The Woman In Me is the highly anticipated and heavily gossiped about memoir from Britney Spears. The late 90s- early 2000s icon doesn’t need any introductions. Britney is a household name, a pop singer known for her numerous hits and impressive performance career spanning over two decades. She is also, more recently known for her conservatorship battle against her father (2021), her family and relationship dramas and her racy instagram posts.
I’m a 90s kid meaning Britney Spears was one of the musicians that shaped my childhood. So of course I’m an avid follower and up to date with all the goss! When I found out she’s releasing a book I was thrilled. It’s an instant pre order and count the days till it’s out affair.
If you are not as obsessive trashy-news reader as I am, I’ll keep you up to date with the recent: Britney’s instagram is full of bizarre posts showing her dancing erratically in her living room with washed up make-up and outdated, often very revealing, outfits. The captions are often weirdly written: lots of emojis, no punctuation and no clear thread of thought. This been going on for a few years now, following her release from a conservatorship agreement where her father was assigned to manage her finances and personal affairs for thirteen years due to her suffering a highly publicised mental breakdown. A deal that has proven to be very abusive and damaging to Britney.
Due to continuous backlash on her posts she eventually turned off comments on Instagram and now you can see loyal followers still insisting to comment on the last post where comments are still enabled debating Britney’s most recent content. To save you scrolling at least a year worth of posts down, the comments are divided to three types: The ‘Go Britney! Yey to freedom!’ type, the concerned ‘You’re mental, please get help, we’re so worried’ type and the conspiracy movement ‘She’s still not free’, ‘It’s not Britney, it’s AI’.
With all that in the background, I couldn’t wait to see what she has to say in her memoir that was marketed as ‘a woman telling her own story, on her own terms, at last.’ But the book proved to be almost disappointedly well written. It follows a linear narrative describing her childhood and family history, her rise to fame and personal breakdowns as well as key moments in her career and love life. In the acknowledgments Britney addresses just that, “If you follow me on Instagram, you thought this book was going to be written in emojis, didn’t you?” – well it’s not! In fact it is somewhat an inspiring female empowerment story.
The book reveals the tale of yet another woman being constantly judged no matter what she does. A talented young girl is the perfect victim for men thirsty for power. Britney is first trapped in the good girl image imposed on her by managers and fans and later literally imprisoned by her father to serve as a money-making machine. But of course a strong woman always finds a way to turn things around and set herself free. Spoiler alert: the memoir ends on a positive with Britney feeling ‘present’ in her own life again.
The ending is heartwarming but something still feels incomplete… Britney focuses largely on her early life and gives a much smaller section in the book to her experiences under conservatorship and her more recent whereabouts. Of course there is also the fact that the book still describes Britney as happily married when we know she went through a messy divorce just prior to publication date. The biggest bombshell dropped is actually her traumatic abortion experience during her early relationship with Justin Timberlake. The media had a field trip with that revelation of course!
The book itself comes full circle but in real life we still see media headlines and Instagram posts that present a somewhat disturbed Britney going from scandal to scandal. Somehow I feel cheated, like I expected to read more dirt! Nonetheless, I have to say it was definitely a one-seat-read for me which I thoroughly enjoyed. It’s a book review and not a how-good-is-Britney-at-doing-life review after all. On a side note though, even after her apparent fall from grace, the Britney Spears legacy lives on proving that no amount of bad publicity can take away from a damn good song.
FOUR STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
The Woman In Me by Britney Spears is available now from Simon & Schuster Australia. Grab yourself a copy from Booktopia HERE.
