Britney Spears’ new memoir out Tuesday titled “The Woman In Me” is full of numerous bombshells including that she had an abortion at 19 while dating Justin Timberlake, teen drinking with her mom, feeling “objectified” by her parents/media, and more.
The 41-year-old singer said her childhood, which she said involved drinking daiquiris with her mom and dating Justin Timberlake after meeting on “The Mickey Mouse Club,” was anything but ordinary, People magazine reported.
“For fun, starting when I was in eighth grade, my mom [Lynne] and I would make the two-hour drive from Kentwood to Biloxi, Mississippi, and while we were there, we would drink daiquiris,” Spears wrote. “We called our cocktails ‘toddies.'”
“I loved that I was able to drink with my mom every now and then. The way we drank was nothing like how my father did it,” she added. “When he drank, he grew more depressed and shut down. We became happier, more alive and adventurous.”
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Spears revealed in the book that while she was dating Timberlake, the pop star got pregnant at 19 and ended up getting an abortion, claiming the actor “didn’t want to be a father.” The two dated from 1999 — when she was 17 and he was 18 — until 2002, Variety noted.
She wrote that if it had been left up to her alone, she never would have aborted the baby, but added that Timberlake said they were “too young” to have a child.
“It was a surprise, but for me, it wasn’t a tragedy,” the former “The Mickey Mouse Club” star wrote. “I loved Justin so much. I always expected us to have a family together one day. This would just be much earlier than I’d anticipated.”
“But Justin definitely wasn’t happy about the pregnancy,” she added. “He said we weren’t ready to have a baby in our lives, that we were way too young.”
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“I don’t know if that was the right decision. If it had been left up to me alone, I never would have done it,” the singer continued. “And yet Justin was so sure that he didn’t want to be a father. To this day, it’s one of the most agonizing things I have ever experienced in my life.”
The superstar said because of the need for secrecy, the abortion was done at her home, writing about the “excruciating” pain.
“It was important that no one find out about the pregnancy or the abortion, which meant doing everything at home,” the singer recalled, adding that they didn’t tell her family.
The “Toxic” hitmaker claimed in the new book that while the Disney stars were dating, the former NSYNC member cheated on her with “another celebrity,” Page Six noted.
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Spears chose not to name the actress because she said the woman has a family and “doesn’t want to embarrass” her. Another revelation from the “Gimme More ” hitmaker was that she admitted she cheated while dating Timberlake with choreographer Wade Robson-confirming longtime rumors about unfaithfulness in their relationship.
Spears confessed she “made out” and danced through the night with Robson when the two ended up at a Spanish bar while she was still in a relationship with Timberlake. The pop star suggested in her memoir that her cheating had more to do with rumors of unfaithfulness by the former “Mickey Mouse Club” member, the New York Times noted.
Spears’ time in the spotlight briefly came to an end in 1994 when her time on the “Mickey Mouse Club” show ended. She talked fondly of that time in the memoir but admitted she missed performing.
In 1998, the 16-year-old singer released her debut single “…Baby One More Time” and became a huge celebrity. During the height of her career in the mid-2000s Spears appeared in headlines for the wild partying she was doing with socialite Paris Hilton and Disney actress Lindsay Lohan.
In the memoir, the pop star disputes that she was ever as “wild” as the press reported during her early adulthood as she admitted to doing “Adderall liberally” while she was drinking to feel “less depressed,” Page Six noted.
In 2004, she tied the knot with dancer Kevin Federline and the couple had two sons together. They divorced in 2007.
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In 2008, Spear’s father was put in charge of her financial affairs over concerns about the pop star’s mental health after she had been hospitalized for involuntary psychological assessments twice. She remained under the conservatorship controlled by her father, Jamie Spears, for nearly 14 years.
The singer said when it comes to that time in her life, it’s still hard to think about “having my freedom stripped away.”
She wrote that many of the headline-catching things she did during that time, like shaving her head bald, were about trying to have control in a situation where she said she had none, People noted.
“I’d been eyeballed so much growing up,” Spears wrote. I’d been looking up and down, and 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. But under the conservatorship, I was made to understand that those days were now over. I had to grow my hair out and get back into shape. I had to go to bed early and take whatever medication they told me to take.”
Spears said because she didn’t get to feel like an adult she would do “child-like” things and act like “a little girl” under the conservatorship, People reported.
“This is what’s hard to explain, how quickly I could vacillate between being a little girl and being a teenager and being a woman, because of the way they had robbed me of my freedom,” the teen pop star wrote. “There was no way to behave like an adult, since they wouldn’t treat me like an adult…”
Several other revelations from Britney’s memoir included that she felt “infantilized” and like a “child robot” under her conservatorship and she has no plans to get back to performing.
“Feeling like you’re never good enough is a soul-crushing state of being for a child,” Spears wrote. “He’d [Jamie] drummed that message into me as a girl, and even after I’d accomplished so much, he was continuing to do that to me.”
“I became a robot. But not just a robot — a sort of child-robot,” she added. “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.”
“Thirteen years went by with me feeling like a shadow of myself,” Spears said, THR reported. “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. 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.”
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In November 2021, a judge terminated the conservatorship.
“Pushing forward in my music career is not my focus at the moment,” Britney wrote. “It’s time for me not to be someone who other people want; it’s time to actually find myself.”
“The Woman In Me” is due out October 24.