Britney Spears Shares More Details About Her Father's Emotional Abuse In Upcoming Memoir
Spears opens up about being subject to constant criticism and bodyshaming by her father as a young girl. She reflects on how this behavior began in her childhood and tragically persisted into her adulthood, all the way through the highly publicized conservatorship. The new excerpts bring to mind her impassioned testimony in court in 2021, where she spoke out about her father's oppressive control over her life, adding: "I've been in shock. I am traumatized."
In her memoir, slated for release next week, Spears writes: "Feeling like you're never good enough is a soul-crushing state of being for a child. He'd [her father] drummed that message into me as a girl, and even after I'd accomplished so much, he was continuing to do that to me."
The "Toxic" hitmaker added: "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. 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."
Spears, who recently split from her husband Sam Asghari in August, went on to write that she felt "like a shadow" of herself under the conservatorship that sparked the Free Britney movement. "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 writes.
The "...Baby One More Time" singer added: "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."
Another shocking revelation from the snippets of Spears' memoir is that her highly publicized love affair with Justin Timberlake had more complexities than the world was made to believe. She discloses that while the two were an item, she underwent an abortion.
"At one point when we were dating, I became pregnant with Justin's baby," she says. "It was a surprise, but for me it wasn't a tragedy. I loved Justin so much ... But Justin definitely wasn't happy about the pregnancy."
Spears' memoir will hit bookstore shelves next Tuesday.