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There came a point during the 13 years that a conservatorship strictly governed Britney Spears\u2019s life and career that she gave up fighting it, the singer recalls in her memoir, \u201cThe Woman in Me,\u201d which is being released on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Her father, James P. Spears, had been put in charge of her affairs in 2008 after she was twice hospitalized for involuntary psychological assessments. At times over the years that followed, she pushed back privately<\/a>, but ultimately her exhaustion and fear of losing access to her two young sons won out, she recalls in the book.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter being held down on a gurney,\u201d the memoir reads, \u201cI knew they could restrain my body any time they wanted to. And so I went along with it.\u201d Spears adds, \u201cMy freedom in exchange for naps with my children \u2014 it was a trade I was willing to make.\u201d<\/p>\n In the much-awaited 275-page memoir, which The New York Times obtained from a retail store in advance of its authorized release, Spears writes about her career as a teen idol, her struggles that became tabloid fodder, her time under the conservatorship and her eventual push for its termination in 2021<\/a>, when she regained the right to make her own decisions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Throughout, she describes the feeling of being too much in the public eye, too scrutinized, whether by her parents or the paparazzi, or even by the doctors who she says \u201ctook me away from my kids and my dogs and my house.\u201d But the story is, by nature, incomplete, referring cheerily to Spears\u2019s post-conservatorship marriage to Hesam Asghari<\/a>, known as Sam, who filed for divorce<\/a> in August after a little more than a year.<\/p>\n Below are other notable moments from the book.<\/p>\n From performing her first solo \u2014 the Christmas carol \u201cWhat Child Is This?\u201d \u2014 at her mother\u2019s local day care to auditioning with Whitney Houston\u2019s \u201cI Have Nothing\u201d in rooms full of record executives, Spears tracks her rapid ascent to fame as a child and teenager.<\/p>\n When she was 10 years old, she recalls, she was on the show \u201cStar Search,\u201d where the host, Ed McMahon, asked her if she had a boyfriend. After she replied that she didn\u2019t, because they were \u201cmean,\u201d McMahon responded, \u201cI\u2019m not mean! How about me?\u201d She \u201ckept it together\u201d until she left the stage, Spears writes, \u201cBut then I burst into tears.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/li>\n After appearing on \u201cThe Mickey Mouse Club,\u201d Spears writes, she decided that she wanted to live a \u201cnormal life\u201d back in Kentwood, La., until Larry Rudolph, a lawyer whom her mother met on the audition circuit, suggested that she record a demo. She won a record deal at 15, and Rudolph became her longtime manager.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Spears quickly rose from a teenager performing at malls to a 16-year-old pop princess with a hit single: \u201c \u2026 Baby One More Time.\u201d She went on tour with the boy band \u2019N Sync, and had a high-profile romance with Justin Timberlake.<\/p>\n She writes that she \u201ccouldn\u2019t help but notice\u201d that talk show hosts asked Timberlake different kinds of questions from the ones that she was asked: \u201cEveryone kept making strange comments about my breasts,\u201d the book says, \u201cwanting to know whether or not I\u2019d had plastic surgery.\u201d The pressure only grew as she became a fixture on MTV, and the public criticism ultimately led her to start taking Prozac, she recalls.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Spears recounts her connection with Timberlake as magnetic and describes their breakup \u2014 which she said he initiated over text message \u2014 as leaving her \u201cdevastated\u201d and fantasizing about quitting show business.<\/p>\n She recalls her reaction to the release of Timberlake\u2019s music video<\/a> \u201cCry Me a River,\u201d in which, as she describes it, \u201ca woman who looks like me cheats on him and he wanders around sad in the rain.\u201d She viewed the media as portraying her as a \u201charlot who\u2019d broken the heart of America\u2019s golden boy,\u201d she writes, when in reality: \u201cI was comatose in Louisiana, and he was happily running around Hollywood.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/li>\n As first revealed in excerpts released by People magazine<\/a> earlier this week, Spears recounts in detail the decision to get an abortion after she became pregnant while in the relationship with Timberlake. She said she didn\u2019t view the pregnancy as \u201ca tragedy,\u201d but that he thought they were too young, leading her to agree \u201cnot to have the baby.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/li>\n After the breakup, Spears says, she felt forced by her father and her management team to participate in an interview<\/a> with Diane Sawyer, during which Sawyer pressed her on what she did to Timberlake that caused him \u201cso much pain.\u201d (In the book, Spears confirms a longtime rumor when she says she kissed the choreographer Wade Robson during her relationship with Timberlake, but she suggests that her behavior was related to rumors of Timberlake\u2019s unfaithfulness.) Spears recalls that interview as a \u201cbreaking point\u201d for her. \u201cI felt like I had been exploited,\u201d she writes, \u201cset up in front of the whole world.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n Tackling the peak years of her notorious stint as a paparazzi and tabloid fixture, Spears writes about her early adulthood forays into partying and nightlife with a sense of disbelief about how they were portrayed in the media.<\/p>\n Of her time being photographed alongside celebrity peers like Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, Spears writes, \u201cIt was never as wild as the press made it out to be,\u201d saying that she had no interest in hard drugs and \u201cnever had a drinking problem.\u201d Instead, Spears describes her \u201cdrug of choice\u201d as the ADHD medication Adderall, which \u201cmade me high, yes, but what I found far more appealing was that it gave me a few hours of feeling less depressed.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/li>\n Spears writes that during some of her most widely known public episodes \u2014 shaving her head and attacking a paparazzo\u2019s car \u2014 she was \u201cout of my mind with grief\u201d following the death of her aunt and a custody fight with her ex-husband, Kevin Federline. \u201cWith my head shaved, everyone was scared of me, even my mom,\u201d she writes. \u201cFlailing those weeks without my children, I lost it, over and over again. I didn\u2019t even really know how to take care of myself.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/li>\n Spears adds: \u201cI am willing to admit that in the throes of severe postpartum depression, abandonment by my husband, the torture of being separated from my two babies, the death of my adored aunt Sandra, and the constant drumbeat of pressure from paparazzi, I\u2019d begin to think in some ways like a child.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In early 2008, amid her public struggles, the singer\u2019s father, known as Jamie, was appointed conservator of her finances and personal life by the state of California, an arrangement that lasted in various forms until 2021. Even as she returned to work as an entertainer, Spears writes that her every action was monitored, including who she could date or spend time with.<\/p>\n \u201cI know I had been acting wild, but there was nothing I\u2019d done that justified their treating me like I was a bank robber,\u201d Spears writes in her memoir. \u201cNothing that justified upending my entire life.\u201d She describes the decision as being made by her father along with support from her mother and a business manager, Louise Taylor, known as Lou<\/a>, who has denied being an architect of the conservatorship. (Jamie Spears has long defended his involvement as an effort to protect his daughter from financial exploitation.)<\/p>\n<\/li>\n \u201cToo sick to choose my own boyfriend and yet somehow healthy enough to appear on sitcoms and morning shows, and to perform for thousands of people in a different part of the world every week,\u201d Spears writes, adding of her father: \u201cFrom that point on, I began to think that he saw me as put on the earth for no other reason than to help their cash flow.\u201d Elsewhere, Spears recalls her father saying, \u201cI\u2019m Britney Spears now.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/li>\n \u201cI went from partying a lot to being a total monk,\u201d Spears writes. \u201cSecurity guards handed me prepackaged envelopes of meds and watched me take them. They put parental controls on my iPhone. Everything was scrutinized and controlled. Everything.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/li>\n Any pushback by Spears was frowned upon, ignored or minimized, she writes: \u201cI even mentioned the conservatorship on a talk show in 2016, but somehow that part of the interview didn\u2019t make it to the air. Huh<\/em>. How interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n While Spears had intermittently pushed back against the conservatorship behind closed doors to no avail, she traces the beginning of the end of the arrangement to disputes with her father near the end of 2018, when she was made to undergo further mental health evaluations and then spend more than three months in rehab.<\/p>\n \u201cMy father said that if I didn\u2019t go, then I\u2019d have to go to court, and I\u2019d be embarrassed,\u201d Spears writes, adding that he threatened to make her look like an \u201cidiot.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/li>\n In addition to being prescribed lithium at the facility, Spears says, she was allowed only an hour of television before a 9 p.m. bedtime. \u201cThey kept me locked up against my will for months,\u201d she writes. \u201cI couldn\u2019t go outside. I couldn\u2019t drive a car. I had to give blood weekly. I couldn\u2019t take a bath in private. I couldn\u2019t shut the door to my room.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/li>\n It was there, in a $60,000-per-month Beverly Hills rehab, that Spears says a nurse showed her clips of fans representing the viral #FreeBritney movement<\/a> that was questioning the need for the singer\u2019s conservatorship<\/a>. \u201cThat was the most amazing thing I\u2019d ever seen in my life,\u201d Spears writes. \u201cI don\u2019t think people knew how much the #FreeBritney movement meant to me, especially in the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/li>\n She writes that \u201cit felt like every day there was another documentary about me on yet another streaming service\u201d (including one, \u201cFraming Britney Spears,\u201d by The New York Times<\/a>). \u201cSeeing the documentaries about me was rough,\u201d she writes. \u201cI understand that everyone\u2019s heart was in the right place, but I was hurt that some old friend spoke to filmmakers without consulting me first.\u201d She adds, \u201cThere was so much guessing about what I must have thought or felt.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/li>\n When her father was removed as her conservator<\/a>, not long before the arrangement was ended entirely<\/a>, \u201cI felt relief sweep over me,\u201d Spears writes. \u201cThe man who had scared me as a child and ruled over me as an adult, who had done more than anyone to undermine my self-confidence, was no longer in control of my life.\u201d When she received the call from her new lawyer, Mathew S. Rosengart, that the conservatorship was officially over, Spears writes, she was at a resort in Tahiti.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n But Spears remains raw about the aftermath of the conservatorship, writing of her continued estrangement from much of her family. \u201cMigraines are just one part of the physical and emotional damage I have now that I\u2019m out of the conservatorship,\u201d she writes. \u201cI don\u2019t think my family understands the real damage that they did.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n While some say the conservatorship saved Spears\u2019s life, she writes, \u201cNo, not really. My music was my life, and the conservatorship was deadly for that; it crushed my soul.\u201d<\/p>\n Throughout her time performing a revue in Las Vegas, Spears writes, she was not allowed to update the show. \u201cWhen I wanted to perform my favorite songs, like \u2018Change Your Mind\u2019 or \u2018Get Naked,\u2019 they wouldn\u2019t let me,\u201d she writes. \u201cIt felt like they wanted to embarrass me rather than let me give my fans the best possible performance.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/li>\n Now that she has the opportunity to create freely again, the singer writes, she does not feel motivated to do so, although she mentions a one-off collaboration<\/a> with one of her musical heroes, Elton John, released last year. \u201cPushing forward in my music career is not my focus at the moment,\u201d Spears says. \u201cIt\u2019s time for me not to be someone who other people want; it\u2019s time to actually find myself.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n Chris Kuo contributed reporting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nRise to fame<\/h2>\n
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Mounting fame, and attention<\/h2>\n
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Breaking up with Timberlake<\/h2>\n
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Relationship to drugs and alcohol<\/h2>\n
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The conservatorship<\/h2>\n
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Fighting back and #FreeBritney<\/h2>\n
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A return to music?<\/h2>\n
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