Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Bobbi Brown is back, Buffalo is all but set to get its first female mayor, and Emrata offers a unique perspective on Britney Spears’ conservatorship. Have a great weekend!
– Emrata on #FreeBritney. At Fortune, we’ve been busy with our Most Powerful Women Next Gen Summit over the past two days. But there was one news story that was impossible to ignore during that time: Britney Spears’ court testimony about her “abusive” conservatorship.
A quick recap: Spears told a judge on Wednesday that she is “traumatized” by the control she’s been under for 13 years—from being required to perform while sick to the disturbing claim that she is not permitted to have her IUD removed. The pop star wants the conservatorship ended without delay.
One of the speakers to join us at Next Gen yesterday was uniquely positioned to comment on feeling like you’re not in control: Emily Ratajkowski. The model, actor, and author recently published an essay describing her journey to regaining ownership of her image and likeness; she even minted an NFT to do so.
During their interview, Kristen asked Ratajkowski for her thoughts on Spears. It turns out, the model has already written an essay on the singer as part of her forthcoming collection My Body.
“She was the ultimate sacrifice, commodified woman—really a girl,” Ratajkowski said. “Anyone who ingests media the way that we do, we’re [removing] her ability to control the narrative.”
Ratajkowski has found a sense of ownership through writing (Personally, I can’t wait to read her book this fall). “When you write your own story,” she said yesterday, “that’s the ultimate way of regaining control.”
Of course, Spears’ situation is different from Ratajkowski’s; the singer can’t publish an essay or mint an NFT to escape her conservatorship. Still, while Spears isn’t writing her story right now, she is voicing it—for what sounds like the first time.
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
@_emmahinchliffe
The Broadsheet, Fortune’s newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women, is coauthored by Kristen Bellstrom, Emma Hinchliffe, and Claire Zillman. Today’s edition was curated by Claire Zillman.
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