The 275-page memoir details the 41-year-old pop star’s rise to fame,the controversial conservatorship arrangement and her struggles with tabloid media. Here are five notable moments from the book.
Britney Spears spares little detail in her new memoir,The Woman in Me.Getty
Her ups and downs with Justin Timberlake
Spears recounts her relationship with former NSYNC member Justin Timberlake,whom she dated between 1999 and 2002.
Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake in all denim at the 2001 American Music Awards.Reuters
She describes their first kiss,which was at aMickey Mouse Club party,as well as some of their most iconic looks,including the all-denim ensembles they wore to the 2001 American Music Awards.
Spears claims both she and Timberlake were unfaithful at some point during their three-year relationship. She openly admits to an affair she had with choreographer Wade Robson. She eventually told Timberlake,but the pair reportedly decided to stay together.
She also alleges Timberlake cheated on her with another unnamed famous woman,though she never confronted him about it.
“There were rumours about him with various dancers and groupies. I let it go,but clearly,he’d slept around.”
She says Timberlake ended the relationship via text message,which left her “devastated”.
“I was described as a harlot who’d broken the heart of America’s golden boy,” she writes. “The truth:I was comatose in Louisiana,and he was happily running around Hollywood.”
Her fling with Colin Farrell
Following her breakup with Timberlake,Spears pursued Irish actor Colin Farrell.
After crashing his set one day,Spears describes their two-week fling. “Brawl is the only word for it – we were all over each other,grappling so passionately it was like we were in a street fight.”
They attended the premiere of Farrell’s film,The Recruit,in 2003,but Spears admits she had not yet moved past her relationship with Timberlake.
Britney Spears and Colin Farrell at the premiere of The Recruit in 2003.Getty
“As I had before when I’d felt too attached to a man,I tried to convince myself in every way that it was not a big deal,that we were just having fun,that in this case I was vulnerable because I wasn’t over Justin yet,” Spears writes.
Her relationship with drugs and alcohol
Spears’ drinking and partying were a regular target for the tabloids throughout the mid-2000s,resulting in some of the most notorious paparazzi shots to date,including her night out with Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan.
However,she says most of the stories in the media were false. “It was never as wild as the press made it out to be. There was a time when I never went out at all.
“Do you know what Paris and I did that supposedly crazy night everyone made such a big deal about,when we went out with Lindsay Lohan? We got drunk. That’s it!”
Spears says she didn’t have a drinking problem and hard drugs never appealed to her. However,she recounts her use of Adderall,an ADHD medication.
“Adderall made me high,yes,but what I found far more appealing was that it gave me a few hours of feeling less depressed,” she writes.
The infamous Diane Sawyer interview
Amid the media frenzy following Spears and Timberlake’s split,Spears says she felt forced by her father and management to participate in what would become one of the pop star’s most infamous interviews.
Britney Spears speaking to Diane Sawyer in a 2003 interview.ABC
Speaking with,Spears was grilled about what she supposedly did to Timberlake to cause him “so much pain”,and was hit with “100 per cent embarrassing” questions that she had not been informed of ahead of time.
“I shouldn’t have been forced to speak on national TV,forced to cry in front of this stranger,a woman who was relentlessly going after me with harsh question after harsh question.
“That interview was a breaking point for me internally.”
She felt “gaslit” into going to rehab
Spears was admitted to a rehabilitation centre in 2019 after it was discovered she had been taking over-the-counter energy supplements to help her maintain energy while performing.
She says her stint there had not been entirely voluntary,since her father,Jamie,had – she claims – blackmailed her into going.
“My father said that if I didn’t go,then I’d have to go to court,and I’d be embarrassed,” Spears writes,claiming he also threatened to make her look like an “idiot”.
“They forced me to go,” she writes. “They kept me locked up against my will for months.”
She recalls the moment Jamie told her she no longer had any control,claiming that he said:“I call the shots … I’m Britney Spears now”.
Spears’ father has not commented on her account in her memoir;however,he defended the conservatorship to Britain’s last year,arguing that the arrangement had potentially saved her life.
Britney Spears and her sister,Jamie Lynn,at the Teen Choice Awards in 2002.Kevin Winter/Getty Images/FOX
While in rehab,Spears claims she was constantly watched and had a strict 9pm bedtime. However,it was there she says she became aware of her fans’ #FreeBritney movement,which set in motion the process that would eventually end her conservatorship.
Spears writes of her ongoing estrangement from much of her family,including the fractured relationship with her sister,Jamie Lynn,whom she claims failed to support her while she was in a mental health facility.
“As I was fighting the conservatorship and receiving a lot of press attention,she was writing a book capitalising on it. She rushed out salacious stories about me,many of them hurtful and outrageous. I was really let down.”
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