Seven things we learned from Britney Spears' memoir
The book covers the pop icon's life from early childhood to her rise to stardom to her mental health struggles and the controversial conservatorship. Picture: Ethan Miller/Getty Images
Britney Spears' hotly anticipated memoir, The Woman in Me, dropped on Tuesday and the star certainly got a lot of things off her chest.
The book covers relationships, fame, mental health struggles, motherhood, and her 13-year conservatorship.
Spears said that the book is her chance to tell her story on her terms and she has done just that.
has been met with critical acclaim – with reviews commending the US pop star’s honesty in exploring her rise to fame and the exploitative nature of the industry.
’s deputy music editor Laura Snapes said the book is a “focused story” and deserves to be read as a “cautionary tale and an indictment, not a grab-bag of tabloid revelations”.
She writes: “After all Spears has lost, the sharpness of her perspective is a miracle… May her truth pose a legitimate threat to the system that exploited her.”Â
The book covers the pop icon's life from early childhood to her rise to stardom to her mental health struggles and the controversial conservatorship.
There are more A-list stars mentioned in the memoir - for better or worse - including Christina Aguilera, Madonna, Mariah Carey, Oprah, Ryan Seacrest, Paris Hilton, Elton John, Natalie Portman, Reese Witherspoon and Donatella Versace.
Here are just some of the things that we have learned about the life of one of the world's greatest popstars - in her own words.
Even before her days, Spears' home life was not without its problems as she details a childhood begging for love and attention.
Her relationship with her father reached breaking point when he took control of every aspect of her life through the conservatorship but Spears says that even as a child "nothing was ever good enough" for him.
She described it as "a soul-crushing state of being for a child".
This did not stop no matter how high her star rose, Spears said that he had drummed the feeling of not being enough into her.
"The saddest part to me was that what I always wanted was a dad who would love me as I was - somebody who would say 'I just love you. You could do anything right now. I'd still love you with unconditional love.'"
By the age of 13, she claims she was already drinking and smoking.
The 41-year-old said that she felt like a "ghost child" to her parents while her little sister Jamie Lynn "ruled the roost".
"I can remember walking into the room and feeling like no one even saw me. Jamie Lynn only saw the TV. My mother, who at one time had been the person I was closest to in the world, was on another planet," she recalled.
The number of articles that have been written about Spears and Timberlake and their three-year relationship could easily fill a library but very little of it includes comment from Spears herself.
Now, she is setting the record straight and clearing up all of the rumours.
Before the book was released, an extract appeared in People magazine which detailed that 19-year-old Spears became pregnant and it was decided that she would have an abortion.
But Justin definitely wasn’t happy about the pregnancy. He said we weren’t ready to have a baby in our lives, that we were way too young… I don’t know if that was the right decision.
"If it had been left up to me alone, I never would have done it. And yet Justin was so sure that he didn’t want to be a father.”Â
The couple, who had first met as children on the and shared their first kiss during a game of Truth or Dare, were the couple of the moment in the early 2000s.
When they split, Timberlake heavily implied that Spears had cheated and this is what led to the breakup.
His music video for infamously featured a Spears lookalike and alluded to cheating.
In her book, Spears admits to kissing choreographer Wade Robson but says that the couple were able to move past it and stayed together.
firmly placed Justin in the role of the broken-hearted victim and the media commentary reflected that.
"In the news media, I was described as a harlot who'd broken the heart of America's golden boy. The truth: I was comatose in Louisiana, and he was happily running around Hollywood."
She said Timberlake's music video shamed her and felt there was no way for her to tell her side.
There has "always been more leeway in Hollywood for men than for women", she wrote adding that she was "shattered".
She also revealed that star cheated on her on more than one occasion and that he broke up with her in a text message.
Not long after she and Timberlake parted ways, Spears was photographed with Colin Farrell.
Farrell's star was rising fast and the media couldn't resist the story of the pop princess dating Hollywood's latest bad boy.
Fresh from her first heartbreak, Spears threw caution to the wind and decided to shoot her shot with the Dublin actor.
She thought he was handsome and so when he was filming nearby, Spears drove down to the set to introduce herself.
The whirlwind couple appeared on the red carpet together for Farrell's film where Spears says she accidentally wore a pyjama top thinking it was a shirt.
The two-week fling is described in the book as a brawl.
“Brawl is the only word for it—we were all over each other, grappling so passionately it was like we were in a street fight."
Spears even met Farrell's family who she described as "warm".
But in the end, Spears had jumped into a new relationship too soon and was not over Timberlake and so things ended as quickly as they began.
In 2007, during a custody battle with the father of her two sons, Kevin Federline, Spears had what was labelled at the time as a "public meltdown".
The singer walked into a barbershop, hounded by paparazzi, and shaved off her long locks. The photos were soon plastered on front pages all around the world.
Spears had recently lost her aunt and had not been allowed to see her sons "for weeks" with the paparazzi following her every move as she "begged" to see her children.
The decision to shave her head was her way of "saying to the world: fuck you", she wrote saying she was tired of always being the good girl.
"Everyone thought it was hilarious. Look how crazy she is! Even my parents acted embarrassed by me. But nobody seemed to understand that I was simply out of my mind with grief. My children had been taken away from me."
Just days later, Spears said she "snapped" when a paparazzo wouldn't stop following her. She attacked his car with an umbrella and once again the photos made headlines everywhere.
The constant harassment by the paparazzi compounded her grief during "one of the worst moments of my whole life".
The singer later sent a letter of apology to the photographer's agency.
Unsurprisingly, the extremely controversial conservatorship is a huge part of the tell-all book.
The legal arrangement was in place for 13 years and meant that every aspect of her life was controlled by her father, Jamie Spears, and a lawyer.
When the conservatorship began in 2008, Spears said she "begged the court to appoint literally anyone else - and I mean anyone off the street would have been better - my father was given the job".
According to Spears, during those 13 years she was admitted to hospital against her will, forced to take medications including lithium, could not choose her own legal representation, had every purchase logged down to "a drink from Starbucks, and was forced to take birth control.
"I didn't deserve what my family did to me," she says as she describes the heartbreaking toll the conservatorship had on her.
After years of struggling, the mother-of-two says that she didn't have any more fight left in her and didn't see a way out so she went on "autopilot" and went along with it for her children.
"It's difficult for me to revisit this darkest chapter of my life and to think about what might have been different if I'd pushed back harder then.
"I don't at all like to think about that, not whatsoever. I can't afford to, honestly. I've been through too much."
Spears says she became a sort of "child-robot".
I had been so infantilised that I was losing pieces of what made me feel like myself... The conservatorship stripped me of my womanhood, made me into a child."
The singer questioned why she forced to work while apparently being so ill that she couldn't make simple life decisions for herself.
"If I was so sick that I couldn't make my own decisions, why did they think it was fine for me to be out there smiling and waving and singing and dancing in a million time zones a week?
"I'll tell you one good reason. The Circus Tour grossed more than $130m."
In 2014, Spears did attempt to get out of the conservatorship which was initially supposed to be temporary but quickly became permanent.
However, the court case didn't go anywhere.
In a form of quiet protest, Spears said that she started her own version of a factory slowdown.
She continued to perform her Vegas residency but "I didn't put the fire behind it that I had in the past".
When the residency came to a close, Spears says she was once again hospitalised and this is when she was made to take lithium.
This was one of the darkest times for the Louisiana woman who revealed that she came close to suicide during that time.
She first became aware that there was a fan-led movement demanding the singer be released from the conservatorship during one of her hospital stays.
"The nurse showed me clips... fans saying they were trying to figure out if I was being held somewhere against my will, talking about how much my music meant to them and how they hated to think I was suffering now. They wanted to help. And just by doing that, they did help."
When she returned home in June 2021, Spears reported her father for conservatorship abuse.
For the first time, Spears spoke publicly about what living under the conservatorship had been like when she addressed the court.
She told the judge: "Ma'am, my dad and anyone involved in this conservatorship, and my management, who played huge roles in punishing me when I said 'No' [to going on tour] — Ma'am, they should be in jail."
The decision to end the legal arrangement came in November 2021 and "finally, it was my own life".
The extremely powerful book tells the story of a woman who was let down and mistreated time and time again by the media, the public, and those who should have been looking out for her.
However, it paints a picture of a woman who is strong and determined and who is hopeful for what lies ahead.
Spears closes the book with this message: "There's been a lot of speculation about how I'm doing. I know my fans care. I am free now.
"I'm just being myself and trying to heal. I finally get to do what I want, when I want. And I don't take a minute of it for granted...
"It's been a while since I felt truly present in my own life, in my own power, in my womanhood. But I'm here now."
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