Britney Spears
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Britney Spears says her father belittled and humiliated her during her 13-year conservatorship, which ended in 2021, but left her feeling “like a robot.”
In a new cover story for People, Britney Spears talks to the magazine briefly about why she’s releasing her memoir, The Woman in Me, out October 24. The rare interview is accompanied by an extensive excerpt tracing her childhood days in The Mickey Mouse Club, making her first album after her infamous head-shaving incident and her eventual 13-year conservatorship. Much of the excerpt focuses on control – how much she once had over herself and the result of having that control taken away from her – and the ways in which she was objectified by the industry and her father.
“Growing up, I was looked at so much. Since I was a teenager, I’ve been looked up and down and people have told me what they thought of my body. “Shaving my head and acting out were my methods of fighting back,” she said. “But under the conservatory management it was made clear to me that those times were now over. I had to grow my hair out and get back in shape. I had to go to bed early and take all the medication they prescribed.”
Spears describes how her father and the former executor of her estate and person, Jamie, belittled and controlled her for more than a decade, repeatedly telling her that she “looked fat and that I needed to do something about it.” It was an experience that sparked her passion for singing and dancing, she says.
“The feeling of never being good enough is a soul-destroying condition for a child. “He had instilled that message in me as a girl, and even after I achieved so much, he continued to do that to me,” she remembers. “I became a robot. But not just a robot – a kind of children’s robot. I had been so infantilized that I lost parts of what made me feel like myself.”
Spears goes on to say that the 13-year conservatorship, which officially ended in November 2021, “stripped me of my femininity, turned me into a child” and ultimately caused her to become more of an entity than a person in her performances . According to the singer, if her father and the world had allowed her to navigate the path to fame, she “would have come out of it right and conquered it.”
“Thirteen years passed in which I felt like a shadow of myself. “When I think back now that my father and his employees had control over my body and my money for so long, I feel sick,” she said. “Think about how many male artists have gambled away all their money; How many had substance abuse or mental health problems? No one tried to take away their control over their bodies and their money. I didn’t deserve what my family did to me.”
She says that the conservatorship deprived her of her freedom to such an extent that she relapsed into adolescent and childlike behavior. “There was no way I could act like an adult because they didn’t treat me like an adult, so I would regress and act like a little girl; But then my adult self stepped back – only my world wouldn’t allow me to be an adult.”
The experience—which she found ridiculous in the context of winning prizes while “allegedly so incapacitated that I had to be controlled”—ultimately deprived her of a fulfilling life, including the “sins of indulgence and adventure that befall us.” make people”. which led to the death of their creativity.
Spears discusses her early childhood before she achieved global fame, describing a childhood in which she was a member of the Mickey Mouse Club, kissing Justin Timberlake while a Janet Jackson song played in the background, and having daiquiris in Biloxi, Mississippi. drank mother. “I loved being able to have a drink with my mother every now and then. The way we drank was nothing like the way my father drank it,” she remembers. “As he drank, he became more depressed and closed down. We became happier, more alive and more adventurous.”
She also describes her fear as she slithered across the MTV Music Awards stage with a giant snake around her neck while singing “I’m a Slave 4 U,” and inconspicuously in Method during the filming of “Crossroads.” acting scene fell into disrepair – “pretty much the beginning and …” end of my acting career,” and a relief for the singer, who says she’s glad she missed out on the lead role in “The Notebook” to Rachel McAdams.
“While it would have been fun to reconnect with Ryan Gosling after our time on The Mickey Mouse Club, I’m glad I didn’t,” she said. “I imagine there are people in the acting industry who struggle with something like this and have difficulty breaking away from a character. I hope I never come close to this occupational hazard again. Living like this, being half yourself and half a fictional character, is messed up. After a while you don’t know what’s real anymore.”
Speaking about her post-conservatorship memoir “The Woman in Me,” Spears said it was a way to tell her story without consequences, but it was still “hard to talk about things” like “not a moment of peace, the judgments of strangers who don’t even know me, who have been deprived of my freedom by my family and the government [and] I’m losing my passion for the things I love.”
“It’s finally time for me to speak up and speak out, and my fans deserve to hear it directly from me,” she told People. “No more conspiracy, no more lies – I just own my past, present and future.”