The Biggest Bombshells From Britney Spears' Memoir
Britney Spears is finally telling her story on her own terms with the upcoming release of her new memoir The Woman in Me.
Britney Spears, a solidified pop culture icon, is finally ready to tell her story on her own terms. While she has produced numerous songs that remain permanently impactful in the pop culture zeitgeist and given iconic performances that deserve their own playbook, when it comes to her personal life it would be an understatement to say she hasn't gone through many obstacles. Most infamously is her court-ordered conservatorship, in which her father was granted complete control over her personal and financial decisions for 13 years. It wasn't until late 2021 when she pleaded for the conservatorship to end that Spears was finally granted freedom.
As of late, Spears has made headlines once again for her very public divorce from Sam Asghari. From cheating allegations to Asghari allegedly having wanted to renegotiate the prenup, Spears' name can't stay out of the mouths of the media. But for true Spears stans, what most are focused on is her upcoming memoir The Woman in Me in which Spears reflects on her career, childhood, years of struggles, and many more never before heard details about her life. In anticipation of the memoir releasing on October 24, L'OFFICIEL gives a rundown on the biggest bombshells that we have learned so far.
She was terrified of the snake from her iconic 2001 VMAs performance.
Spears' 2001 VMAs performance has easily gone down as one of the most iconic performances of the award show, where she famously held an albino python while singing "I'm A Slave 4 U." She has since recalled that one of her favorite performances ever, but per excerpts from her memoir shared with People, she reveals how terrified she was in the moment.
"All I knew was to look down, because I felt if I looked up and caught its eye, it would kill me," she wrote. "In my head I was saying, 'Just perform, just use your legs and perform.' But what nobody knows is that as I was singing, the snake brought its head right around to my face, right up to me, and started hissing. I was thinking, 'Are you f---ing serious right now? The f---ing goddamn snake’s tongue is flicking out at me. Right.' Now. Finally, I got to the part where I handed it back, thank God."
Spears became pregnant with Justin Timberlake's baby but agreed to have an abortion.
Everybody knows about the former romance between Spears and Justin Timberlake, but what has shocked the world is Spears' revelation she was pregnant with his child and later had an abortion because "he wasn't ready to be a father."
“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."
She continued, "If it had been left up to me alone, I never would have done it. And yet Justin was so sure that he didn’t want to be a father."
She shaved her head in 2007 as an act of rebellion.
In 2007, after making headlines for her back-to-back visits to rehab, Spears infamously was photographed with a completely shaved head. She finally opens up why she did that, revealing it was an act of rebellion against her father and all the unwarranted attention and criticism she was constantly receiving as a kid.
"I’d been eyeballed so much growing up," she wrote. "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."
Only a year later, in 2008, she would be put in a court-ordered conservatorship, granting her father complete control over her personal and financial affairs. Spears describes the experience as stripping her of her womanhood, having become "more of an entity than a person onstage."
"Thirteen years went by with me feeling like a shadow of myself. 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," the memoir reads. "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."
She was almost cast in The Notebook over Rachel McAdams.
The Notebook is unquestionably one of Hollywood's most treasured films, and it was about to look a lot different. Spears' was almost cast as Allie, as the casting came down to her and Rachel McAdams. As we all know, it ultimately was given to McAdams, a decision that Spears found relieving.
"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. If I had, instead of working on my album In the Zone I’d have been acting like a 1940s heiress day and night," she recalled.
