I don’t know if you saw the Britney Spears headlines over the weekend, but they weren’t exactly the warmest of her career. The pop legend was apparently eating at a restaurant in the San Fernando Valley alongside her husband Sam Asghari and her bodyguard when she got “manic” and stormed out. A video of the incident in which she was allegedly talking “gibberish” has since made the rounds. Last night, she posted a video in response that features her dancing and throwing up middle fingers to “I Touch Myself” by The Divinyls, and the entire thing has attracted a ton of media attention.
That media attention started when TMZ ran a story yesterday morning that featured a video taken by someone in the restaurant that appeared to show Spears talking with an employee at the restaurant and then shielding her face from being seen. She apparently left not long after, and witnesses allegedly said she was acting "manic" during the whole thing. In the time since, the incident has been picked up by a variety of other outlets including Page Six and The Daily Mail. And the noise has only gotten louder since Spears dropped the aforementioned video of her flipping off the camera and dancing.
Altogether, the whole thing is being taken by many as a reason to point and talk about Britney Spears, but I think a lot more context is actually needed here. Certain parts of this story are being, in my opinion, underreported, and it’s being used to paint the singer in a negative light. So, let’s back up for a second and give a little bit of context.
Britney Spears emerged in the late 90s and early 00s as one of the most famous pop stars in history. She was just a teenager when she initially got famous, and after churning out a string of hits, the media circus around her grew to the point where the paparazzi followed her almost everywhere she went. She later got married, got divorced and after a series of well-publicized mental health incidents involving photographers following her and her lashing out, was put under a conservatorship.
After more than a decade under a conservatorship, mostly run by her father Jamie Spears, Britney Spears was finally given her freedom in November of 2021. She soon got married to Asghari and has spent the last year doing a variety of things she previously wasn’t allowed to including but not limited to drinking coffee, using an ATM card and planning her own schedule. She’s also taken to posting on social media, where she’s talked openly about her feelings related to the conservatorship and posted a lot of videos and pictures expressing herself, sometimes in an NSFW way.
Fans have repeatedly and especially over the last six months, however, complained about how Spears is rarely seen outside of her house. In fact, her lack of public appearances led to her comment section on Instagram being bombarded with conspiracy theories questioning whether she’s okay or if there’s something wrong with her. The chatter got so loud that she even had to turn off the comments on most of her posts.
So, to sum up, we have a woman who got famous at a really young age and was put under a conservatorship after a series of incidents in which she was stalked and followed by members of the paparazzi until she lashed out. Over the last six months, this same woman was relentlessly hounded on social media by fans asking why she’s not seen in public more. Then finally, this woman decides to go out to a random restaurant near her home alongside her husband, and what happens?
Well, according to TMZ, almost immediately after she arrived “patrons pulled out their cell phones and began shooting footage of her.” Have you seen the actual video going around of her at the restaurant? It was taken from a table by someone sitting diagonally from her. So, to be really explicit about this, after she walked into the restaurant and random fans started overtly taking pictures of her, another diner at a table basically next to her got out their phone and just started filming her.
Now, I wasn’t at JOEY, the restaurant in San Fernando Valley, and I have no idea what Britney Spears said to other patrons or employees. Maybe she was rude. Maybe she really was speaking “gibberish” as people there are alleging, but I can tell you with 100% certainty that if I went out to eat at a restaurant with my wife and someone at the table next to me pulled out their phone and just started recording me, I would get up and leave too.
I mean, given all that, is it really that weird that she went home and dropped the following middle finger video?
I don’t know exactly what happened inside the restaurant. Maybe Spears did some things that were out of line. I don’t know. But it’s absolutely ridiculous for anyone to think Spears should have just sat there and ate dinner while an army of fellow customers pulled their phones out and started taking video while she was just trying to eat food in peace. And it's absolutely ridiculous for anyone to think they should be pulling out their phones and taking pictures and videos of celebrities inside restaurants. If I was trying to eat and people wouldn’t stop filming me, I’d start acting “manic” too, and I’m sure a lot of other people would do the same.
