BRITNEY SPEARS: ALL THE WAYS SHE’S REPRESENTED WOMEN (PART 1)

I’m currently job searching. No, no…I’m not quitting the blog, I promise. I know my previous post mentioned me almost quitting Instagram (again and again and again), but that won’t happen, and neither will I quit the blog. But anyways, back to the topic I actually want to discuss…..

Job searching has been a very interesting process for me. It’s very different now than what I’d experienced the last time I ever applied to jobs back in 2016 after I graduated college. Back then, recruiters wouldn’t hire me, nor anyone for that matter, if I asked whether I could work from home if I had a lesser salary. I wanted to have an option to work from home not because I felt entitled to, but because I needed time at home due to me being in recovery following surviving a car accident. The recovery process, mine at least, was a years-long process. That’s how I got into freelancing in the first place.

Now, in the post-pandemic era, working from home has become the norm. Therefore, I’m certainly a lot ore hopeful about my job searching journey. I’m obviously applying to writing related jobs, and the experience has been nothing short than interesting, to say the least. Looking for writing and/or editing related positions is a somewhat different experience than the search for any other job. When you get an interview for a writing/editing position, you might ‘test assignments’, or be asked to send in your previous work that’s relevant to the position, or you might be asked some pre-screening questions when you send in your resume.

One job application stood out for me in particular. I applied for a celebrity and entertainment writing position, and one of the pre-screening questions required to state which celebrity I admired most and why. My answer was Britney Spears. She was the first person that came to mind. I wasn’t sure why, but she did. She’s been on the news a lot in the past few months – from the day she got married in June up until the end of August when she released ‘Hold Me Closer’ with Elton John, her first single in 6 years, as well her first single since her conservatorship ended late last year.

Soon after Britney got married to Sam Asghari back in June, she announced she was pregnant with her third child, which was a complete shock to the entire world, women mostly, considering the fact that she wasn’t allowed to have any more children under her father’s control and had an IUD placed in her system. Nonetheless, I was personally rooting for her well-being and happiness. It was long overdue.A month later, though, Britney announced that she suffered a an early miscarriage. With her announcement of her losing her baby, or embryo if we’re being more specific, came the public scrutiny.

For those of you that don’t know, the usual time frame that expectant couples and/or mother start telling their loved ones about their pregnancies is the second trimester, which is around the 13 week mark. Reason being is chances are reduced that something would go wrong with the fetus. I, for one, wouldn’t tell anyone that I was pregnant until the 20 week mark, which is when an ultrasound is done to check the baby’s full body, brain, and organs. When I first found out, the only people that knew were my parents and my husband’s mother. Once the 14 week mark hit, I started, slowly but surely, telling my family and closest friends. When I say closest friends, I mean only 3-4 people. I only made my pregnancy public when I hit the 20 week mark.

Britney Spears was harshly criticized for announcing that she was pregnant in the first place so early. The reason it’s known that she wasn’t far along in her pregnancy is because she mentioned she suffered an early miscarriage, which means that it’s likely to have happened in the early weeks, 4 weeks or so, of pregnancy. She, along with her husband, did admit that excitement got the best of her and she told the world too soon. The question that immediately came to my mind when I saw her post was, ‘Why does she even need to explain herself?’

Pregnancy can be such a beautiful experience for both women AND men. It’s also a very personal experience. We all should have the right to choose when to open up. Some choose not to disclose that they’re expecting at all and only make the birth of their child public. Who’s anyone to say that’s not okay? It’s just as okay as Brittney Spears opening up about being pregnant in early stages. There’s no shame in that. In her case, there shouldn’t be any shame. Nonetheless, there was shame because she’s such a big superstar and the media just got used to judging her the same way it did 20 years ago.

In reality, though, at least in the reality that I live in, it’s a woman’s sole choice of when she’s comfortable enough to open up about her pregnancy if she’s even comfortable enough to begin with. I’ve seen women who’d gone through IVF who are completely and utterly open about their journey. There are women out there who have opened up about having miscarriages following their IVF procedures, there are women out there who have opened up about not being able to have any more children who are genetically theirs and use a sperm donor, an egg donor, or even an embryo donor to have a child, and then there are women out there who open up about why IVF isn’t for them.

I wouldn’t choose that path for myself to be so open while I was going through it, but I always respected other women’s decision to open up and never judged them for it. Infertility is a very lonely thing to go through, and if social media is the way for a woman to get through her emotional pain, why not use it to its potential? I used social media to get through infertility myself. But instead of posting about it on my Instagram, I looked for other women who did. No one understands you more than someone who’s going through something similar to what you’re going through.

Now who’s to say that Britney Spears didn’t go through infertility herself? She was very open about wanting to have more children, but it was obvious that she couldn’t. It wasn’t because her body wasn’t working, but rather the fact that she couldn’t under her father’s control. When she finally gained full control over her life after 13 years of being treated like a child, and even worse, and became free to do whatever she wanted to, which was to get married and get pregnant, of course she’d open up about it with excitement.

No matter the case, women shouldn’t be judged, shamed, or belittled for their choices. It’s our bodies and we are the ones who are in control of them. The saying goes, ‘My body, my choice.’ But we don’t live by it. We have white men in politics telling us what to do. We have other people shaming us in person and talking about us behind our backs for what our bodies look like, and then we have social media – place where people are the most cruel because they type things that they’d never say to a woman to her face.

Us, women – we’re worth more than that, and we need proud of who we are and what we are capable of doing. Society is always going to have an opinion. Others are always going to have something to say, but that shouldn’t stop us from doing whatever it is that we want to do.