Britney Spears couldn’t win.
When she lost weight and showed off defined abs, tabloids speculated about eating disorders or extreme diets. When she gained weight, especially after her return to the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards, they called her “fat” and “out of shape”, never wondering about her mental health. Thin or curvy, there was always something to criticize her for.
That constant scrutiny of her body was no minor detail: it became one of the elements that sustained the narrative behind the legal conservatorship that controlled her life for 13 years. In her book The Woman in Me (2023), Britney recounted how those comments about her body shattered her self-esteem from adolescence onward.
Today, now far removed from that conservatorship, she herself has shared the eating and workout habits she follows by choice. The difference is that now, for the first time, her body belongs solely to her, but many think the damage has already been done.
