be revelatory. Profiles of pop stars, especially, offer listeners new ways to engage with their work. Read Jia Tolentino on Jai Paul, Joan Morgan on TLC or Danyel Smith on SZA and you’ll find not just stories about musicians, but new ways of thinking about music. Great writers allow readers to see musicians in ways that are more interesting—and more revealing—than what pop stars will show us on their own.
The Woman in Me isn’t a great book. It skims where it should excavate, hitting all the topics its reader is hungry for, but fails to make a meal of most anecdotes. We learned more details about the conservatorship from the in-depth, credible reporting on it by the New York Times than from The Woman in Me. Spears is scant on stories from the studio. She opens up, but doesn’t linger. A fantastic profile or sit-down interview would have added texture to Britney’s story at this juncture. There are plenty of places she could go for softballs—Zane Lowe or Drew Barrymore would kill to have her. But she doesn’t have to. She says her piece in the book and shares to the extent she feels comfortable—and that’s all the public, or the media, is entitled to.
Twenty five years have passed since “...Baby One More Time.” In that time, most of Spears’ peers have faded out of the public eye. She hasn’t. Through the 2000s, she fuelled an economic golden age for American tabloids. Even when her musical output slowed, she remained a subject of media fascination. Then the #FreeBritney movement and conservatorship trial made her more newsworthy than she’d been since the height of her commercial powers. She has spent an intense, unhealthy amount of time as a media subject.
For two decades, journalists asked her things they’d never ask a male musician. She was swarmed by cameras at her worst moments. She was called a Lolita, then a bad mom, then crazy.
Now, Spears no longer has a team that will force her to sit for interviews. She has her voice back—and she won’t be taking questions.
Russ Martin is a producer for Pop Pantheon. On Nov. 2, Pop Pantheon and LAist are hosting a discussion of Britney’s memoir, music + legacy at The Crawford in Pasadena with a recording to follow.
And Did You Hear About…
The javelinas waging war on an Arizona golf course. (My Twitter feed and I love them.)
This Nylon piece on “literary it girls” that inspired a somewhat exhausting discourse.
Hasan Minhaj’s fact check of the New Yorker’s September 2023 article about his comedy, which casts serious doubt on the mag’s argument that “many of the anecdotes he related in his Netflix specials were untrue.”
Literary critic Saree Makdisi’s unflinching essay on Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians—and the West’s apathy.
Jezebel’s annual scary story contest.
Thank you for reading this week’s newsletter! Still looking for intersectional pop culture analysis? Here are a few ways to get more Friday:
💫 Join Club Friday, our membership program. Members get early access to Q&As with pop culture experts, Friday merch and deals and discounts from like-minded brands.
💫 Follow Friday on social media. We’re on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and even (occasionally) TikTok.
💫 If you’d like to make a one-time donation toward the cost of creating Friday Things, you can donate through Ko-Fi.