Britney Spears is sharing her side of the story in her memoir, The Woman In Me, which was released on Tuesday, October 24.
In the 275-page autobiography, the music icon writes about her rise to pop stardom, the strain of being in the public eye as well as her time under the conservatorship and its termination in 2021.
The book features bombshell revelations about her relationship with Justin Timberlake, how she narrowly missed out on starring in The Notebook and her infamous 2001 VMAs performance.
So, let’s take a look at everything we know about The Woman in Me:
Her relationship with Justin Timberlake
Spears recounts her rocky relationship with fellow singer Justin Timberlake, who she dated from 1999 to 2002.
In the book, she discusses the “difficult” decision to have an abortion after learning she was pregnant in 2000.
She writes: “It was a surprise, but for me, it wasn’t a tragedy. I loved Justin so much. I always expected us to have a family together one day.
“This would just be much earlier than I’d anticipated, 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.”
The Everytime singer added that she terminated the pregnancy due to Timberlake’s hesitation, but still doesn’t know if “that was the right decision”.
She added: “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.”
Her Conservatorship
In 2008, the star, 41, was placed on a psychiatric hold and later under a conservatorship by her father Jamie Spears in the wake of her split from husband Kevin Federline the year prior.
In the lead up to the conservatorship, she was frequently harassed by paparazzi and a series of degrading narratives about her mental health were published, notably when she was captured shaving her head in an LA hairdresser’s.
She writes: “I’d been eyeballed so much growing up. I’d been looked up and down, had people telling me what they thought of my body, since I was a teenager.
“Shaving my head and acting out were my ways of pushing back.
“Under the conservatorship I was made to understand that those days were now over. I had to grow my hair out and get back into shape. I had to go to bed early and take whatever medication they told me to take.”
The singer also admits she felt like she was “never good enough” for her father, explaining that the conservatorship, usually reserved for the very ill, “stripped” her of her womanhood.
Spears shares: “I became a robot. But not just a robot – 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. I became more of an entity than a person onstage. I had always felt music in my bones and my blood; they stole that from me.”
Relationship With Her Mother
The Stronger songstress also details her relationship with her parents, in particular her strained relationship with her mother, Lynne Spears.
Although she fondly writes at one point: “We called our cocktails ‘toddies’. I loved that I was able to drink with my mom every now and then.
“The way we drank was nothing like how my father did it. When he drank, he grew more depressed and shut down. We became happier, more alive and adventurous.”
Her 2003 Fling with Colin Farrell
Spears also addresses her short-lived romance with Colin Farrell after they met through a “club promoter friend” after her split from Timberlake.
In an excerpt, Spears describes their “passionate” fling to a “street fight”, writing that they were “all over each other”.
“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,” she pens.
However, Spears was soon left “disappointed” when she attended the premiere of Farrell’s movie The Recruit where he told reporters: “We're not dating. She's a sweet, sweet girl. There's nothing going on — just mates.”
The Toxic singer recalls: “As I had before when I'd felt too attached to a man, I tried to convince myself in every way that it was not a big deal, that we were just having fun, that in this case, I was vulnerable because I wasn't over Justin yet.
“For a brief moment in time, I did think there could be something there. The disappointments in my romantic life were just one part of how isolated I became. I felt so awkward all the time.”
Her 2001 VMAs Performance
The music star also discusses her iconic 2001 MTV Video Music Awards with an albino Burmese python and shares it was “even more terrifying than it appeared”.
In passages from the book, the singer talks about the moment she performed I’m A Slave 4 U at the VMAs with the snake named Banana wrapped around her shoulders.
The 41-year-old writes: “It’s become an iconic moment in VMAs history, but it was even more terrifying than it appeared. All I knew was to look down, because I felt if I looked up and caught its eye, it would kill me.”
Revealing what was going through her mind at the time, she adds: “In my head I was saying, just perform, just use your legs and perform. But what nobody knows is that as I was singing, the snake brought its head right around to my face, right up to me, and started hissing.
“I was thinking, Are you f****** serious right now? The f****** goddamn snake’s tongue is flicking out at me. Right. Now. Finally, I got to the part where I handed it back, thank God.”
She Almost Starred In The Notebook
While Spears is best known for her successfully music career, she reveals how she narrowly missed out on landing a role in The Notebook opposite her old Mickey Mouse Club co-star Ryan Gosling.
The Circus singer, who starred in 2002 film Crossroads, shares in her memoir: “The Notebook casting came down to me and Rachel McAdams, and even though it would have been fun to reconnect with Ryan Gosling after our time on the Mickey Mouse Club, I’m glad I didn’t do it.
“If I had, instead of working on my album In the Zone I’d have been acting like a 1940s heiress day and night.”
