Britney Spears reflected on the early days of her conservatorship in the first excerpt from her upcoming book, The Woman in Me.
“Shaving my head and acting out were my ways of pushing back. But under the conservatorship I was made to understand that those days were now over,” Spears, 41, wrote in an excerpt published by People on Tuesday, October 17. “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.”
Spears was placed in a conservatorship in 2008 following a series of public struggles after her divorce from Kevin Federline. Her father, Jamie Spears, had control of her finances and person for much of the next decade. (A judge finally released Britney from the conservatorship in November 2021.)
“I became a robot. But not just a robot — a sort of child-robot. I had been so infantilized that I was losing pieces of what made me feel like myself,” Britney recalled of that period. “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 went on to say that she felt like “a shadow” of herself during the 13 years she was under the conservatorship. “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,” she wrote. “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.”
Britney announced The Woman in Me in 2022. In April of that year, the pop star said the writing process had been “healing and therapeutic” for her.
Earlier this month, an insider exclusively told Us Weekly that Britney didn’t hold back in the book, especially when it came to her ex-boyfriend Justin Timberlake. Britney and Timberlake, 42, dated from 1999 to 2002 after meeting as kids on the set of The All-New Mickey Mouse Club.
“Justin’s not going to be happy,” the source explained, hinting that Britney “goes after him hard” in the memoir.
A second insider, meanwhile, said that Britney, who split from husband Sam Asghari earlier this year, isn’t trying to settle any scores — she just wants to share her truth. “It’s not Britney’s intention to skewer anyone,” the insider said. “She’s just going to relay the facts from her perspective.”
The Woman in Me hits shelves on Tuesday, October 24.
