There has been a lot of talk about Britney Spears for much of her life now, but the conversation recently shifted into over-drive again when the documentary Framing Britney Spears was released on Hulu. While the program brought up many of the important points surrounding Spears life, especially since the conservatorship of her personal and financial matters began over a decade ago, it also brought up new questions and led many people to see the whole situation surrounding Spears and the Free Britney movement differently. Now, another former child star, Bella Thorne, is sharing her blunt thoughts after watching Framing Britney Spears.
One of the things which Framing Britney Spears details is how the public treated the pop star during both her incredible rise to fame and the years during and after her public meltdown. Actress / singer / filmmaker Bella Thorne knows a lot about living your life in the public eye from a very young age, and how any missteps, perceived or actual, can lead people to turn on you or use your experiences as fuel for gossip. After watching the Spears documentary, Thorne spoke to Fox News about it, saying:
It was so sad when I watched it. Everything I was looking at made me really, really, really sad knowing that this was happening, knowing that this still happens, knowing that we're all a part of this, that we all did this to her. . . . Even if you didn't do anything to [Britney], you talked about her with your friends, you heard about those photos of her hitting that car, someone made a joke in a group -- we're all a part of it. That makes it so much more incredulous. The documentary is stunning in the sense that it really gives us the full-blown perspective of the situation. But it's really disgusting in the sense that here it is in black-and-white, this is what we did to her. My goodness, I just feel literally terrible.
It seems pretty clear that one of the reasons Bella Thorne was upset by Framing Britney Spears, is because she feels that everyone led to her downfall, and the situation she still finds herself in with her conservatorship, which doesn't allow her to control any major professional, personal or financial decisions.Thorne appears to believe that the public discourse around Spears after she shaved her head and attacked the car of a paparazzo with an umbrella, is one of the things which made an already deteriorating situation worse for the young star.
Those incidents, of course, are what led to the conservatorship, part of which is controlled by Spears' father, Jamie Spears. While the singer has been attempting to have him permanently removed from his position for several months now, that still hasn't happened, and the past couple of years have seen her fans launch Free Britney to try and get her out from under the control of her dad.
Bella Thorne knows a lot about living in the public eye and how destructive it can be to one's mental health. She's spoken openly in the past about being pitted against Zendaya on their breakout Disney Channel show over a decade ago, and about how the public perception of her is so much different from the reality. In fact, Thorne talked in her recent interview about identifying with some of what Britney Spears has gone through because of also being the target of slut shaming after a breakup with a famous boyfriend who claimed she cheated on him, and noted:
I was called a cheater and a slut and that hurt and people still think that was true. I've definitely been through my fair share of people putting some other perspective on me or lying about me publicly. I definitely relate to the male misogyny that is placed on all of us, in us women.
Framing Britney Spears has brought up a lot of emotional responses from viewers, and you can still catch the documentary on Hulu to see how you feel about all the information.
For more on what to watch right now, check out our guide to winter / spring 2021 TV.
