It seems like not a week goes by that another Britney Spears headline emerges, reminding us that we need to be concerned about the 43-year-old pop star who was subject to a conservatorship for approximately 13 years.

While her memoir, “The Woman In Me,” details some of the major events from that period of her life, and her chart-topping career before it, it seems that the “Toxic” singer is now free to lead the life that she wants without worrying about selling albums and bringing in numbers.

And yet, it seems that many are more fixated on the Princess of Pop than ever. Some will say that we need to be concerned for her due to her increasingly racy Instagram posts, but she has been baring her bum on social media for years.

Instead, it’s worth asking another question. Who is writing these eye-catching headlines, and, moreover, who is benefiting?

Judging by the Instagram posts that she frequently shares and deletes, it does make one wonder if Britney would have joined OnlyFans if it had existed during the height of her fame. Of course, one could imagine that her managers would have been against it, but there is something to be said about the way Britney has worked to reclaim her sexuality.

These days, she struts her stuff wearing knee-high boots and little else, spinning wildly in her living room or plunging topless into the waves on a beach in Mexico. This week, the pop star raised eyebrows when she pulled down her dress in order to show off her bare chest. The video was quickly deleted, which tends to be Britney’s way. It’s either deleted now or it’s deleted later, but it usually doesn’t stay up for very long.

In previous Instagram posts, most of them from 2022, when she was still using Instagram to hint at the details of her conservatorship without saying too much, she admitted that she loves dancing but can’t stand the hateful comments. It’s why, in late 2023, she decided to completely disable comments from her posts, although they do still pop up from time to time.

When her conservatorship ended, many wanted the pop star to “be free.” It’s starting to seem clear that fans – some, not all – were waiting on her “freedom” so that she could release new music under her own terms. It’s starting to sink in now, after multiple posts teasing her “retirement,” that Britney will not release any new music, and she will certainly not return to the stage.

Many fans were concerned when they saw videos of the singer smoking following her divorce from actor Sam Asghari. While some singers do smoke, this is just another way that the pop star is working to separate herself from the teenage pop icon that many fans spent their childhoods idolizing.

Now, it looks like she is more than happy to make her living through her Instagram page. It’s unclear how much money she is bringing in through her sultry footage, but between that and the book sales, it’s clear that she isn’t going to have to release any new music if she doesn’t want to. And, from the looks of things, it seems pretty clear that she doesn’t want to.

It looked like the beginning of the end for Britney’s freedom when she released a video on Instagram in 2023 that showed her dancing with kitchen knives. Although she claimed the cutlery was fake, publications were bringing in experts and prop masters to watch the video and give their opinion on whether or not the knives were real.

Whether they were or not, this seemed to be the final test of her freedom. If she was playing with knives, and hurt herself, would her freedom be taken away? Would she be placed back under another conservatorship? No. In the end, it was never revealed if the knives were real or fake, and the story eventually faded out of circulation.

At the end of the day, Britney isn’t going to stop what she’s doing. She’s not going to release new music. She’s going to keep posting, then deleting, risqué videos with head-scratching captions, because that is what freedom looks like for her. Just because it’s not what people expected when she was released from her conservatorship doesn’t mean that’s not what she wants.

The real question is, does she want the constant headlines that feign concern over her mental state in exchange for a few clicks? She’s usually quick to call out an unflattering headline, but most times, she just minds her own business and lets the Internet report what it may, because that’s what she’s used to. Maybe the real “freedom” lies in her posting Instagram videos, deleting them, and letting the world keep turning without creating another clickbait headline.