When Britney Spears stepped off her private jet at Cabo San Lucas Airport just over a week ago the eyes of onlookers were – for once – not fixed on her.
Instead, tourists and staff at the tiny Mexican airport were ‘stunned’ to see a baby’s leg sticking out from beneath swaddling blankets, in the arms of her longtime bodyguard, Nicholas Bunbury.
There was an audible gasp. Could the troubled singer, who spent 13 years under a controlling ‘conservatorship’ legal order, put in place due to severe mental health problems that once saw her confined to a psychiatric hospital, secretly have become a mother again?
As one onlooker put it: ‘Nick had this big grin on his face and was holding the “baby” in his arms as Britney walked along behind him. All you could see was the baby’s foot, but at one point they were loading up bags into a limo and you could see the back of its head. Everyone was staring at the kid in the blanket and thinking, has she had another baby?’
Not so fast. While loyal bodyguard Nick was indeed holding something dear and precious to Britney, far from being an addition to her family (she already has two sons, Sean, 19, and Jayden, 18) this was, in fact, merely a creepily lifelike plastic doll.
The witness added: ‘It was only when they got really close that you could see the little dangling leg was made of plastic. It’s one of the oddest things I’ve ever seen.’
And that is saying something. Britney is no stranger to ‘odd’: her regular stream of semi-naked dance videos and bizarre posts on her beloved Instagram, where she has 41 million followers, never fail to create a stir.
The 43-year-old had come to Mexico alone, apart from her bodyguards, and was immediately whisked to the five-star, £50,000 a week, Las Ventanas al Paraiso Resort, a spectacular beachside oasis overlooking the azure waters of the Sea of Cortez, where she wasted no time in stripping down to a skimpy green bikini, for a video, which was duly posted online.
But it is not the first time she has pretended to ‘mother’ a doll. Back in October 2021 – shortly after her conservatorship order was terminated following a lengthy court battle – Britney posed with another baby doll and told her followers: ‘I had a baby y’all. Her nursery is beautiful and her name is Brennan. We even look alike.’
For many, the singer’s behaviour is troubling and has prompted some to question whether the #FreeBritney movement, which campaigned for her to be freed from the financial and social shackles of her father Jamie, and seize back control of her life and her $60 million fortune, may not have been such a good thing.
One former associate said: ‘Britney looks lost. She’s on holiday with her two bodyguards and a plastic life-sized baby doll. Doesn’t she have any real friends?
‘It’s sad. It is troubling to see her this way. You wonder if she is taking her meds and if everything is all right?’
Meanwhile, the singer’s on/off boyfriend of three years, heavily-tattooed former handyman Paul Soliz, 37, remained at the star’s sprawling $8 million mansion in Thousand Oaks, California. The convicted felon is understood not to be able to leave the US for legal reasons, according to his father. Soliz Jnr’s criminal record includes illegal possession of a firearm in 2020 and driving without a licence in 2016.
Speaking exclusively to the Mail, Soliz’s father, Paul Snr confirmed his son was still dating the star, saying: ‘They are still together. It’s alive, the relationship is alive.’
He said: ‘She’s cool, you know. She’s come over here. We were swimming last summer. We have a pool in the back. Another time she called and said: ‘What are you guys doing right now? Why don’t you come over to my place?’ She said she didn’t know how to barbeque but she was going to go out and buy steak and chicken and we went there and cooked.’
When asked if his son is in love with the pop singer, Mr Soliz smiled and made a ‘roller-coaster’ action with him arm, saying: “Happy? You know, like with any relationship, it’s like this. You know how it is, being with a woman. One minute they’re happy and the next . . . a strong-willed woman like Britney is used to getting her way. It’s complex like that.’
Mr Soliz said his son was a ‘good boy’ and an excellent father – he has nine children by three different mothers.
‘My son works in construction and he’s raising four of his kids by himself, with no woman. I don’t know how he does it. He cooks, he cleans, he does the laundry . . . so when I see them [the press] calling him a “bad boy” I don’t know what they are talking about.
‘They should see what he does for his kids. He’s a good man, a strong man.’
Britney has made no secret of her desire to have another child. Her two sons are from her short-lived marriage to actor Kevin Federline. She was recently delighted to have reconnected with their younger son, Jayden.
During the 2021 court case, in which she faced down her father Jamie, 72, a tearful Britney told how she was forced to have a contraceptive device implanted to prevent her having the daughter she longed for.
In sworn testimony, she told the judge: ‘I want to be able to get married and have a baby. I was told in the conservatorship I was not able to get married or have a baby. I wanted the birth control device removed so I could start trying to have a another baby but they wouldn’t allow my doctor to take it out.’
Perhaps to quell her desire for another child, Britney may have joined a growing fad in America of women who buy realistic baby dolls knows as Reborns.
Collectors bathe, feed, dress and change their dolls just like real infants, and women are paying up to $3,000 (£2,260) for the lifelike dolls. Some Reborns even dirty their nappies, and can be held to a nipple to suckle.
For many women the dolls are a diverting hobby but for some they offer comfort while grieving the tragic loss of a real baby,
Psychologist Karyn Hall of Houston, Texas, says: ‘For people who are scared, it is a way of connecting without fear. There’s no fear of rejection and no fear of not being accepted. There’s a connection and it’s very powerful.’
The dolls can feed a woman’s need for nurturing, help combat loneliness and help to heal trauma, she says.
For Britney, who has worked as an actress and performer since the age of nine – she made her television debut on The All-New Mickey Mouse Club at the age of 11 – keeping a doll may be a way of reclaiming her lost childhood.
One source who worked with her during her conservatorship said: ‘It’s possible she is using the doll as some form of therapy. She’s a sensitive woman and, in many ways, stopped growing emotionally once she became such a big star. That’s where a lot of her problems came from.
‘You often find celebrities are stunted in their emotional development and Britney has a childlike, naive quality about her. She has always loved dolls.’
While some fans have questioned whether Britney is ‘off her meds’ and may, in fact, have been better off under her father’s conservatorship when her wealth and health were closely monitored, other fans believe some of her more outrageous social media postings could be a ruse to make her appear more mentally fragile than she is.
Britney’s social media is managed – sceptical fans might say ‘manipulated’ – by Crowd Surf, a digital marketing agency with a 50-person team with offices in New York, Los Angeles and Nashville, Tennessee.
Crowd Surf represents music artists and companies including Backstreet Boys, Guns N’ Roses, Duran Duran, Camila Cabello, Paramore and Nickelback, as well as Apple, Google, Disney, Warner Bros, Universal and Sony.
Britney’s fans complained that during her court-ordered conservatorship, Crowd Surf presented a rosier, more optimistic portrayal of her life on social media than the sense of imprisonment and disenfranchisement she was later revealed to have felt.
Fans continue to distrust Spears’ social media, knowing that the company remains at the controls. ‘It’s absolutely diabolical Crowd Surf would still be running Britney Spears’ social media accounts all this time later,’ wrote one on Instagram.
‘I’m so sick of people making excuses for the fact that people who helped conceal Britney Spears’ conservatorship and keep her trapped are still in her life and working for her to this day.’
Some went so far as to suggest that a Spears lookalike has been used to generate social media posts. ‘The person in the videos is DEFINITELY NOT Britney Spears!’ posted another.
Britney’s former make-up artist Billy Brasfield has previously claimed the singer personally told him that she has no control over her own social media captions.
Brasfield, whose clients have included Beyoncé, Christina Aguilera and Mariah Carey, said: ‘The content is her, but the words are not how she feels.’
Crowd Surf has denied reports that Britney is not in charge of what she posts online. Co-founder Cassie Petrey posted on Instagram in February 2021: ‘Britney creates her own posts and writes her own captions for Instagram. She finds the Google images, Pinterest images, quotes, memes, and everything else herself. Nobody is suggesting any of that stuff to her.
‘She generally edits the videos herself. If a video she sends in is edited by her social media team, it’s because she gave specific instructions and asked for it to be edited that way.
‘Then she sees it and decides if she wants to post it or not.’
Petrey added: ‘She has stated many times that she creates the posts, but people continue to believe conspiracy theories over what Britney says over and over again. Britney is not “asking for help” or leaving secret messages in her social media. She is literally just living her life and trying to have fun on Instagram.’
A movie based on Britney’s best-selling 2023 memoir The Woman in Me is due to start filming later this year. Whether the biopic will include any fake baby dolls remains to be seen.
Additional reporting: Peter Sheridan
