The simultaneous publication in 26 countries of Britney Spears’ memoirs is an event. And not only for his millions of fans who last saw him on stage in 2018. Published Tuesday, “The Woman in Me” full of anecdotes tells the dark underbelly of Hollywood and the major music companies. The sexism, the misogyny, the constant bullying. We meet Natalie Portman, Ryan Gosling, Christina Aguilera and Colin Farrel. Justin Timberlake emerges as a vile character who forces her to have an abortion, leaves her via text message and describes her as a slut for his own glory. Like Michael Jackson, Britney Spears embodies all the hypocrisy and puritanism across the Atlantic. America’s Little Bride lived as a couple but had to remain a virgin. She is dragged through the mud. “I had a natural tendency towards anxiety, I became socially phobic,” she says.
This book, written with the help of an undisclosed author, goes well beyond the memories of a star broken by the system. Britney Spears would have liked to have the strength of Madonna “who does what she wants”, the “formidable intelligence” of actress and producer Reese Whiterspoon, the “ability” of Jennifer Lopez, the “repartee” of Dolly Parton . “I remained a nice girl from the South of the United States, ready to do anything to please, a little stupid, convinced that everything that happened to me was my fault,” she confides. My parents always considered me a failure. I was passive and too accommodating.” When you close this book, you can only feel empathy.
His childhood in a poor white family in Louisiana, in the heart of the “Bible Belt”, where the father drinks and the mother shouts, is well described. “Here, everyone goes to church and knows how to handle a gun.” Like Elvis Presley, who grew up in neighboring Mississippi fifty years earlier, Britney Spears showed herself to be a hard worker. From his discovery of singing thanks to gospel to the release of his first hit Baby one more time, in 1998, the rise has been meteoric. She is sixteen years old and everything is already going too fast. “In interviews, I was never entitled to the same questions as a man,” she laments. In 2000, when Oops I did it again was released, it was worse. “If I was sexy I was stupid, if I was hot I had no talent.”
What will happen to him is extraordinary. She married the dancer Kevin Federline and after the birth of her two boys, born in quick succession in 2005 and 2006, and post-natal depression – “at the time, there was little talk about the mental health of young mothers” -, she divorces. In 2007, when her aunt whom she adored died, she was alone and lost her bearings. “I was young, I made mistakes. But I wanted to be a good mother. I never took hard drugs, just drank occasionally and took Prozac.” She still takes Adderall, a drug banned in France based on amphetamines to treat attention disorders. When she is forbidden from seeing her sons aged five and seventeen months, she shaves her head that same evening, mad with grief. This will be the beginning of a descent into hell unique in the history of showbiz.
Half of these 285 pages describe the abuses of guardianship in the United States. From the age of 27 until she was 40, “America’s Little Bride” was stripped of all her rights. In a legal decision, normally reserved for seniors, she loses control of her life. Telephone tapped, microphones in his house, internment in an asylum for a disagreement during rehearsals, compulsory IUD, envelopes pre-filled with medication, obligation to inform his bodyguards two hours before leaving a room, prohibition to choose his meal… Nothing is spared. Without the American justice system being surprised, she is under the influence of her father and his associate, Louise Taylor. Britney Spears records albums and performs huge shows. She earns them tens of millions of dollars but they only pay her $2,000 per week.
Based on what evidence, could Californian justice have gone astray for thirteen years? Difficult to get an idea, Britney Spears says nothing about the documents which were used as evidence. The worst is that his guardian, the one who obtains the rights to his fortune estimated at 60 million dollars and to his life, is his father. Jamie Spears is, however, known to be a violent alcoholic and an incompetent manager. A man who always terrified his daughter. One scene in the book is particularly chilling: “Now Britney Spears is me,” he tells her.
In 2020, suspecting that their idol is locked up against his will, his fans successfully rise
Britney Spears often refers to her spirituality and says she encountered God in the Arizona desert. Despite a duet in 2022 with Sir Elton John, she has no intention of returning to the profession. “Being placed under guardianship killed my creativity,” she says. Her half-naked photos in front of her 44 million Instagram followers? “Taking sexy poses is my freedom.” At the end of August, after the completion of her memoirs, she separated from Sam Asghari, her third husband with whom she had lived for six years. “Now it’s time to find myself,” she concludes.
» The Woman in Me, Britney Spears, 324 pages, JC Lattès editions, 22.90 euros.
