To communicate! It’s an essential human need, to understand and to be understood. And Britney Spears, as human as you and me and anyone else, is trying to tell us something. Well, she’s trying to tell us a lot of things, and she’s doing it through her most recent Instagram post.
First, there’s a new photo of her topless, and covering her chest with her hands. There is something about shedding layers and being free—being #FreeBritney—through partial nudity. In her captions for the post, she wrote a long caption that said, in part, “The immediate reaction to any woman who does this after shedding a layer is DAMN I FEEL BETTER … therefore you think you look better !!! I’ve had a billion shows where I’ve done that and to my horror uhhh we’ll … sometimes I didn’t look so great … TOO MANY TIMES and it’s embarrassing as fuck but in my imagination it felt great !!!! I mean I don’t want anybody to see the big dimple on my ass but I feel like performing made me too self conscious about my body and that’s not attractive ….. anyways I bet you’re wondering why I’d expose my body NOW … well it’s because I was born into this world naked and I honestly feel like the weight of the would has been on my shoulders and it’s made me view myself that way !!!!”
Spears, who has been under the control of her father via a conservatorship, has seemed to stretch her wings on Instagram recently, just as her dad agreed to remove himself from the position. While so many IG users have dispensed with frequent posts on the main feed, Spears is posting multiple times a day, many days a week.
Call this exposure therapy—that is, doing exposure on her own terms—or the self reborn or nakedness as a means of honesty. “I wanted to see myself in a lighter way … naked,” she wrote. “Like the way I was born and to me looking back at my pictures when I shoot it’s insane the psychology in seeing myself in my purest form gives evidence that pain … hurt … tears … and heavy burdens aren’t who I am. I am a woman …. a beautiful … sensitive woman who needs to look at myself in my purest form !!!”
She added that she wouldn’t do all this naked posting forever; that “would get boring but it sure as hell helps when you need to be enlightened.” This is Britney seeing you seeing her for maybe the first time on her own terms. And this particular message didn’t stop with shedding layers, real and metaphorical. There is something else concerning the color red, from her red-rose emojis and red boots. She won’t tell anyone what the color means, just that it means something. “And I will admit the FREE BRITNEY comments after I took my shirt off were actually really fucking funny !!! The Free Britney campaign started with all your amazing pink Free Britney shirts 👚 3 years ago !!! There’s a way deeper meaning to the movement than you can ever imagine … my fans have always been so damn amazing and I love you all 🌹🌹🌹 !!!! ”
And finally, before you could wonder if this was shot on the holy Sunday, she wrote, “Psss this was shot on holy Sunday yesterday ✨ !!!!” Listen, one major step to open communication is radical honesty.
More Great Stories From Vanity Fair
— Behind the Scenes of Anthony Bourdain’s Iconic Nude Portrait
— Will TikTok Save the Olympics?
— King Edward VIII, King George VI, and the Rift That Changed History
— New Summer Books for Every Mood
— Jeff Bezos and the Life-Changing Magic of Going to Space
— The Best Next-Gen Face Toners for Balanced Skin
— Jared and Ivanka Have Reportedly Closed on Billionaire Bunker Mansion 2.0
— The Rehabilitation of Prince Edward and Sophie
— From the Archive: How John Kennedy Gracefully Took His Place in History
— Sign up for The Buyline to receive a curated list of fashion, books, and beauty buys in one weekly newsletter.