[imagesource:Stephen Lavoie]

Britney Spears is having her say in her already explosive tell-all memoir, The Woman In Me.

She is sparing no detail, for instance, in describing her time spent in a conservatorship overseen by her father or the abortion she had while in a relationship with Justin Timberlake.

The publishers have kept a tight lid on most of the contents – unsurprising since Simon & Schuster reportedly paid more than 15 million dollars for the rights – but ahead of its October 24 release (that’s tomorrow), a couple of juicy excerpts have been making their way into headlines across the media world.

1 week until my book #TheWomanInMe hits shelves 📚 !!! Thank you all for making it #1 on Amazon already !!! #AD https://t.co/ifGb83HMHq @simonschuster @GalleryBooks pic.twitter.com/lchdmWUlit

— Britney Spears 🌹🚀 (@britneyspears) October 17, 2023

The biggest revelation is perhaps how Spears said she felt pressured into having an abortion while dating fellow popstar Timberlake between 1999 and 2002.

“But Justin definitely wasn’t happy about the pregnancy,” she writes. “He said we weren’t ready to have a baby in our lives, that we were way too young. If it had been left up to me alone, I never would have done it.”

“It’s one of the most agonising things I have ever experienced in my life.”

The relationship only lasted for three years but still became the stuff of pop culture legend. Spears also shared that Timberlake broke up with her via text while clearing up longtime speculation about infidelity in their relationship. While Timberlake’s post-breakup implication was that she cheated on him, she alleges that he was unfaithful to her several times. She did, however, admit to making out with her backup dancer, Wade Robson – a move she says was motivated by Timberlake’s indiscretions.

This came after the interview with journalist Diane Sawyer who pressed her on what she did to Timberlake that caused him “so much pain.”

Spears recalls that interview as a “breaking point” for her. “I felt like I had been exploited,” she writes, “set up in front of the whole world.”

She mentioned how the media willingly portrayed her as a “harlot who’d broken the heart of America’s golden boy,” she writes, when in reality: “I was comatose in Louisiana, and he was happily running around Hollywood” singing ‘Cry Me a River’.

Growing up in the media’s glare, relentlessly sexualised from a young age, Spears lost her footing in 2007. We all watched her highly public breakdown in which she shaved her head and was filmed attacking a paparazzi’s car. This all led to her father, Jamie Spears, taking legal control over her life.

Spears described the conservatorship as tantamount to “abuse”, with the book going into further detail about how she’s lived a life mostly at the mercy of others.

Image: Simon & Schuster

Besides writing about her struggles that became tabloid fodder, Spears also spends time tracking her rapid ascent to fame as a child and teenager. Spears came from a very humble background and found early fame on The Mickey Mouse Club alongside other future stars, Ryan Gosling and Christina Aguilera.

She also acknowledged her bizarre Instagram antics, saying that while many of her followers might find her skin-baring posts unconventional, she gets “joy” from “posing the way I feel sexy”.

[source:pagesix&time&huffpost]