The Woman in Me

Despite her heartbreak, Spears returns to work to finish her tour. When she tells the record label that she wants a break once the tour is over, they respond negatively. They do not want her to leave the spotlight and lose career momentum. She does an interview from her home in Kentwood to assure people that she is “doing well and ‘just taking a little break’” (68). 

At home, Spears’s mother divorces Jamie, who is nowhere to be seen during this period. Spears notes Jamie Lynn’s behavior, which she views as entitled and frustrating. Spears feels like a ghost—isolated and alone.

Spears visits Donatella Versace in Milan. The visit helps her feel confident, and she tries to get over Timberlake. However, when she returns to America, Timberlake is promoting his first solo album and doing interviews in which he claims she broke his heart. Timberlake’s press tour shatters the illusion, created by Spears’s managers, that she was an “eternal virgin,” as he is asked about and confirms their sexual relationship. Though Spears is upset with Timberlake for not admitting that he cheated on her, she feels grateful not to have to pretend to be a virgin, and be more open about her sexuality. However, Timberlake’s descriptions of her make her feel as though she is a bad person.

Spears decides that since Timberlake has been openly sleeping around since their breakup, she should also start dating. She briefly dates actor Colin Farrell and tries to make more public appearances, but she begins to deal with extreme social anxiety. She fears “being judged or […] saying something stupid” (80) and starts to isolate herself in her New York apartment. One of the few people who visits her is Madonna. Spears is in awe of Madonna’s confidence, and Madonna begins to mentor her. They decide to perform together at the VMAs in 2003.

During the performance, they kiss on stage. The kiss gets a lot of attention from the press. Later, Madonna and Spears collaborate on Spears’s song “Me Against the Music.” While shooting the music video, Spears is “in awe of the ways Madonna would not compromise her vision” (85) and the way that she demands respect and attention. Spears resolves to be more like this while also being kind to others.

One day, four men show up at Spears’s apartment. One of the men is her father; she does not recognize the other three. The men ask her a number of questions, but Spears does not answer them. The next day, her team tells her that she is going to do an interview with Diane Sawyer about her relationship with Timberlake. Sawyer asks her invasive questions about their breakup and why she broke Timberlake’s heart. The interview makes Spears feel even more vilified, and she sinks deeper into depression.

Spears goes on a trip to Las Vegas with some friends. They drink heavily, and she hangs out with a childhood friend. The two end up drunkenly getting married at the Little White Chapel. The next day, her family arrives, furious with her for her reckless behavior. Spears does not understand their anger, seeing the experience as a silly youthful fling. They force her to sign papers and get the marriage annulled after only 55 hours. Perturbed by her family’s reaction, Spears wonders if they rushed in not to protect her but to protect her money since they are all supported by her financially.

Spears begins the Onyx Hotel Tour. Her brother, Bryan, is working as part of her team. Spears becomes extremely depressed and suffers an injury to her knee; she is not enjoying the tour. She starts dating Kevin Federline, who accompanies her on tour. Their relationship is playful and loving at first, but Spears later finds out that he has two children, a fact he chose to hide from her. Despite this, Spears falls in love with Federline, and they get engaged. 

While on tour, Spears injures her knee a second time and has to have surgery. Her doctor prescribes her Vicodin to help with the painful recovery. She does not want to go back to performing and wishes she could have actually taken the time to recover from her breakup with Timberlake before touring again. Spears and Federline get married after only three months of dating, and Spears thinks more about taking time off. She announces to her fans that she is taking a break, proud of herself for setting a boundary.

Spears gets pregnant and gives birth to her son Sean in 2005. Three months later, she gets pregnant again. She is happy to be having kids so close in age, though her second pregnancy is hard on her body. She tries to stay out of the public eye, but paparazzi follow her everywhere she goes, harassing her and documenting everything she does with her son. The tabloids comment on her body while she is pregnant, which frustrates Spears, who does not understand why she is expected to still have the body of a teenager.

Federline attempts to launch his own music career when Sean is a baby. Spears feels distant from him since he commandeers her studio and equipment, refusing to let her inside while he is recording or hanging out with his friends and smoking weed. Spears realizes that fame and power has gone to Federline’s head. Later, she tries again to see Federline, this time in Las Vegas, but a security guard who used to work for Spears bars her from going into Federline’s recording studio. She is devastated.

Spears’s second son, Jayden, is born in 2006. Spears loves her sons and is happy to feel comfortable in her body again after two years of being pregnant. Tabloid magazines continue to harass Spears, and she has to dodge paparazzi everywhere. She wants to keep her sons safe from exposure to the press. In hindsight, she recognizes that she became overprotective of her sons, especially when she refused to let her mother hold Jayden for the first two months of his life. She realizes that she was suffering from perinatal depression and becoming increasingly isolated without support from Federline or her family.

The months following Jayden’s birth are busy, but Spears feels creatively fulfilled when she goes back to the studio to record another album. She feels like her work is for herself, not for her parents or managers. Being in the studio again also allows her to momentarily escape the scrutiny of paparazzi. She releases the album, Blackout, of which she feels proud. Federline’s lengthy absences increase ostensibly due to his work commitments, and Spears almost never sees him. Although he claims to care about his sons, Spears feels he is a neglectful father.

Spears’s lawyer tells her that she should file for a divorce from Federline before he does. She files for divorce, and Federline demands that she pay his legal fees. They both ask for full custody of their sons. Because she filed first, Spears is vilified in the media for breaking up their family. The media also paints an unflattering picture of Federline, which upsets Spears despite her feelings about him. After her relationships with both Federline and Timberlake, she notes that she “never really did trust people again” (115).

After her divorce, Spears finds comfort in her friendship with Paris Hilton. Hilton is kind to Spears and encourages her to have fun again. Spears and Hilton start partying together frequently, and the tabloids spin headlines accusing her of promiscuity and drug use. Spears insists that while she did drink heavily, she never had a drinking problem or took hard drugs. She admits to taking Adderall because it made her feel less depressed. 

One night, Spears asks her mother to babysit her sons while she goes out with Hilton. When she returns home drunk late at night, her mother screams at her, and they get into a fight that Spears describes as “a turning point” (118) in their relationship. Spears feels upset that her mother does not show her any grace or understanding for what she is going through.

Spears continues to struggle with the challenges of motherhood in the public eye. She suffers from postpartum depression and feels escalating pressure from her parents and the media, who scrutinize her every move. Federline tells people that she is out of control in a bid to get full custody of their children and suggests that she should not be allowed to see her sons at all. 

Federline eventually forbids Spears from seeing their sons when the boys are five and 17 months old respectively. She goes to his house to plead with him to be reasonable, but he refuses to let her inside. Paparazzi staking out the house watch it all happen. Later that night, she shaves off all her hair, “out of [her] mind with grief” that her children have been taken away (122). Both the press and her family frame her actions as evidence of a psychotic break, but from her perspective, she’s just a mother in an impossible situation desperate to see her sons.