#FreeBritney

I watched “Framing Britney” this weekend and walked away completely disturbed by the financial misogyny that Britney Spears has endured throughout her career. And truth be told, I’m even more appalled that it took me this long to realize it.

Here I am a feminist, a self-made business woman, a 40-year old adult, a financially literate member of society, and I’ve known on some level about the Spears conservatorship for years--and I didn’t even blink. As I reflect on “Framing Britney,” I realize that Britney’s situation is tied to the backwards, misogynistic relationship we have as a society with women and money--and I’m also considering how that misogyny has subconsciously seeped into my own belief system.

Let’s start with the biggest red flag. For the past 12 years Britney has been under a conservatorship run by her father. A conservatorship is a legal state where a guardian is appointed by a judge to manage the 1) financial affairs and 2) daily life of another person due to physical or mental limitations. Britney’s mental health aside, Britney is a BIG business, and her brand is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Her four-plus year show in Vegas alone generated $331K a show or $1MM a week. This doesn’t include her 20 years of music sales, merch sales, endorsements, licensing agreements, touring and more. 

Any financially literate individual will tell you that a brand and a bank account worth this much should be managed by a professional: a wealth advisor, a bank, or an experienced talent and/or money manager. And, the minute an entrepreneur sees some element of business success, their investors and Board members advise them to get an independent wealth manager (even when they are still at a stage where their wealth is still ‘theoretical’/locked up in company stock). Why? Because wealth is complicated and requires long-term planning from tax advisors, accountants, estate planners and investment professionals who focus on this all day.

Britney’s money, however, was turned over to her father – a formerly bankrupt, consistently under-employed 60+ year old man who has zero financial experience. To make matters much worse and in a glaring conflict of interest, James Spears was paying himself a percentage of Britney’s income for this 12-year period, as if he was her manager. Even if we chalk James Spears’ disease up to greed and power, how in 21st century America can a judge hand over the reigns to a $100M+ business to James Spears? Why is the title “father” so powerful that for 12 years it trumped Britney’s own requests to move her financial interests over to a bank and it trumped the recent requests of her mother to take Britney seriously? 

Is our collective rationality so clouded by the patriarchy that we can’t see how glaringly inappropriate this situation is and how similar it is to a pre-RBG time when American women couldn’t open bank accounts without a male co-signer? Britney is 39 years old and has made hundreds of millions of dollars performing while under conservatorship. Even if she is mentally ill, she certainly has enough intellectual capacity to choose who should manage her brand. If not, why put her up on stage 3 times a week to perform – isn’t that abuse? Can we imagine any 40 year old man who was generating hundreds of millions of dollars being infantilized like this? 

I believe that some of the abuse in this situation is tied up in how relatively rare it is for women to have independent wealth. It is only in the last few decades that women have started acquiring wealth via their own devices. Before that, much of women’s wealth was inherited in some way.

Is our society still uncomfortable with women who have agency over their own financial power? Or maybe we are just flat out not used to it? It’s still taboo to talk about money – especially as a woman. A few years ago, I was asked to be on the cover of a magazine called “Women and Wealth,” and I couldn’t fathom entertaining the idea at the time. I thought it would be tacky and even embarrassing to be on a magazine cover with this title. I remember thinking, “I can’t set myself up like that. What if Rent the Runway fails at some point and I’m on a magazine cover about wealth? I’ll be attacked.” Plus, as someone who is still striving and very much on my way, “wealthy” just isn’t a word I’d ever use to describe myself.  

Beyond discomfort, there’s also looming problems related to lack of financial education and therefore, lack of confidence related to women and money. We certainly don’t educate kids in school on financial health, and social communities and message boards that are steeped in the markets are heavily male. Even stock market clubs in high schools and colleges are rarely filled with young women.  

Women may also lack self-confidence when it comes to financial know-how. I hear frequent stories from my wealth advisor that self-made women often walk into her office accompanied by their father or their husbands and defer to them to make decisions. She has never experienced a self-made man deferring to his wife or mother on financial decisions.

Knowing what I know and with the experience I have, it took a documentary for me to fully comprehend what a pervasive impact our financial systems have on perpetuating misogyny. For Britney, and even for women in somewhat similar positions, collectively grappling with this issue is the difference between living life as an independent adult and effectively being a child forever. So here I am, as a business leader, joining the chorus of social media supporters, celebrities, fans, feminists and more calling to #FreeBritney. This is much bigger than one person, but let’s start here.