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Does she control her social media?
By Alice Kelly — Written on Jun 29, 2021
While we’re still reeling from her shocking testimony at her conservatorship hearing on Wednesday, June 23, Britney Spears has been taking a vacation in Hawaii — at least according to her social media.
The pop star shared a montage video supposedly taken during a recent trip to Maui but eagle-eyed fans spotted similarities between the footage and photo previously shared by Spears last year.
This added fuel to the long-standing theory that Spears does not control her own social media and left some wondering whether her team were attempting to hide something by passing off old photo as new updates.
Does Britney Spears control her Instagram?
Spears’s Hawaii vacation is just one example of some of the strange content posted to her social media.
That said, theories about what and who is behind the singer’s Instagram do require some further investigation.
Spears’s Hawaii photos appear to be from old posts.
Spears’s montage features her laying by the sea in a red bikini and cowboy hat. Fans spotted some striking similarities between the shot and a September 2020 vacation taken by the singer.
Everything down to the position of the seaweed is the same in the identical images which have now been removed from Spears’s Instagram.
That said, we do know from Spears’s boyfriend Sam Asghari’s Instagram stories that the couple were in Maui this week.
Equally, paparazzi photos show the singer wearing the red bikini.
It’s possible her team are posting on her behalf to keep up a facade that the singer runs her social media.
Or perhaps Spears’s just liked the old picture and didn’t want to post anything current!
Spears does have a social media manager.
The theory that Spears doesn’t have full control over her social media isn’t entirely misguided.
We do know that she has a social media management team however, her social media manager maintains that Spears has the final say over what gets shared.
Cassie Petrey addressed questions about Spears’s social media in February 2021, refuting theories that the singer was attempting to send coded messages via her social media.
“Britney creates her own posts and writes her own captions for Instagram,” she wrote, “She finds the google images, Pinterest images, quotes, memes and everything else herself. Nobody is suggesting any of that stuff to her.”
Spears’s ex-makeup artist claimed she doesn’t control her social media.
Despite Petrey’s statement, speculation has continued.
In March 2021, her former makeup artist Billy Brasfield claimed Spears told him she did not control her captions.
The alleged conversation was about a post on Spears’s Instagram in which the singer claimed to have cried for weeks after the release of the “Framing Britney Spears” documentary.
Brasfield, who's Instagram account has since gone private, said the post inaccurately made Spears look fragile and vulnerable.
"What was upsetting [about the post] — it was basically a narrative denouncing her fans and the Free Britney movement and people now taking a very conscious look at the facts and what is going on,” he added.
But soon after, Britney reportedly refuted the claims to TMZ, insisting she writes her own posts and had stopped speaking to Brasfield because she was so upset by his statements.
"No, I’m not talking to him at all," TMZ quotes Spears as saying. "I write my posts. I’m not sure who he is talking to, but I am not talking to Billy B."
Whether or not Spears currently or has ever controlled her social media remains unclear, but the doubt surrounding her online presence and conservatorship in general has encouraged her supporters to continue asking questions about the information spread about the singer.
Alice Kelly is a writer living in Brooklyn, New York. Catch her covering all things social justice, news, and entertainment. Keep up with her on Twitter for more.