Charlie Garner 

Opinion Editor 

avg6206@psu.edu

In 2023, much anticipation began when it was revealed that Britney Spears would release her own memoir, spilling everything from her childhood and family life, her experience in the music industry, her relationships, and her conservatorship. Spears’ book, “The Woman In Me,” really shows her vulnerable side and makes you, as a reader, empathize with her struggles. 

Britney Spears is highly regarded as one of the best pop stars of all time, even often compared to Madonna and Mariah Carey. And even though it has been years since she has released music consistently, she is still one of the most memorable celebrities of the 2000s. In her memoir, “The Woman In Me,” Spears goes into how she got her start in show business and how it led to her success in the music industry. She had grown up always wanting to perform and she always loved to sing and dance. When she was only 10 years old, she was on the show “Star Search,” where she made her mark as a talented young star. And her talents were put to more use and were more recognized when she got cast on “The Mickey Mouse Club” only a few years later. Anyone could see when Britney was such an early age, that she was made to be a star. 

When Britney was only 16, her first hit song, “…Baby One More Time,” was released and it was an instant pop hit. Britney already started to face scrutiny from people (especially the media) at this time and it never really stopped. Then, she went on tour with NSYNC and had a very public relationship with Justin Timberlake. Spears recalls how magnetic her relationship with Timberlake was and how their split left her devastated. She claims that, even with her infatuation with Timberlake, he had cheated on her multiple times throughout her relationship, for which she had forgiven him for. And she admits that she had cheated on him once too, but they had moved past it and continued their relationship after the fact. But, when they had split up, Timberlake was working on his first solo album, “Justified.” She recounts how she felt when Timberlake’s “Cry Me a River” music video dropped. In it, “a woman who looks like me cheats on him and he wanders around sad in the rain,” is how she puts it. She claims that she was misrepresented in the media as a “harlot who’d broken the heart of America’s golden boy,” while in actuality, “I was comatose in Louisiana, and he was happily running around Hollywood.” She also says that, because of the backlash from the music video, she would get constantly asked about it in interviews, where she would be embarrassed on live television and she would get booed everywhere she went. 

When Spears became a mother, she was getting more and more trauma with paparazzi and the way the media was portraying her. The press was constantly trying to get footage of her children and trying to criticize her as a mom. She opened up about her decision to shave her head in 2007 and she said it was a way to say “F*** you” to the public. 

Spears writes on living under the court-ordered conservatorship, which gave her father Jamie and an attorney authority over her personal and financial matters in 2008. She claims that the conservatorship made her feel like a robot and that it stripped away her womanhood, which took her years to get back. And even though she was still performing on the regular, every move of hers was monitored like she was out of control or a danger to the people around her. Although Spears had unsuccessfully resisted the conservatorship on occasion behind closed doors, she credits arguments with her father near the end of 2018 for the arrangement’s breakdown, during which she was forced to undergo additional mental health assessments and more than three months of rehabilitation therapy. During this, she discovered the Free Britney movement and it aided her to make the move to put an end to her conservatorship after thirteen years of being under her father’s control.