The Biggest Bombshells From Britney Spears' Memoir 'The Woman In Me'
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Britney Spears in 2002
Britney Spears' memoir is dropping some serious bombshells.
Hitting shelves on Oct. 24, 2023, excerpts from The Woman In Me reveal details about the "Toxic" singer's life that no one other than those closest to her ever knew—including about her love life, childhood, career, conservatorship and even a movie role she turned down (that later became iconic). Find out the biggest truth bombs from Spears' tome.
Related: Everything to Know About Britney Spears' Book The Woman In Me
Biggest reveals from Britney Spears' book The Woman In Me
Britney Spears got an abortion after Justin Timberlake got her pregnant.
Kevin Winter/Getty Images
In an excerpt of The Woman In Me obtained by PEOPLE, Spears revealed that she got pregnant with ex Justin Timberlake's baby during their relationship, but that she got an abortion after the then-NSYNC star made it clear he "didn't want to be a father" at the time.
"It was a surprise, but for me, it wasn't a tragedy. I loved Justin so much. I always expected us to have a family together one day," she wrote. "This would just be much earlier than I'd anticipated. But Justin definitely wasn't happy about the pregnancy. He said we weren't ready to have a baby in our lives, that we were way too young."
Spears wrote that to this day, she's not entirely sure she made the right decision for herself when she terminated her pregnancy. Timberlake's rep hasn't commented, but he has previously apologized for how he treated Spears after their breakup.
Related: Justin Timberlake's Net Worth
Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake's first kiss was at Mouseketeer camp.
During an entertainment industry bootcamp for Mickey Mouse Club Mouseketeers, Spears writes, she shared a room with Christina Aguilera and thought future The Voice contestant Tony Lucca was "so handsome"—but it was Timberlake who'd be her first kiss.
"[Once] at a sleepover, we played Truth or Dare, and someone dared Justin to kiss me," Spears recalled in an excerpt obtained by PEOPLE. "A Janet Jackson song was playing in the background as he leaned in and kissed me."
Related: Get to Know Britney Spears' Ex-Husband Sam Asghari
When she was still in middle school, Britney Spears drank with her mother, Lynne Spears.
Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic
Spears fondly recalled being in junior high and sipping alcoholic cocktails with her mother, Lynne Spears.
"For fun, starting when I was in eighth grade, my mom and I would make the two-hour drive from Kentwood to Biloxi, Mississippi, and while we were there, we would drink daiquiri. We called our cocktails 'toddies,'" the "Slumber Party" singer wrote (via PEOPLE).
"I loved that I was able to drink with my mom every now and then," she added. "The way we drank was nothing like how my father did it. When he drank, he grew more depressed and shut down. We became happier, more alive and adventurous."
During her conservatorship, which began when she was 26 years old and legal drinking age, Britney was not permitted to consume any alcohol.
Related: Britney Spears' Net Worth and How Much the Conservatorship Cost Her
Britney Spears shaved her head to hit back at the world's obsession with her appearance.
When it comes to the infamous head-shaving incident of 2007, Spears says it was her way at lashing out over being ogled and criticized for her appearance since she was a literal child.
"I'd been eyeballed so much growing up. I'd been looked up and down, had people telling me what they thought of my body, since I was a teenager. Shaving my head and acting out were my ways of pushing back," she explained in The Woman In Me (via PEOPLE).
Related: The Biggest Bombshells From the Netflix Britney Spears Documentary
Britney Spears' father and team body-shamed her during her conservatorship.
In her memoir, Spears says that during her conservatorship, the scrutiny of her body and image was heightened—by those closest to her.
She said that after shaving her head in 2007 and being placed under her conservatorship in 2008, her father, Jamie Spears, repeatedly shamed her for her body.
"If I thought getting criticized about my body in the press was bad, it hurt even more from my own father," she wrote (courtesy of PEOPLE). "He repeatedly told me I looked fat and that I was going to have to do something about it."
Spears said that she was forced to grow her hair back out and lose weight under the conservatorship, in addition to having to work and take medications as ordered by her conservators.
Calling her father's words "soul-crushing," Britney said that she never felt like she was good enough.
"If they'd let me live my life, I know I would've followed my heart and come out of this the right way and worked it out. Thirteen years went by with me feeling like a shadow of myself," she wrote. "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."
Britney Spears says she felt like a 'child-robot' during the conservatorship.
While Spears was treated as an adult when it came to being forced to perform, promote and work, she was granted little-to-no agency anywhere else in her life during the conservatorship. She previously revealed that she was forced to have an intrauterine device (IUD) to prevent pregnancy and that she was ordered to take medications that made her feel less like herself, all while others—namely her father, Jamie, and Lou Taylor of Tri Star Media Group—allegedly made money off of her during her Las Vegas residencies. (Jamie and Taylor have repeatedly and vehemently denied any wrongdoing in terms of the conservatorship.)
"I became a robot. But not just a robot—a sort of child-robot," she wrote in The Woman In Me (via PEOPLE). "I had been so infantilized that I was losing pieces of what made me feel like myself."
"The conservatorship stripped me of my womanhood, made me into a child. I became more of an entity than a person onstage," she added. "I had always felt music in my bones and my blood; they stole that from me."
As a coping mechanism, Spears said she "vacillated" between feeling and acting like a teenager when she was being infantilized, and like an adult when she wanted to take charge—but she was never actually allowed to be or be treated like an adult.
"I accomplished a lot during that time when I was supposedly incapable of taking care of myself," she wrote. "I sometimes thought that it was almost funny how I won those awards for the album I made while I was supposedly so incapacitated that I had to be controlled by my family. The truth was, though, when I stopped to think about it for very long, it wasn’t funny at all."
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She used method acting for her role in Crossroads, which made her happy to not star in The Notebook.
In The Woman In Me, Spears recalled her debut and only lead role in a movie: Crossroads. Spears said she method-acted for her part, and she had a hard time actually breaking character when the cameras weren't rolling. As a result, she didn't want to continue pursuing acting any further, even when a now-legendary romance movie wanted to cast her.
"The Notebook casting came down to me and Rachel McAdams, and even though it would have been fun to reconnect with Ryan Gosling after our time on the Mickey Mouse Club, I'm glad I didn't do it," she wrote. "If I had, instead of working on my album In the Zone I'd have been acting like a 1940s heiress day and night."
