Since being freed from her conservatorship in 2021, the world has been waiting for Britney Spears to tell her story.
Two years later, it's finally here thanks to the release of her highly-anticipated memoir, The Woman in Me, which debuts on 24 October. In an exclusive interview with PEOPLE, who have published extracts of the book, Britney revealed she is ‘finally free’ to tell her story. ‘Over the past 15 years or even at the start of my career, I sat back while people spoke about me and told my story for me,' she said. 'It is finally time for me to raise my voice and speak out, and my fans deserve to hear it directly from me. No more conspiracy, no more lies — just me owning my past, present and future.’
And the book certainly isn’t short of bombshell revelations. In the memoir, Britney addresses vulnerable parts of her life, such as living under a conservatorship, her relationship with Justin Timberlake and her complicated family life.
Some images on social media suggest the book was accidentally put on sale a week early in Mexico. Following an online frenzy about the topics addressed in the book, Britney took to social media to make her intentions around writing it clear.
‘My book’s purpose was not to offend anyone by any means!” she wrote in the post. ‘That was me then … that is in the past! I don’t like the headlines I am reading … that’s exactly why I quit the business four years ago! Most of the book is from 20 years ago … I have moved on and it’s a beautiful clean slate from here! I am here to establish it that way for the rest of my entire life! Either way, that is the last of it and shit happens!’
The memoir has already shot to number one on the Amazon bestseller charts, and at the time Britney took to social media to celebrate its success. '1 week until my book #TheWomanInMe hits shelves !!!' she wrote. 'Thank you all for making it #1 on Amazon already !!!'
Britney Spears' The Woman In Me reviews...
Ahead of its October 24 release, reviewers have got their hands on Britney’s highly anticipated memoir, which is already sending shockwaves through the celebrity world.
TIME magazine has a review with the headline ‘Britney Spears Is Suspended Between Girlhood and Womanhood in The Woman in Me.’ In the review, they detail how Britney’s tale is one of ‘rapid maturity followed by arrested development, freedom followed by imprisonment,’ continuing ‘In the book, Spears likens herself to Benjamin Button, a character who ages backward through time.’
Read the full review here.
The Los Angeles Times calls the book a ‘gothic horror story’, describing Britney’s fate as ‘practically Victorian.’ They continue ‘It’s not a particularly uplifting read, though relief and rebellion course through it, as she expresses for the first time her side of the indignities foisted upon her, as well as the exciting and dizzying trajectory of global superstardom from age 16. Her writing is conversational and straightforward, and though there are moments of self-reflection, the details are enough.’
Read the full review here.
The New York Times described Britney as 'stronger than ever' in their review, continuing 'It’s nearly impossible to come out of it without empathy for and real outrage on behalf of Spears, whose admitted bitterness over the dire circumstances of the last decade-plus of her life — she no longer speaks to her family, and says she has no immediate plans to return to recording — is tempered by an enduring, insistent optimism.'
Read the full review here.
Like TIME magazine, the Washington Post review explores how Britney seems to be 'frozen at the age she got famous', before detailing her life under the 13-year conservatorship. 'The details revealed in “The Woman in Me” disturb even more deeply as Spears illustrates the adolescent-surrounded-by-sinister-adults dynamic,' they write. 'Spears remains adamant that she was taken in to the psychiatric evaluation that led to her conservatorship under false pretenses: She alleges that she went to a beach house upon her mother’s invitation to talk but was greeted by a SWAT team. She alleges that her father sent her to rehab though she’d only been taking over-the-counter energy supplements, and that her father controlled so much of her life — including her work schedule and diet — that he taunted her by saying, “I’m Britney Spears now.”'
Read the full review here.
Although we are going to have to wait a bit longer to read the memoir in full, here are all the revelations we know...
She had an abortion when she was with Justin Timberlake
Britney reveals that she became pregnant with Justin Timberlake’s baby, but had an abortion, according to PEOPLE.
‘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,’ Britney writes in the book. ‘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.’
Justin and Britney dated between 1999 and 2002, when they were in their late teens and early 20s. After they split, Britney went on to have two children with her second husband, Kevin Federline. She continues in the book ‘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.’ When addressing her experience of the abortion, she writes ‘To this day, it’s one of the most agonizing things I have ever experienced in my life.’
Justin did not respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
She accuses Justin Timberlake of cheating on her
Britney apparently accuses Justin of cheating on her with ‘another celebrity’ in her memoir. According to TMZ, Britney writes in the book that she does not want to name the woman, as she now has a family.
Other outlets are claiming that Britney claims Justin was unfaithful to her with two women in the memoir. This comes after fans in Mexico got their hands on the book after it was released one week early by mistake.
One fan who says that they have the book wrote on X 'Britney mentions that she knew JT was unfaithful, first with the All Saints girl and then with a celebrity who is still very famous, married and has kids now... and that in revenge she had a one-time lay down with [dancer] Wade Robson.'
This has caused old rumours to resurface about Justin’s speculated fling with Nicole Appleton, from the UK girl band All Saints. Justin was famously pictured heading to a London hotel with Nicole in late 2000, when he was a year into his romance with Britney. However, there is no indication that Justin was unfaithful and it is not known if Nicole was the celebrity Britney refers to in her memoir. Appleton and Timberlake never commented publicly on their night out.
Reps for Timberlake and Appleton did not immediately respond to requests for comment from other publications.
Britney Spears says that she cheated on Justin Timberlake…
What goes around, comes around, as Justin once sung**.** It has been reported that one of Britney’s bombshell revelations is that she admits to cheating on Justin with dancer and choreographer Wade Robson. In 2001, Wade choreographed her Oops... I Did It Again and I'm A Slave 4 U music videos as well as her Live from Las Vegas concert special. At the time, many people speculated that this was the reason she and Justin broke up in 2002, with Justin later releasing the single Cry Me A River, which includes lyrics that allude to being cheated on.
‘We were out one night and we went to a Spanish bar. We danced and danced. I made out with him that night,’ she writes. Apart from that ‘one exception’, she claims she was loyal to Justin throughout their relationship. She adds that she told Justin about her kiss with Wade, and they were able to move on from it.
Britney Spears says she was scared of the snake at the VMAs
One of the most iconic Britney performances of all time (and there have been many) was undoubtedly when she held a snake in 2001 while she sung ‘I’m a Slave 4 U’ during the MTV Video Music Awards. But in the memoir, she reveals she wasn't as comfortable as she looked on stage.
‘All I knew was to look down, because I felt if I looked up and caught its eye, it would kill me,’ she wrote. ‘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.’
Britney Spears almost got the female lead in The Notebook
One of the stranger revelations in the memoir is that Britney was almost cast to play Rachel McAdams in The Notebook, alongside Ryan Gosling. Addressing her acting career, Britney writes ‘Filming [my movie Crossroads] wasn’t easy for me,' continuing 'That [film] was pretty much the beginning and end of my acting career, and I was relieved.’
However, she goes on to detail another film which might have caused her career to pivot into acting. ‘The Notebook casting came down to me and Rachel McAdams,’ she claims, ‘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.’
Britney shaved her hair as an act of rebellion
Most of us will remember the pictures of Britney shaving her hair in front of approximately 70 photographers after leaving rehab in 2007. After much speculation, she has finally opened up about her motivations behind it. ‘I’d been eyeballed so much growing up,’ she writes. ‘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.’
The move came shortly before Britney was placed under a conservatorship in 2008 when she was 26, which granted her father and a lawyer control over her financial and personal affairs. In the book, she details how she wasn’t allowed to keep her new haircut in the months that followed. ‘Under the conservatorship I was made to understand that those days were now over,’ she writes. ‘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.’
Her conservatorship robbed Britney of adulthood
When addressing her conservatorship in the book, Britney reveals how it robbed her of the ability to be an adult. ‘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.’
She continued, ‘If they’d let me live my life, I know I would’ve followed my heart and come out of this the right way and worked it out. Thirteen years went by with me feeling like a shadow of myself. 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.’
Britney Spears reveals why she shares naked photos on Instagram
In an extract of the book seen by the New York Times, Britney addresses her risqué Instagram posts, which have been scrutinised by fans since the end of her conservatorship. ‘I know that a lot of people don’t understand why I love taking pictures of myself naked or in new dresses,’ she wrote. ‘But I think if they’d been photographed by other people thousands of times, prodded and posed for other people’s approval, they’d understand that I get a lot of joy from posting the way I feel sexy and taking my own picture.’
Her dad, Jamie Spears, body shamed her
In the memoir, Britney details how her dad commented on her body throughout her conservatorship. 'If I thought getting criticized about my body in the press was bad, it hurt even more from my own father,' she writes. 'He repeatedly told me I looked fat and that I was going to have to do something about it.'
She also reveals how she blames her father for losing the passion she'd had for singing. 'Feeling like you’re never good enough is a soul-crushing state of being for a child,' she writes. '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.'