Britney Spears’ Brave Memoir Tells Tales Of Decades Under Conservatorship
In a candid revelation from her long-awaited memoir, The Woman in Me,” Britney Spears opens up about her agonizing years living under a conservatorship, shedding light on the ways she felt her humanity was stripped away by the court order.
For more than a decade, the pop sensation felt as though she had been dealt an unfair hand in life. “Thirteen years went by with me feeling like a shadow of myself,” she writes in her memoir, in which she reflects on the control her father and his associates exerted over her body and finances, a duration that now makes her feel sick.
She questions the double standards, asking why male artists facing issues like gambling, substance abuse, or mental health were not subjected to such control. She asserts, “I didn’t deserve what my family did to me.”
Britney’s father, Jamie Spears, maintains that he was acting in her best interests, but her time under his control has been shrouded in controversy and trauma, as Britney claims.
In her memoir, Britney describes how she was “robbed” of her freedom during this period, often feeling caught between adulthood and adolescence. The conservatorship stripped away her womanhood, leaving her feeling like a child.
In her words: “There was no way to behave like an adult, since they wouldn’t treat me like an adult, so I would regress and act like a little girl; but then my adult self would step back in – only my world didn’t allow me to be an adult. The woman in me was pushed down for a long time. They wanted me to be wild onstage, the way they told me to be, and to be a robot the rest of the time. I felt like I was being deprived of those good secrets of life — those fundamental supposed sins of indulgence and adventure that make us human. They wanted to take away that specialness and keep everything as rote as possible. It was death to my creativity as an artist.”
She laments the loss of her creativity as an artist, as the conservatorship made her feel like an entity rather than a person onstage. Her passion for singing and dancing became a mere shadow of what it once was.
In a candid interview with PEOPLE, Britney shares that these difficult moments are still hard to speak about. She discusses the constant judgment from strangers and the painful experience of having her freedom taken away by her own family and the government.
With the conservatorship behind her, Britney has embarked on a journey of self-discovery. In her book, she reveals how she had to construct a whole new identity, transforming from a passive and pleasing girl to a strong and confident woman.
