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Britney Spears has a message for anyone expressing concern about her behaviour in a vehicle on a Los Angeles highway last week: “I think I need to come out of the roof quite a bit more.”
The 44-year-old pop star was photographed last week, standing with her head through the sunroof of a Mercedes G-wagon as it travelled down Route 101, not far from her home in Thousand Oaks, Calif.
Gossip blogs TMZ and Page Six posted photos of Spears standing with her arms outstretched and her blonde hair thrown back, as the vehicle reportedly travelled at about 70 km/h.
The moment may have looked a little too carefree for someone who was charged with driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol four months ago.
But Spears herself was not driving, and she says the moment wasn’t reflective of her life. She posted a blurry photo of herself standing in the vehicle on Instagram.
“What people see is two seconds of insanity of me arching me to the lords !!!!! yet the days and hours of my reality !!!!!! Nothing is what it seems,” she wrote in the caption of the post, which included a second photo of a young girl curled up in a ball.
CBC News has requested more details about that post, but has not yet heard back from Spears’s publicist.
Free Britney
Over the past 25 years, Spears’s personal life has gone from tabloid gossip to feminist cause.
Her followers, for the most part, say they want her to live a happy life of her choosing, now that she is free of the controversial conservatorship that controlled her life and money for nearly 14 years.
The conservatorship sparked a movement, and the #FreeBritney hashtag took hold early in 2019, when some fans believed she was being forced into a mental health hospital against her will.
After years of silence, Britney Spears pleaded with a judge to end her court-appointed conservatorship. The star said it allowed her father to control virtually every aspect of her life.
It was terminated in 2021, after a drawn-out legal battle in which Spears successfully argued the restrictions and scrutiny of her life was “abusive.” She demanded that the conservatorship end without any prying evaluation of her mental state.
Which is why concerns were raised earlier this year when Spears was accused of driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs in southern California.
Spears pleaded guilty in May to what’s known as a “wet reckless” charge and was sentenced to a year of probation, instead of a jail sentence.
At that time, district attorney Erik Nasarenko said the singer had taken “full responsibility” for her actions, and he said it was essential that she follow the requirements agreed to in court, which include continued substance abuse treatment, weekly visits with a therapist and monthly visits with a psychiatrist.
The deal meant Spears’s mental health was once again subject to closer scrutiny, and for now, any time she is pulled over, she must automatically yield to searches and sobriety tests.
