in an event book, the popstar recounts the moments that led to her being placed under guardianship

It is one of the most anticipated books of the year. “Silenced” for thirteen years by her family, who had placed her under guardianship, Britney Spears, at the age of 41, takes the floor again from all those who had confiscated it from her, in uncompromising memoirs with feminist overtones. The Woman in mepublished by JC Lattès (The Woman in Me published by Simon & Schuster in the United States), comes out on Tuesday October 24 in bookstores in around twenty countries.

Reclaim your history

This text responds to an objective for the singer, freed from this tutelage: to reclaim her own history. “I didn’t write this book with the aim of insulting anyone!!! It’s the past, I don’t like the press titles I’m reading”, she wrote Friday October 20 on her Instagram account. Cash without ever being believed, the book conceals nothing, of the rise of the interpreter of Toxic until her descent into hell in 2007 and this long guardianship, which deprived her of all freedom.

The story, in a very oral style, without literary pretension, leaves the reader stunned. Without taboo, the pop star reveals herself completely. “It’s the text of a standing woman”, declares the CEO of Editions Lattès, Véronique Cardi, who publishes the book in France. Thanks to pre-orders, the book is already at the top of sales on Amazon in the United States, France and Spain. Throughout these nearly 300 pages, the singer recounts how this guardianship dictated by her father (with the support of her mother and sister) broke “the woman in her”.

The story opens with his childhood. She recounts the stigma of “growing up poor” with an alcoholic father, who terrorizes the household. “Disagreement was not tolerated”she writes. “The tragedy is my family”. And to evoke the fate of her paternal grandmother Jean, whom her husband had interned and who committed suicide on her infant’s grave, after eight years of unbearable mourning. The singer feels close to this woman she never knew, but who she is told looks like her. She feels it even more when she is forcibly interned and, too, force-fed lithium. Before that, at age 11, she took dance classes in New York, to the point “not having a minute to be a child”she writes.

The rest, everyone knows. She rose to fame with Baby One More Time. The most beautiful period of her life begins, when she lives with the singer Justin Timberlake. What we didn’t know was that she then became pregnant and reluctantly aborted. The couple will not resist infidelity. But while she was silent, he complained publicly. He stages his vision of history in his music video Cry Me a River, with which he gained worldwide notoriety. Suddenly, the image of the nice schoolgirl changes, she writes. She becomes a “streak“, to which the media demands accountability for this break.

Descent into hell

There “descent into hell” takes place in 2007. The singer, mother of two very young children, with dancer Kevin Federline, is subject to constant pressure from the paparazzi. And the couple is struggling. She shaves her head in a Los Angeles hair salon, in front of the cameras. “It was a way of saying ‘Fuck you'”, she says. Exhausted, “into a thousand pieces”, she agrees to be interned. What else to do? she asks herself in the book. She accepts it so that she can find her sons one day.

But she continues to perform concerts. “I came into this world to fund their bank account”, she says of her family. In 2019, she was forcibly interned again. But this time, helped by her fans, she revolts. And in 2021, the judges break the guardianship. His real life begins. His desire? “Get my spiritual life in order and pay attention to the little things”, she writes. His musical career will wait.