Five Bombshell Takeaways From Britney Spears’ Autobiography

With Britney Spears’ new tell-all memoir, The Woman In Me, landing on bookshelves next Tuesday, 24 October, the pre-release revelations are pouring out, and The Music has rounded up the biggest bombshells shared by the Oops… I Did It Again singer.

The synopsis for The Woman In Me reads:

In June 2021, the whole world was listening as Britney Spears spoke in open court. The impact of sharing her voice—her truth—was undeniable, and it changed the course of her life and the lives of countless others. The Woman in Me reveals for the first time her incredible journey—and the strength at the core of one of the greatest performers in pop music history.

Written with remarkable candour and humour, Spears’s groundbreaking book illuminates the enduring power of music and love—and the importance of a woman telling her own story, on her own terms, at last. 

News of Spears’ memoir began circulating in February, three months after her controversial conservatorship ended.

The Woman In Me was reportedly delayed to release this month due to “a lot of nervous A-listers,” according to a source at The Sun. Just how controversial can a book be?

From not scoring a massive film role to feeling like a “child robot” under the conservatorship, these are the key takeaways from Britney Spears’ new memoir.

Britney Spears nearly scored the lead role in The Notebook

The Toxic singer is “glad” she lost the part of Allie Hamilton in the 2004 romance classic The Notebook to Rachel McAdams.

Recalling her experience filming the 2002 film Crossroads, Spears admitted that the time “wasn’t easy”, and she struggled to differentiate between herself and her character, Lucy Wagner.

Recalling how she took on method acting, Spears said that she “didn’t know how to break out of my character,” per an excerpt shared by People. “I really became this other person. Some people do Method acting, but they’re usually aware of the fact that they’re doing it. But I didn’t have any separation at all.”

Feeling “relieved” by the “beginning of the end” of her acting career, Spears continued, “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.”

Why Britney Spears shaved her head in 2007

We all remember looking at newspapers, magazines and television screens on the day Britney Spears shaved her head in 2007. But why?

As an act of rebellion.

“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,” she wrote, as per a People excerpt.

The conservatorship was soon granted to her father, Jamie Spears, in 2008. “Under the conservatorship, I was made to understand that those days were now over,” Spears admitted. “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.”

She continued, “I think back now on my father and his associates having control over my body and my money for that long and it makes me feel sick… Think of how many male artists gambled all their money away; how many had substance abuse or mental health issues. No one tried to take away their control over their bodies and money. I didn’t deserve what my family did to me.”

Britney had an abortion while dating Justin Timberlake

Another admission from The Woman In Me was shared in the form of Spears writing that she had an abortion while dating Justin Timberlake. The two pop stars dated from 1999 until 2002 while they were in their late teens and early twenties.

“For me, [the pregnancy] wasn’t a tragedy,” Spears admitted via the People excerpt. “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 … 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.”

Timberlake hasn’t responded to Spears’ written account.

Britney describes living under the conservatorship as feeling like a “child robot”

Britney Spears felt like she was “infantilised” and was no longer treated like an adult while living under the conservatorship her father placed her in.

“I became a robot. But not just a robot — a sort of child robot,” she shared in another excerpt. “I had been so infantilized [sic] that I was losing pieces of what made me feel like myself.”

Recalling feeling like “more of an entity than a person onstage”, Spears wrote that those years were “soul-crushing”.

She added, “The woman in me was pushed down for a long time. They wanted me to be wild onstage, the way they told me to be and to be a robot the rest of the time.”

Britney says she was body-shamed by her father

“If I thought getting criticized [sic] about my body in the press was bad, it hurt even more from my own father,” Spears wrote in an excerpt of The Woman In Me. “He repeatedly told me I looked fat and that I was going to have to do something about it.”

Spears wrote that growing up, she felt like she wasn’t good enough for her father. “He’d drummed that message into me as a girl, and even after I’d accomplished so much, he was continuing to do that to me.”

Britney’s father, Jamie, put her under a conservatorship in 2008 that was eventually terminated in November 2021.

The Woman In Me will be released on Tuesday, 24 October. You can pre-order your copy via Britney Spears’ website.

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