The Catch-22 #FreeBritney

When we say, “free Britney,” we really mean, “free us.”

She represents the feminine principle- and our country, instead of defending her, contributed to her ultimate insanity. And this is America’s insanity: that we continuously kill the female instead of protecting her.

I vividly remember when Britney Spears came on the scene. I was 16, just like her, when she was sexily dancing down the hallways of her high school.  When her videos were aired on MTV, my neighbor and I would imitate her moves, attempting to begin owning our Power, just like she did.  We did this in secret, however, as both of our mothers did not approve of us watching MTV. 

On the one hand, I wanted to be just like her—fully owning her space and her blossoming womanhood. It was innocent and yet, yet! She was blatantly being “sexy”—something that my fundamentalist purity culture would not allow girls to be.  And on the other hand, I felt guilty for wanting to be like her.  Sadly, I intuited, quite accurately, that being like her was not safe if I wanted to be approved of by the people I loved the most.

It was during my adolescence that my own split really deepened: there was the part of me that everyone saw and that could come to church youth group, i.e. the good girl who played by the rules, didn’t ask too many questions, and the girl who played along with purity culture, agreeing that waiting until marriage for sex was the route I was taking. But there was this other part of me, split off from conscious awareness: the sexy part, the part of me that seethed with anger at the constraints I felt, the part of me that felt she would come undone like a wild animal at any moment. The part of me with dreams, desires, feelings and LIFE.

It has taken me my all of my adult life, years of psychotherapy, embodiment practices, the mentoring of beautiful, strong women, and the encouragement of evolved men to be able to integrate my sexuality into my identity. 

And most women I know report the same struggle.

Always caught between the desire to be sexual, sexy, beautiful—maybe even naughty—and also liked, respected, and good.

Most women I know feel like they have to choose.

And then their husbands ask me in marriage counseling why their wife doesn’t see herself as beautiful. Why she doesn’t want to wear lingerie. Why she doesn’t want sex. Why she scrutinizes what she eats, why she can’t orgasm, why she isn’t even interested in him or her own pleasure. 

Notwithstanding other relationship factors, one of the reasons for women’s sexual dysfunctions is the broader system every American couple lives in, puts women in a tricky catch 22- the sexual double standard that female bodies find themselves in: that being sexy is not safe. And it doesn’t magically go away when she is in a loving and committed relationship. In order to heal the split, she must learn to ignore the shaming voices both inside and outside of her if she is to fully own her body, her desire, and her sexuality.

This catch-22 was PAINFULLY demonstrated in the “Framing Britney” documentary: From Ed McMahon asking a TEN year old Britney if she had a boyfriend, to being asked by interviewers if she was a virgin, from female politicians saying they wanted to shoot her because she was a “bad example.”  I felt myself cringing for Britney with every inappropriate question or commentary. And not just cringing, I felt the wild wolf woman inside of me want to protect her.

That’s why the #freebritney movement caught on…because we could all identify with her struggle.  Each woman sees herself in Britney.

And if the catch-22 weren’t enough to break Britney (or any woman down), let’s take a closer look at what happened when she became a mother:

The most relevant part of the story that I haven’t heard anyone speak about is the fact that the courts sided with Kevin Federline, her vampirish husband, and awarded him sole physical custody of her children. When they were BABIES. When she was quite possibly still BREASTFEEDING.  Any woman on the planet will tell you that they would feel exactly like Britney did if you took her baby from her, even if the cause was “reasonable.” Taking a baby out of a woman’s arms is like trying to take a bear cub from a mama bear- she wants to kill you and will probably try. Every mother with babies knows this feeling.  

Watching Britney’s story now as an adult woman, a psychotherapist , relationship teacher,  and women’s embodiment practitioner, was absolutely horrifying. Here was a woman, who was obviously suffering from severe post partum depression, possibly psychosis, and we made it worse by laughing at her. The ultimate gas-lighting. Not only did we as a country make it worse, the men in her life destroyed her and we did nothing to protect her. The system failed her, and continues to do so. While it is completely reasonable to state that I don’t have all the details so I can’t say who should have been awarded custody, I have worked for many years in the intersection between addiction, mental health crises, and custody issues.  In my experience, the courts are always moving towards reconciliation and a 50/50 split because the best case for children is that they spend equal time with both parents.  It is rare, especially when the children are young, that the courts will not award time with the mother, especially infants.  When one partner is granted sole custody, parental alienation can often be to blame; parental alienation is a particularly insidious form of mental and emotional abuse that is common in divorce cases. I had one client years ago whose ex-wife fabricated a story of domestic violence in order to acquire sole custody. My client, with my therapeutic assistance, was able to stand up for himself and requested a custody evaluator (usually an LMFT or LCSW) who evaluated the psychological status of both parents and awarded the father 50% custody. Naturally, his grief and depression symptoms evaporated once he had his children with him again; we are primates with attachment systems- we are not meant to be away from our children for long periods of time.

Let’s also not forget that having sole custody means a significant amount of child support being paid to that person. I am purely speculating that Mr. Federline’s rap career did not afford him the lifestyle he had become accustomed to while being married to Britney—but having sole physical custody of the two children would entitle him to a significant percentage of her earnings.

The moral of the story? Do not delight when others are struggling. Compassion rules the day, and address any pre-conceived/outdated/innacurate ideas you have about female sexuality especially. But also, as a country, we need to do more to support young parents. Parents with children under the age of 5 in their home have a very high rate of divorce and marital dissatisfaction. Why? Well lack of sleep alone makes anyone feel kind of nuts. 1 in 5 mothers can be diagnosed with post-partum depression, but most mothers will tell you that they feel pretty down. Fathers can be diagnosed with post-partum depression, too.  The COVID-19 crisis has only exacerbated the pain parents were already feeling. If you are either childfree or beyond the child rearing years, reach out to your friends with young children- don’t ask them what you can do- just show up and offer to do SOMETHING. Get bossy about holding that young mothers’ baby so she can take a damn shower. Everyone, including baby, will benefit.

And this, this will be the honoring of the feminine.

#freebritney

Note: The picture in this post is a picture of me as a newly divorced young mommy. I would have gone psycho if someone tried to take that beautiful baby girl away from me. 

"The Grief of the Tame Woman" and the key that keeps bleeding.

The story of Bluebeard released me from a toxic relationship.

In the classic book, Women Who Run With the Wolves, the tale of Bluebeard frees women from the lies of what Mame Gena calls the PWO (patriarchal world order). Here is my attempt at a brief synopsis:

It is the story of a woman who, against the guidance of her intuition, marries a man with a beard that is blue. There is “nothing wrong” with him except a feeling that she has inside of her body (well, and his beard is blue). He promises her a castle and a love she has only dreamt of. One day he says to his new wife “I’m leaving on a trip, here are the keys to all the rooms in the castle. You can go everywhere except this room.” She and her sisters fly around the castle opening all the doors- naturally they say to their youngest sister, “c’mon, let’s see what’s in the one room he said we couldn’t go in!” The new wife protests, briefly, but then agrees and opens the door. Inside, she discovers a room full of rotting corpses. And then the key starts bleeding. She tries to get it to stop as she doesn’t want her husband to see, but the key won’t stop no matter what she does. He comes home, sees the bleeding key, and says, “I’m throwing you in that room with all my other wives who wouldn’t listen to me!” She begs him for time to say goodbye and prepare for her death- and then plots her escape. She “calls to her brothers and sisters” who come to her aid and eventually kill Bluebeard, putting an end to his reign of death.

The tale of Bluebeard resonates deeply with most women: he represents the predator, the toxic masculine that wishes to kill (or possess) the healthy feminine instead of protect and love her.

Last night my fiance and I watched Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan on Amazon Prime. There was a scene that haunts me: a young wife running away in the middle of the night away with her two daughters with only the clothes on her back and all the jewelry she could pile on. She was the wife of the primary terrorist mastermind. Dark and evil men had begun entering her home and her instincts were alerted. The men began looking at her teenage daughter with hunger and domination. She walked into rooms with men plotting terrorist attacks.

She told her husband, “you’ve changed.” He said, “I’m doing this for you.” But she had already seen the corpses and the key was bleeding.

She plotted her escape. Not knowing if it was going to be okay, but her fate (and her childrens’ was even more certain if she stayed).

We’ve all been taught to be tame.

 To marry someone because they checked the boxes, to take the job we hate, to go to PTA, to over-extend ourselves, to volunteer, to have 2.4 kids, have a perfect house perfect body don’t be too much of anything to do-do-do-do-do-OMG this shit is going to kill me. And it does. Women’s depression is 2-3 times what it is in men. Women are murdered by their significant others. Teenagers are killing themselves because it is just all too much. And mommies are drinking wine and taking xanax at the playground.

 There comes a moment in every woman’s life where something clicks and she finally, defiantly, valiantly, says, “NO.” Or she ignores that moment and slowly but surely dies a slow death in allegiance to the patriarchal world that needs her to be a domestic ghost and pretend she likes it like that.

 Today in my class at S factor (which is an unexplainable and miraculous movement practice that empowers and unleashes a woman’s power from deep within her bones), one of my siSters was sharing about a recent experience and described the grief she felt as “the grief of the tame woman.”

 Chills ran up my entire body.

 Because I know that grief.

You do too if you are quiet enough.

 I was once that tame woman.

 Until I wasn’t- and I had to grieve the wreckage and the losses and the complexes living as a tame woman had created.

 The magic of S factor is that we tap into our wildness and when the wild woman is awakened most women are quite surprised at how “un-ladylike” she is.

 Oh but she is GOOD. She channels her anger to defend her pups and her mate, she allows sadness to move through and deepen all of her connections, she lusts after her man with a desire that makes him feel like a King, and when she does serve and nurture it is with wholeness and congruence.

 How are you tame? In what areas are you too domestic? When did you learn that your body was un-safe? When did you start turning your lights off? Where are you betraying yourself?

 Come home to yourself. It is more safe than you even know.