By Andrew Hylton
Britney Spears recently released her highly anticipated memoir “The Woman In Me,” which chronicles her life from humble beginnings in Louisiana to global pop superstardom. Along with fame and fortune came media scrutiny and a troubling personal life, which ultimately led up to a 13-year conservatorship in which Spears lost the freedom to make her own personal and financial decisions. Within the last two years, there have been multiple documentaries and media outlets trying to capitalize off of the trauma and mistreatment that Spears has endured, and with this memoir, she’s setting the record straight as this story is coming from her own words and experiences. She is taking ownership of her life and finding the woman deep down inside.
I always credit Britney Spears for being my introduction to pop music, specifically female pop music. The only other artist I would give that same credit to would-be Beyoncé Knowles. I remember the year being 2003. I was about six years old and as my older brothers were watching MTV, the music video for “Me Against The Music” by Britney Spears featuring Madonna came on the screen, and I was automatically mesmerized and captivated by Spears as a performer. She was a star in every meaning of the word. She had the stage presence of Janet Jackson with the rebellious sensuality of Madonna, and I loved every minute of it. At the age of six, I didn’t know what the “It factor” was but Britney definitely had “It.” After my initial introduction to Britney Spears, I started watching all of her music videos and live performances in an effort to sing and dance like her. I still have flashbacks of myself trying to mimic her singing voice while I danced to the choreography of “I’m A Slave 4 U” in my mother’s living room. She was truly the first pop star I had a genuine connection to and I know so many others share the same sentiment.
While I, and so many others admired Britney Spears, the pop star, we had no idea what was going on behind the scenes. Spears was going through a lot in her personal life including a breakup with longtime boyfriend, singer Justin Timberlake, a divorce from backup dancer Kevin Federline and a custody battle over Spears’ two sons. This is a lot for anyone to deal with. However, imagine dealing with all of this chaos in the public eye.
Being a public figure comes with a lot of pressure and scrutiny. Spears has expressed how being in the industry at a young age added to her infamous breakdown in 2007. Spears wrote in the book, “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.” The head-shaving incident that occurred in February 2007 was a talking point in pop culture history. I was in third grade when all of this was happening, and I couldn’t even fathom what was really going on. Everyone was saying, “Britney is crazy now.” I was too young to use my critical thinking skills. As a result, I repeated what everyone else was saying. Nonetheless, we have to take into consideration that it was the 2000s, and there was so little knowledge or awareness about mental health. There wasn’t even a conversation to be had. We had celebrities such as Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton and Britney Spears stumbling out of clubs drunk, getting DUIs, in and out of rehab, and even getting arrested. All of this was public information and quite frankly a cry for help. The only thing the media had to say about the destruction of these young women was, “They’re just crazy.” No empathy or understanding, just judgment.
Another thing that was expected of female celebrities in the 2000s was for them to be role models. The concept of a virginal, squeaky clean image was promoted as being marketable in an effort to sell products, with Spears being one of them. When you are an entertainer, there is no ownership of your image. You are no longer an individual. You are a corporation, a business, a machine. What the record label says, goes. This concept comes up a lot when Spears talks about how the industry tried to sexualize her, but still wanted her to be sweet and innocent. She wrote, “Given that I had so many teenage fans, my managers and press people had long tried to portray me as an eternal virgin.” She then questions, “Why did my managers work so hard to claim I was some kind of young-girl virgin even into my twenties? Whose business was it if I’d had sex or not?” At the time Spears was in a long-term relationship with Justin Timberlake. She later admitted to getting an abortion while they were together. The concept of purity reminds me of future stars that came after her such as Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato. They all hail from the Disney machine just like Spears who starred in The Mickey Mouse Club in 1993. There was always this bizarre, perverted fascination about their virginity, so much so that Disney pushed and encouraged them to wear purity rings in efforts to solidify their innocence, which was inappropriate to say the least. This seems to be a problem that many young starlets run into. The media wants them to be sexual for the male gaze while still being sweet and innocent enough to satisfy the conservative parents of America. What people in that time failed to realize is that there are role models for different types of people. For every little girl who looks up to Taylor Swift as a role model, there’s also a young woman who admires the unapologetic sexuality of Nicki Minaj or Cardi B. Women are not a monolith. They are multidimensional and complex in so many different ways. Looking back at that time, the good girl versus bad girl mindset is so outdated, problematic and misogynistic.
In the book Spears talks about the speculation over her alleged drug use. Spears said she was never interested in hard drugs and “never had a drinking problem.” Of her relationship with Adderall, she admitted the medication “made her high,” but added, “What I found far more appealing was that it gave me a few hours of feeling less depressed.” Adderall is a medication that is used to treat ADHD. Although the drug is used to treat attention deficit, it is widely used as a party drug, especially among Hollywood celebrities. There were many times back then and even now when the media questioned her sobriety or mental state.
In January 2008, Spears was admitted to Cedar Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles for a psych evaluation after she refused to give her children back to ex-husband Kevin Federline. This ultimately led to her father Jamie Spears filing a conservatorship over her personal wellbeing and financial estate. Spears claims that all of this was planned in an effort for her family, specifically her father to take control of her life. In what was supposed to be a temporary conservatorship turned permanent, Spears was given a $2,000-a-week allowance, and wasn’t allowed to use an ATM, drive her car, decorate her house or even order french fries at a restaurant - yes, it was that ridiculous. Everything had to be approved by her father Jamie, and she hated that. Spears wrote about the conservatorship in an excerpt from her book saying, “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. 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.” Shen then goes on to say, “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. 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.”
Furthermore, this led to the Free Britney Movement in which fans caught on to some of the troubling aspects of this conservatorship. Any logical person would question it considering Spears was making albums and going on tour, making millions of dollars. She essentially became a cash cow, a bank for many people involved. Whenever Spears didn’t do something her handlers wanted, they either medicated her or sent her to a mental facility which Spears describes as “traumatizing” and even thought for a moment that her family was trying to “kill her” by giving her medications such as lithium to keep her in a sedated state. On November 12, 2021, Britney Spears was free from her conservatorship and was now able to live the life she wants to. After 13 years of being controlled, one would assume Spears had a lot of truth to tell and she did just that.
In an effort to tell her story in the way she wanted to, Spears decided to write a memoir as a way to control her own narrative, and with “The Woman In Me,” she tells her story from top to bottom. Although all of this information is coming from Spears, most of it is already public knowledge. While reading this book, there wasn’t anything that truly surprised me. I felt like Spears could have gone deeper in terms of revealing more about the turbulent times in her life. It’s almost as if she’s holding back, which makes a lot of sense considering there is still a legal battle repairing the damages to her finances as there were many people involved in the conservatorship. Aside from the conservatorship, Spears also discussed her childhood in Louisiana. She and her family were poor and her home life was also toxic due to her father being an alcoholic. She then recalls singing as being her only escape from reality. This detail was heartwarming as it set the tone for what her future reality would be. In some ways, this memoir was a passion project for Spears. Instead of fans watching documentaries and reading blogs, she’d rather tell the story herself and I applaud her for that. Furthermore, it is very apparent that she is still processing the last 13 years of her life. If Spears would have waited another two to three years to release this memoir, her healing process would have been such a great chapter to read. However, that chapter is not present in this memoir. As a Britney fan, I already knew most of what she revealed. This book would be a great intro point to someone who knows little to nothing about her story. You can tell that there are certain things she’s not ready to talk about and that’s okay. Maybe in a few years’ time she’ll do a sit-down interview with Oprah, who knows? We can only be optimistic. Overall, the book is an easy read and very digestible in the sense that it is not complex and straight to the point. An extra few chapters would have been excellent, but I’m glad the fans (myself included) finally received the message directly from Spears herself.
Britney Spears is one of the most dynamic and entertaining performers of our time and no matter what she has gone through, her fans and supporters have been by her side. Spears has stated that she is taking time away from the spotlight and music in an effort to heal spiritually and emotionally from her past, and she has every right to do so. She has been a staple in pop music history, cementing herself as an icon for more than two decades and her influence is undeniable in today’s pop divas. In the 2002 single “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman,” Spears sings about the transitional period of womanhood. 21 years later, she has finally discovered the woman in herself.
Comments