Britney is engaged, but why is everyone so nervous for her?
If it were most couples, it’d be cause for unbridled joy and congratulations: a surprise engagement announcement, complete with giddy, rock-bearing Instagram photographs, massive grins and an emoji-filled caption. But when half of that couple is Britney Spears, no one’s quite sure what to think.
“I can’t f---ing believe it!” Spears, 39, wrote on Sunday night, posting a video showing her at home with her long-term boyfriend, now fiancé, Sam Asghari. While she mugs to camera, showing off her new four-carat diamond ring, Asghari stands there a little awkwardly.
Underneath, some fans and followers tweeted their best wishes – Paris Hilton, Britney’s fellow queen of noughties pop culture, was quick off the mark – yet the overriding feeling seemed to be of protective doubt. Nerves, even.
The point was made most vocally by Oscar-winning actress Octavia Spencer, of all people. “Make him sign a prenup,” Spencer wrote, simply. The advice elicited more than 35,000 likes. “Yes”, “So true”, “100 per cent right” fans replied.
All over social media, the same sentiment played out: “Congrats, Britney, we are happy for you and everything... but please, know what you’re getting yourself into this time.” Asghari, a 27-year-old fitness instructor who has been in a relationship with Spears since 2016, even referenced it, proving there was at least a thin sense of humour underneath those abs.
“Thank you to everyone who is concerned about the prenup!” he wrote on Instagram on Monday. “Of course we’re getting [an] iron-clad prenup to protect my jeep and shoe collection incase [sic] she dumps me one day.” He added two cry-laugh emojis.
At this stage in 2021, there can’t be many people unaware of Britney Spears’ remarkable public attempts to free herself from her father’s leash, which began in 2007 when Jamie Spears was awarded effective control over much of his daughter’s life in a Californian legal procedure known as conservatorship.
A slew of documentaries, podcasts, magazine and newspaper articles have all covered the case – usually with lawyerly attention to detail. Since Britney’s public psychological breakdown 14 years ago, her father has been able to make decisions relating to her $60 million (£43 million) estate, as well as allegedly almost every other aspect of her life.
“This conservatorship is doing me way more harm than good,” Britney said during an astonishing testimony in June. “I deserve to have a life.”
In that court appearance, she alleged that she had been forced to keep her IUD, which she wanted to remove in order to have another child; that she had been made to take medication she didn’t want to; that she was made to perform when she didn’t wish to; that the conservatorship was abusive, echoing the fan-driven #FreeBritney movement’s arguments; and that she wished to marry Asghari and have another baby.
After being at the eye of a media storm for much of the year, just last week, Jamie Spears finally agreed to terminate the conservatorship, saying “recent events” called into question whether she still needed a court to oversee her personal life and finances.
Through it all, Asghari, who Britney met in 2016 on the set of her video for Slumber Party, has kept a relatively low profile. He occasionally appears on Britney’s Instagram videos and she his, but fans have tended to be split over whether he is good news or not. That same fissure has appeared after the proposal.
“Is Britney just moving from the control of one man to another?” one camp, who eye Asghari’s profile as a suspicious young actor on the hunt for a bigger profile, seem to be arguing.
They point out that Britney has been married twice before, hurt twice before, has two children, and has fought so hard for her independence that she should be just that, independent, for a while. At the very least financially.
The other side, who are equally forthright, might counter that if Britney deserves anything it’s happiness, and she seems to have found it with a nice-seeming man who she has been asking to marry for years, so if this is what she wants to do with her independence then good luck to her. Neither side is likely to back down for a while.
“The couple made their long-standing relationship official today and are deeply touched by the support, dedication and love expressed to them,” Asghari’s manager, Brandon Cohen, said.
The ring Asghari gave Britney is engraved with the word “lioness” – apparently, his nickname for her. With the help of her army of fans, she has finally broken free from one cage. Whether he signs a prenup or not, those same fans will now stand sentry to make sure she doesn’t end up in a new one.
