Britney Spears is my idol… here’s why!

When I was about 12 or 13, Britney Spears was everything to me. I obsessed over every music video, every dance move, every sparkly costume. I was a dancer myself, and when Britney stepped on stage, she carried all the confidence, power, and joy that I desperately wanted to feel in my own skin. Her songs were catchy and relatable, the soundtrack to growing up, stepping into womanhood, and later, stepping into my clubbing era. She helped me express my femininity and power I didn’t know I had.

She was unstoppable. Untouchable. Indestructible.

Or so we were led to believe.

For years, Britney was put on a pedestal as the definition of girl power adored by millions while being silently chipped away by the very system that made her famous. And when she could no longer hold the crushing weight of everyone’s expectations… she cracked.

And the world laughed.

Suddenly, admitting you loved Britney was embarrassing. People mocked her, called her “crazy,” dismissed her talent, claimed she couldn’t sing or dance anymore. But what was really happening was far darker:

She was the perfect example of exploitation in plain sight.

She was the perfect example of societal misogyny.

She was the perfect example of what happens when a woman’s mental health becomes entertainment.

Britney’s documentary, Framing Britney Spears, was a gut punch. Her own family… the people who should have protected her…literally profited from controlling her. They insisted she wasn’t mentally stable enough to manage her own life or finances… while simultaneously forcing her to perform show after show, choreographing full-scale productions that generated millions for everyone but her.

How can someone be “too unwell” to make decisions, yet “well enough” to work like a machine?

That’s abuse.

That’s coercive control.

That’s trauma.

And now, in her freedom, Britney dances.

She dances to regulate.

She dances to feel.

She dances to reclaim her body, a body the world has owned and commodified since she was still a child.

But because her movement doesn’t fit the polished, hyper-sexualized, industry-approved mold she once performed within, people call it “weird.” They mock it. They judge it. They decide that her healing should look more palatable, more “normal.”

Yet what she’s doing is somatic therapy.

Movement as medicine.

Nervous system regulation in real time.

For decades, the media and by extension, the public controlled her narrative. They showed the worst angles, the rawest moments, the breakdowns. Now that she is showing herself unfiltered, unedited, unapologetic, people don’t know what to do with it.

Because vulnerability from a woman once deemed “perfect” makes people deeply uncomfortable.

Britney Spears is not a joke.

She’s not a cautionary tale.

She’s a survivor.

She is a mirror for so many women who were once adored for their sparkle… until the world decided it preferred to watch them shatter.

And maybe that’s the real taboo, the truth that “girl power” isn’t about being unbreakable.

It’s about what happens after the breaking.

It’s about reclaiming a life that was never fully your own.

It’s about healing loudly, even when people say you should disappear quietly.

Britney is still dancing.

Still moving.

Still rising.

And that?

That is the most powerful girl power story of all. And why she will always be my idol!