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BREAKING DOWN CELEB BREAKDOWNS For those in the limelight, mental health breakdowns often receive a gendered bias. Words by Megan Adams Art by Ande Wittenmeier
Britney Spears and Ye West (formerly Kanye) are both famous for being musical and cultural icons, and equally famous for hitting their absolute breaking point in the most public ways possible. The big difference? One of them gained a platform to run an (albeit brief) presidential campaign and the other was stripped of custody of her children, bodily autonomy, and basic legal and human rights. West’s recent behavior has walked the line between personal expression and harassment, to say the least. After West and Kim Kardashian’s relationship suffered from a highly public split, West
bought a house next to Kardashian’s, showed up uninvited to his daughter’s birthday party, and sent a truckload of flowers to her house on Valentine’s Day, despite her having a new beau, comedian Pete Davidson. He included imagery of himself holding a decapitated head of Davidson and Davidson in a grave in his music video for “Eazy” featuring The Game. Despite the very troubling and abusive nature of his behavior, West’s loyal (maybe too loyal) fans are going nuts. Why? Because his clearly struggling mental health-turned-harassment is apparently the world’s greatest joke and another “iconic” chapter in the self-proclaimed genius’s life story. Not only is nothing particularly funny or iconic about a very public mental health crisis, but nothing is funny about a woman being harassed publicly by her ex-husband. Spears, on the other hand, was, up until very recently, under lock and key since her public breakdown in 2008. What brought this on? The media called it a “year of erratic behavior,” although we could safely say the Spears slander largely began around 2004 following her surprise marriage to Kevin Federline. Their divorce in 2006 really kickstarted the discourse, though. Spears filed for sole custody of their children, and when it was said that Federline found out over text, people went wild. He filed for sole custody against her. Spears understandably needed to blow off steam, so she and Paris Hilton went clubbing. The paparazzi caught everything, including extremely private areas of her body, and published it all just to show everyone how “off the rails” she had