Book Review: ‘The Woman in Me’ by Britney Spears
The Woman in Me by Britney Spears pulls the curtain back on the making of one of the biggest pop stars the world has ever seen and reveals how her superstardom eclipsed her familial trauma.
Taking the title from the lyrics of the 2001 hit “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman” from the Britney album and Crossroads soundtrack, the long-awaited memoir made headlines with the sordid details of Britney’s relationship with fellow pop star and Mouseketeer Justin Timberlake during the turn of the century where tabloid articles and paparazzi photos overtook the media landscape. But there’s more to Britney’s life story starting in Kentwood, Louisiana. Born 25 miles away in McComb, Mississippi (also R&B pop star Brandy’s birthplace), Britney is a little girl who loves singing and dancing.
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.
Her father, Jamie, transitions through jobs as a welder to a construction worker to a gym owner, while her mother, Lynne, runs a daycare center raising Britney and her brother, Bryan. Britney scores opportunities to audition for The All New Mickey Mouse Club and perform on Star Search. Like many future stars at the time, once these opportunities end, she is back home. Her family eventually welcomes her younger sister, Jamie Lynn. The family dynamic is volatile. Her father is an alcoholic. Her mother smokes and yells constantly. She feels the most in power when she is performing.
“Tragedy runs in my family,” Britney writes when telling the story of her paternal grandmother, known as Jean, who was committed to an asylum by Britney’s grandfather after losing a baby. Her grandmother was 31 years old when she shot herself with a shotgun over her infant son’s grave. New York Magazine covered this story in November 2022 in a longform piece that explores Britney’s ancestral tree on the Spears side to set the background for the conservatorship that ended in November 2021. Like her grandmother, Britney suffers from mental health issues after having her two sons a year apart. She says she had been forced to take Prozac for years. She had been hospitalized, where she says she was given lithium instead. Lithium was the drug her grandmother had taken as well. And like her grandmother, the reason why her mental health had destabilized is misunderstood.
I was a little girl with big dreams. I wanted to be a star like Madonna, Dolly Parton, or Whitney Houston. I had simpler dreams, too, dreams that seemed even harder to achieve and that felt too ambitious to say out loud: I want my dad to stop drinking. I want my mom to stop yelling. I want everyone to be okay.
One aspect that seems to have been dominated by the Justin Timberlake headlines is the mistreatment Britney endured being married to backup dancer and wannabe rapper Kevin Federline. The father of her two children, Kevin disappears into recording studios and industry parties while Britney is breastfeeding one son and is pregnant with another one. As her marriage is falling apart and her custody arrangement goes against her, paparazzi stalk her more than ever to capture photos of her in disarray. Then in 2007, she shaves her head at a barbershop with camera lens catching the moment outside. A few weeks later, she strikes a paparazzo’s car with an umbrella. The media salivates over these incidents and brands them as erratic, but Britney blames the stress on her postpartum depression, her divorce, the death of her aunt, and her family’s failure to help her properly through the grief. Throughout the book, she clarifies her emotions during events that dominated tabloids because her voice was misconstrued or silenced when it came to defending herself.
The memoir serves as further defense for her sanity, post-conservatorship. Now, Britney makes headlines strictly with her Instagram usage. She often tapes herself dancing and modeling clothes with smoky eyes. In the book, she explains she finally has the right to express herself through photography. She owns the images and reels she shares on social media and poses for the camera of her volition.
I am willing to admit that in the throes of severe postpartum depression, abandonment by my husband, the torture of being separated from my two babies, the death of my adored aunt Sandra, and the constant drumbeat of pressure from paparazzi, I’d begun to think in some ways like a child.
As for her infamous relationships, she was 24 and 25 years old when she had her sons. She married Kevin at 22 years old in 2004. That was only 2½ years after her unexpected breakup with Justin. When a girl falls in love with a boy at eleven years old and reconnects with him in a relationship plastered on every tabloid page, it’s natural for judgment to lead to soul mate talk. The raw emotion on the pages of Britney’s memoir just shows how she had to grow and move on from a relationship that seemed like it could last forever. Showbusiness had gotten in the way of both her major romances, which both ended disastrously with her receiving the weight of the judgment as the woman.
Though she discusses her most memorable tours and appearances, Britney uses the memoir to give us a picture of the life she tried to make private until it was forced into privacy with her 13-year conservatorship. She describes the loneliness of performing while under a conservatorship like serving as a reality show judge and headlining a Las Vegas residency. A conservatorship is defined in legal terms as the designation of a conservator by a court to manage the financial and personal affairs of an incapacitated or incompetent individual, minor, or older adult with limited capacity. Britney was under a conservatorship when she shouldn’t have been classified as incapacitated or incompetent since she worked under extreme pressure. When the legal battle to gain back her independence started in 2020, many fans didn’t realize what a conservatorship entailed. Now, that her father is no longer her conservator, she is free, but she lost many years of her adulthood not having the freedom to control her wealth, decide on what to put in her body, or even drive her car.
Looking back, I think that both Justin and Kevin were very clever. They knew what they were doing, and I played right into it. That’s the thing about this industry. I never knew how to play the game. I didn’t know how to play the game.
Overall, the memoir gives Britney a chance to explain her side of the story, which was largely ignored or misconstrued by the media machine. The book is written in her voice (think her lengthy Instagram captions), where you can tell she is sorting out her feelings and emotions during difficult times of her life. She chose Oscar-nominated actress Michelle Williams to record the audiobook on her behalf, which is unusual, especially for a celebrity who uses her voice to opt out of recording her own story. How you use your speaking voice can vary greatly compared to how you use your singing voice. The way the entertainment industry took a young Southern girl who loved to perform and transformed her into a robot to sell millions of albums and concert tickets took an insurmountable toll on the pop star. Now, that her story is out in the open, it seems like she is setting the parameters for her life.
