Photo: Erik Pendzich/Alamy Stock Photo
Britney Spears’ long-awaited memoir The Woman in Me doesn’t hit stores until Tuesday, but excerpts have already leaked online. In the book, Spears covers everything from her Mickey Mouse Club days to drinking with her mother as an eighth grader, falling in love as a teenage pop star, marriage and divorce, and, of course, life under a conservatorship.
“For the last 15 years or even early in my career, I sat back while people talked about me and told my story for me,” Spears told People via email. “It’s finally time for me to speak out and speak out, and my fans deserve to hear it directly from me.” No more conspiracy, no more lies – I just own my past, present and future .”
Unnamed publishing sources have stated that the book appears to be “not a takedown” of anyone, but rather a way for Spears to tell her own life story. At the same time, certain people are doing better than others in the run-up to the release.
Here are some of the things we’ve learned from the memoir so far.
On social media and in a scathing court statement, Spears has spoken out about the conservatorships that controlled every aspect of her life for 13 years, starting when she was 26. In the memoir, however, she goes into more detail, not just about the specific restrictions the agreement imposed on her life—she reportedly had to exercise, have long hair, and take certain medications she didn’t want to take—but also the emotional ones toll it took on her. In one case, she remembers feeling like a “child robot.”
She also writes that she agreed to the terms of the conservatorship out of fear of losing her sons. “After being held on a stretcher, I knew they could hold my body at any time. And so I went along with it,” Spears says, according to the New York Times, which reviewed a copy of the book. “My freedom in exchange for a nap with my children – that was a trade I was willing to make.”
Still, she says the tight constraints of the arrangement never made sense to her, especially as she returned to a busy career. “Too sick to choose my own boyfriend and yet somehow healthy enough to appear on sitcoms and morning shows and perform in front of thousands of people in a different part of the world every week,” Spears writes, according to the Times. She also reportedly remembers her father telling her, “I’m Britney Spears now.” As the conservatorship progressed, she recalls, “I began to think that he saw me put on this earth for no other reason , than to improve their cash flow.”
In 2007, in the midst of a difficult and aggressively prosecuted divorce and custody battle with her ex Kevin Federline, Spears surprised the paparazzi by showing up at a Los Angeles salon, shaving off all her hair and then attacking a photographer’s car with an umbrella. Tabloids plastered her face on their front pages, portraying her as a woman in the midst of a breakdown, but in her memoirs she writes that she shook her head to “pull back” and take what little control over her life she had could have had. “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,” she explains. “Shaving my head and acting out was my way of fighting back.”
Spears also says she was “out.” [her] “Mind full of grief” due to the constellation of traumatic events occurring simultaneously in her life, writing, “I am ready to admit that I am in the midst of severe postpartum depression, abandonment by my husband, and the anguish of separation from my two.” “Babies, the death of my beloved Aunt Sandra and the constant pressure of the paparazzi – I began to think like a child in some ways.”
But soon after, her family imposed the conservatorship requirement, and the singer “was made clear that those days were now over,” she writes. “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.”
Although she has rarely spoken publicly about her relationship with fellow pop star Justin Timberlake, Spears apparently spares few details here. She supposedly writes that they had their first kiss at a dare, a sleepover as teenagers; They would eventually stay current for three years.
While they were together, Spears believed they would get married. And in an excerpt published by People on Tuesday, Spears recalls finding out she was pregnant. “It was a surprise, but for me it wasn’t a tragedy. I loved Justin so much. I always expected that one day we would start a family together. This was just going to happen a lot sooner than I expected,” she writes, according to People’s excerpt. Ultimately, however, Spears says she had an abortion because Justin “didn’t want to be a father.”
“Justin was definitely not happy about the pregnancy,” the excerpt reads. “He said we weren’t ready to have a baby in our lives, we were far too young.” The couple were believed to have been in their late teens or early 20s at the time.
According to TMZ, Spears also writes that despite the narrative surrounding their breakup that she cheated on Timberlake – fueled in part by Timberlake himself – he actually cheated on her with another famous woman whom she won’t name. Spears admitted to making out with choreographer Wade Robson while the couple were together, but claims she and Timberlake “agreed to get over it” because she “only had eyes for him.” Spears says she was “devastated” when Timberlake broke up with her – via text message while attending a music video set – and returned home. As the breakup played out in the press, she felt that the media portrayed her as a “whore who had broken the heart of America’s golden boy,” when in reality she was “in a coma in Louisiana and he was happily walking around Hollywood, ” She writes.
According to USA Today, Spears writes that while filming Crossroads, she became a little too engrossed in the role, which made her realize she didn’t want to be an actress. “Crossroads” was “pretty much the beginning and end of my acting career and I was relieved,” she says. She also reveals that she was almost cast in The Notebook, which Spears says “went to me and 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.”
According to People, Spears writes that the years she spent in Louisiana after finishing “The Mickey Mouse Club” were “wonderfully normal,” or “the closest thing to ‘normal’ that my family could get.” was”. During that time, Spears remembers going to homecoming and prom, going to the movies and driving around her town. She also remembers drinking cocktails with her mother since she was in eighth grade.
“I loved being able to have a drink with my mother every now and then,” she remembers. “The way we drank couldn’t compare to the way my father drank it. As he drank, he became more depressed and shut down. We became happier, more alive and more adventurous.”
Spears writes that the partying and drinking that made the tabloids in the mid-2000s “was never as wild as the press made it out to be.” She notes that she didn’t have a drinking problem and that hard drugs never appealed to her. Instead, she took Adderall, which “got me high, but what I found far more appealing was that it made me feel less depressed for a few hours.”
This post has been updated.
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