It seems like every couple of days new details from the upcoming Britney Spears documentary are leaked online. You get that her people are trying to build up buzz for the MTV event and for her new CD, and it’s working. It does seem to be too much information about her though, and given her struggles that we’ve witnessed through the media I feel kind of uncomfortable to hear her talk about them. It seems as if the strategy is for her to bare some of her pain in a sanitized way in order for people to better relate to her and take her seriously as a pop singer again. She’s a brand and she has an image to rebuild.
In the latest quotes to be released from “On The Record,” an upcoming 90 minute documentary, (I was incorrect in earlier stories when I said it was an hour) Britney pretty much hovers over most of the bases of her troubled life. She talks about her breakups with Justin Timberlake, husband Kevin Federline, and her struggle for freedom and a sense of identity after her children were born in close succession.
On her breakup with Justin Timberlake
“With Justin, he was a part of the magnitude of what I’d become,” says Spears, who ended a three-year relationship with Timberlake in 2002. “So then when he was gone, I was like, `What am I supposed to do with myself?’ … I would go out just to keep my mind busy, just to keep going.”On struggling to find her identity after getting married and having kids
“With Kevin, because I had two children with him, I did not know what to do with myself,” she says. “I had built my dream home in Malibu, a huge house and a pool and a huge yard for the kids and I did everything for them. And just my world was that.”She says she married Federline for the wrong reasons instead of following her heart. As a result, she went down a “weird path.”
On why her marriage ended
She says her marriage disintegrated when Federline began concentrating on his rap career.When it ended, “I felt so alone. I didn’t really want to think about the reality of it. It was like, `I’m OK.’ … But I never really faced it, and I just ran,” she says.
On trying to make sense of her life after her divorce
“I’ve been through a lot this year _ well, actually the past two or three years,” she says. “And my trust has really been battered. I’ve definitely grown up _ big time. And I’m very weary of a lot of things. Very protective of myself.”She says sometimes she gets lonely.
“You’re guarded,” she says. “You have to be that way, otherwise you get taken advantage of and get in situations like I did the past year. I totally lost my way. I lost focus, I lost myself, I had that type of nature within me that wanted to rebel out.
“I never wanted to become one of those prisoner people _ I always wanted to feel free and get in my car and go and not let people make me feel like I have to stay in my home. I think that was always the part of me that kinda got me in trouble,” she says.
[From AP via Huffington Post]
Britney’s team is trying to revamp her image with a new website and with this documentary, which sounds like it glosses over everything while explaining it in Britney’s kind of simplified way. It still seems to me like it’s too soon for her to be talking about it to the public – if she should ever talk about. Why not just move on and show that she’s capable of working again?
Just hearing her bring up the subject reminds me how troubled she really was. She had at least four separate crotch-baring incidents, including some ass-baring that happened earlier this year, she shaved her head and pulled the shades up in the salon so the paparazzi could capture it, and she went around driving aimlessly, wearing wigs and speaking in an accent. It’s very heartening to see her get better and restart her career if that’s what she wants, but I can’t help but feel like she’s being propped up to make a lot of people money and that’s why she has to talk about it. She was experiencing a full scale breakdown and we all watched it. That should have been private and so should the way she makes sense of it all after it’s old news.
Photo credit: Britneyspears.com
just anothe PR exercise cooked up by her comeback team. do they think we are all thirteen?
So the marriage started to fizzle when he started having a life of his own? I know, I’m not much into rap in general and K-Fed’s rap in particular, but it was his thing and I guess his doing it and not staying in his orbit around her sun did her in?
This seems typical to me. It’s always all about Britney, that’s at least half her problem. I can understand why she has the problem, what with being treated the way she was as a teen. But she has to realize that things do not revolve around her, that life is often boring, and just because you’ve built your mansion and have your Mercedes and your children, it doesn’t mean life is over.
Very well said, Celebitchy. I concur.
Maybe, Syko, but I always viewed Kevin as an opportunist. Don’t you think he was using her from day 1 just SO he could have a rap career? jmho.
Possible, Chun Li, but I think she was using him too, she was in love with love and wanted to be married. I guess we all use each other all the time, and it’s only after things go bad that it seems like a crappy thing to do.
I do agree with CB that it should all have been private. No matter if she comes all the way back, we’ll all forever have pictures in our minds of her shaving her head and attacking that car with an umbrella.
She is exposing alot of her personal self but come on we all wanted to know what was swirling around in her head at the time of her breakdown. I’m sure being a celebrity can be very lonely and like Brit said you dont know who to trust.
I am happy that she’s getting her life back on track for the sake of herself and her boys. And who’s marriage in America is perfect anymore. I cannot sit and judget KFed or Britney on their parenting skills. Atleast KFed had sense enough to be there for their boys when their mother wasnt capable.
Isn’t this how it all started, creating a monster that became bigger than her? Some people never learn. You would think that by now privacy is her top priority and keeping her feet on the ground. Good luck. I see another break down in another 5 years if it goes on like this.
Only five years, Kim?
I don’t think she’s recovered from the first one and don’t think she should be doing all this stuff so quickly. Teaching dancing to five year olds would have been a better choice for her mental health.
Actually I have always felt sorry for britney. She has been treated horribly by the paps and the press. She had a breakdown and none of the paps or the press gave her any slack. Really sad. I think that by telling about herself and what she went through is a good thing. I for one find it makes me feel really sad of rher and her struggles.
Oh yes, Britney, let’s blame Kevin for your downward spiral. What does Kevin have to do with you wearing a pink wig, talking with an English accent and boinking the paparazzi???? Kevin has been the stabilizing influence in your children’s lives…
She sounds very dependent, but I don’t know if I’ve mellowed out or what, I’m really starting to like her.
Watching her rise in the ranks of celebrated people, I always did wonder what all the fuss was about. So, she is a singer and a dancer…SO WHAT?!!There are plenty of singer/dancers around who happen to be pretty. She lacks talent and personality, but for some reason the press chose to latch onto her. I thought that she was extremely lucky to have so much success and money and then she started making all the wrong moves, beginning with her marriage with her friend which was annulled and then the marriage to K.F. who had a child with one on the way and the writing was on the wall at that point. Now she is notorious for bad judgment choices and is trying desperately to change the image that she trashed. As far as I am concerned, I cannot think of her without remembering her sleaziness and irrational behavior which I believe was totally intentional and not mental illness at all. This is what happens when people are worshiped without any basis for it. Why most successful pretty young women want to classify themselves as morally depraved sl-ts, will always remain a mystery to me.
I hope that her comeback is successful. She does have talent.
Mental illness is a horrible place to find yourself in, especially being a mother. Unless you know or understand her diagnosis – I don’t think you should be judging her.
She looks great – GO POP TART!
i think a lot of people forget until brit and keven split she took care of them kids not keven she made mistakes but who doesn’t if i’d i’ve had everyone of my mistakes plastered for all to see..well don’t even want to think about it being a star and having $$$$ does’t change the fact she is a person deep down we all want the happy endding. a partner who loves us for us,kids and the house. she thought she had it all and then everything crashed in on her $$$ or no $$$ pain hurts
Anyone noticed how she hasn’t talked about her kids and what they’ve brought to her life in any of these quotes. She complains about het life, but what about those two boys?? Don’t they make her less bored…lonely? How can you be bored in your life when you have two children? This girl may look better and act better, but she’s still selfish and shallow at heart. She’s just not able to show it anymore.
Oh, please. She has never taken care of those children. Too many stories surfaced about her sitting stiffly holding a baby and then telling the nanny to “take him, I’m done.”
You know, with all the ZOMG HOMEWRECKER stuff that goes on in the Angelina/Brad threads, I wonder why nobody ever called Britney a homewrecker. Maybe Kevin and Shar weren’t married, but they had a home, a child and another child on the way. Hmm.
I can’t believe some people on this thread are criticizing Spears for her struggles with mental illness and the fallout from a career that required her teenage sexuality be packaged and sold to the American public. This woman is traumatized. And you say she ruined her marriage because she didn’t allow her husband enough freedom to do his own thing! Bleak picture. Bleak, misogynistic picture.
I feel sympathy for anyone who has hit their limit and then subsequently taken a nosedive – but COME ON. After the crash, you’ve got to reevaluate how you’re living your life, not pander your “mental illness” to the crowd for empathy while you stage a “comeback”.
I’ve no doubt that given her lifestyle that she’s prone to Major Depressive Disorder – but so are 30-40% of Americans.
Her biggest problem is that her narcissism isolates her from everyone else and makes her unwilling to accept responsibility for her actions. It’s a difficult handicap to face (since it seems to be ingrained in her since childhood), but any psychiatrist will tell you, being perpetually loaded on antipsychs isn’t going to help you accomplish anything.
I’m with you, Susan; I feel she has been treated badly and it makes me sad. I also feel that Britney is a larger-than-life example of what a typical girl in our country is like today. It started with the jail-bait video. She grew up too fast, partied to drown her sorrows, went desperately searching for stability in her past with a marriage to her hometown friend, then regretted it, then got married/had children in an attempt to have “family”, and then lost it when she realized that she had to be an adult. I see lots of this and it is unfortunately a result of poor parenting.
I don’t think she’s well yet. Bipolar disorder is a lifetime thing. Not a cold you get over.
I agree with a lot of what you said, Syko. However, I really feel like a lot of what happened to Brit in 2006-08 was true mental illness. And I think she’s trying to be as honest and as straight-forward as she’s ever been.
I think she should really talk about her healing process, the medication she’s taking, etc. It would be informative, and she would be providing a public service to a lot of kids who struggle with mental illnesses.
Lenneke: Excellent point. And I might add that the only time she appears “connected” to her children is during one of those staged photo ops.
Syko: Agree with everything you said, as I usually do when Britney is the topic. 😀
I actually think it’s fabulous that she’s talking about it. Mental illness has a huge stigma in this country: although 1 in 10 Americans has a mental illness, nobody will ever talk about. To have somebody like her talk about her recovery is so important to people who are dealing with their own mental health issues, usually unsuccessfully.
My voyeuristic (sp?) celebrity gossip loving side is thrilled about this documentary because I’m going to love watching it.
however…I tend to agree with CB on this. I don’t know how healthy or positive any of this is for Britney.
As long as the doco helps not hurts her im all for it.I agree with Syko, baby steps, so that its not, hit me baby, one more time…
And come on people, this is not a mental illness. Everything that happened was just a very very unintelligent very spoiled young girl acting out. In the US, when dumb people do dunb things, people always blame it on something else and start medicating the hell out of people. Kids that are a little too active always have ADHD. And people like Britney who just have a very low IQ, are labeled bipolar.
I think, if this is done properly, it could help her heal. She experienced a manic episode and had to deal with it publicly, so if she wants to talk about it, I’m okay with it. I can understand if she wants people to know that she’s over it.
My offer to jump your ex Cletus in a parking lot still stands, Britney. 😈