In the excerpts released so far, Spears recalls her days as a teenager on “The Mickey Mouse Club” – she recalls a truth-or-dare kiss with fellow cast member Timberlake – and how she was about to land the lead role to take on alongside Ryan Gosling in “The Notebook”, a role that ultimately went to Rachel McAdams.
She recalls her childhood growing up with parents she would later blame for exerting too much control over her life, and tells a story about how her mother, Lynne Spears, let her drink cocktails as an eighth-grader. And she talks about the constant pressure on her body, writing how her father “repeatedly” told her during her conservatorship years that she “looked fat and that I needed to do something about it.”
“Since I was a teenager, I’ve been looked up and down and people have told me what they thought of my body,” an excerpt reads. “My way of fighting back was to shave my head and act out. But under the conservatory management it was made clear to me that those days 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 had pushed privately for years to end the conservatorship, but she left no doubt about her position in 2021 when she told a Los Angeles judge that the agreement was “abusive” and that she was forced to work, when she didn’t. She didn’t want to and was prevented from removing her contraceptive when she wanted to have more children. Her father has long claimed that the guardianship was always intended to protect his daughter from exploitation.
The memoir firmly rejects the idea that conservatorship was for her own good: according to one excerpt, she writes that the arrangement turned her into a kind of “child robot,” a shadow of her former self, and claims that male artists had mismanaged her money and dealt with drug problems without being treated the way she was.
“There was no way I could act like an adult since they weren’t treating me like an adult, so I regressed and acted like a little girl,” an excerpt reads, “but then my adult self stepped back “a.” – only my world didn’t allow me to be an adult.”