I finished Britney Spears memoir this week “The Woman in Me.” It was an unflinching look at her life of religious trauma, generational trauma, and misogyny. I had to read it in chunks because I have a very similar upbringing as Ms. Spears.

The opening chapter was quite shocking to me as she detailed her grandfather putting both of his wives in mental health facilities if they started disagreeing with him. This would foreshadow her breakdown in the mid-2000s when the people surrounding her, who should have protected her from the media, used and manipulated her for their own financial gain.

During the 2000s, there was also a backlash to the early and mid-1990s alternative music culture that was very feminist and pushed the boundaries of gender norms. I remember Nirvana dressing in  drag and no one batted an eye about it. I grew up during the grunge culture of riot girls and alternative bands like Rage Against the Machine and Garbage who pushed back against the patriarchy and corporate capitalism. It was a wonderful time to be in your early 20s.

But, the media landscape changed when Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake and the Backstreet Boys exploded on the scene at the turn of the millenium. The media culture that Britney Spears was a part of was far more sexist and degrading to women than the early 1990s. 

But, why was this young woman, who was barely 18, asked so many personal questions by the media, which today would not happen?

According to “Vox,”  in the 2000s, it was open season on young women. ""It was blatant, horrifying misogyny," says the former New York Daily News gossip columnist Ben Widdicombe, author of Gatecrasher: How I Helped the Rich Become Famous and Ruin the World. He welcomes our soul-searching about the period. "I'm glad it's being re-evaluated," he says. "I think it has to be. The media was incredibly cruel to Britney and other women at the time.”

Through Spears' book, people are re-examining their own lives and what religious and generational trauma can do to a person. Spears states in her book that her grandfather was horrible and controlling to her father which led him to be an alcoholic, which led to her seeing how her father treated her mother and Britney which led her to being a people pleaser and her ultimate breakdown and 13 year conservatorship where she wasn't even allowed to drink coffee. 

I do think social media has played a positive role in helping us look back at this era and reexamine how women were treated. If you want to go down this rabbit hole, get a Tik Tok account. There are numerous pop culture accounts that do an academic deep dive on this topic. 

At the end of the day, the patriarchy hurts everyone. Women, and men, should be free to live their authentic selves without judgment. We are a long way from that but we also are coming to terms with how the culture treated women like Britney Spears who grew up poor and in a hostile environment. She didn't have the advantages that Taylor Swift had  with a supportive family. Her book is a must- read for pop culture and music historians.

Maybe it will make you think differently about her Instagram posts. It did for me. 

See you on the flip side.