The Woman in Me

Spears’s father tells her that she is a disgrace, but that if she goes to rehab, she might get custody of her sons back. When she gets out of rehab, she is able to negotiate a temporary 50/50 custody agreement with Federline. 

Spears’s management team forces her to perform at the 2007 VMAs to combat the negative portrayal of her as mentally unstable. They believe a televised performance will send the message that she is fine, though she does not feel fine. Backstage at the VMAs, she runs into Timberlake. The encounter unnerves her—it’s a shock to see him, and devastating that he’s on top of the world in his life and career, while she feels like everything is falling apart. She feels under-rehearsed for her performance and unhappy with how she looks. The media pans the performance and heavily criticizes her body and appearance. Her management team quits, and one of her old bodyguards testifies against her in her custody case, accusing her of doing drugs; he is not cross-examined. Spears’s witness, a court-appointed parenting coach, tells the judge that Spears “loves [her] children” and that they are “clearly bonded” (128), but her testimony does not make the news.

In January of 2008, Spears visits her sons. At the end of their visit, when one of Federline’s bodyguards comes to pick them up, she panics, suddenly fearing that they will take her children away for good. She runs to the bathroom with Jayden and locks them both inside. A SWAT team arrives, breaks down the bathroom door, and takes Jayden from her. The medics restrain Spears, tying her to a gurney, and take her to a hospital on a medical hold. In a new custody hearing, a judge further limits Spears’s visitation rights with her sons. Spears also learns from a tabloid magazine that Jamie Lynn is pregnant at 16. Her family has hidden the pregnancy from her.

Spears continues to spiral deeper into depression. She starts taking large amounts of Adderall and begins dating a photographer (and former paparazzo) 10 years older than her. She describes him as chivalrous and claims he helps her with her depression by giving her attention and encouraging her to have fun and do whatever she wants. They are constantly followed and photographed. Once, Spears spins her car 360 degrees while trying to escape paparazzi, and they almost go over a cliff. She feels alive. Spears’s parents do not approve of her relationship. On a visit to her parents’ beach house, she is surrounded by a “SWAT team of what seem[s] like twenty cops” (135). 

Spears learns that her father has become very close with a woman named Louise Taylor, and the two of them have conspired to force Spears into a conservatorship. Jamie and Louise set up two kinds of conservatorship over Spears: conservatorship of the person and conservatorship of the estate, essentially placing Jamie in control of every aspect of Spears’s personal and professional life. Spears begs the court to appoint any other person than her father to be her conservator, but no one listens to her. Spears’s father is now in control of every aspect of her life, including her finances and her bodily autonomy. Spears notes that before filing for conservatorship over her, Jamie was $40,000 in debt to Taylor. This, she says, is a conflict of interest.

While Spears’s life is falling apart, her mother writes and releases a memoir. Spears accuses her mother of capitalizing on her suffering and not being there for her as a mother during such a traumatic time. She reflects that she would never try to profit off of her own child’s pain.

Spears’s father claims that she needs to be under a conservatorship because she is incapable of taking care of herself, yet he immediately requires her to go back to work. Jamie bars Spears from seeing her photographer boyfriend again and spins a narrative to the media that the conservatorship is “a great stepping stone on the road to [her] ‘comeback’” (142). Spears realizes her father only cares about money and sees her not as a daughter—or even a person—but as a means to an end. He tells her, “I’m Britney Spears now” (143).

The conservatorship gives Spears’s father an unchecked amount of control over every aspect of her life. When she goes to a friend’s house, security sweeps the place to make sure that there are no drugs or alcohol on the premises. Anyone she wants to date has to have a background check, sign an NDA, and take a blood test. Spears’s court-appointed lawyer is unhelpful, but, unaware of her legal rights, she believes she cannot fire him and hire someone else. Spears retreats into herself, hoping that if she goes along with everything her father asks for a while, he will eventually let her see her sons. She loses touch with friends and becomes more and more isolated. Her father often confiscates her phone. 

Spears goes along with her father’s rules and is eventually rewarded with getting to see Sean and Jayden. She works an extremely busy schedule, making a huge profit, of which she is only allotted a small allowance. Her father becomes a millionaire.

Spears struggles under the conservatorship. She constantly battles to see her sons and feels like her fire is going out. She notes that other people, especially men, go through a hard time and behave badly without having their autonomy taken away. She argues that shaving her head and acting out was her way of rebelling against the intense scrutiny she has always lived with.

Spears’s father starts placing strong restrictions on what she can eat, telling her that she needs to “do something about [her weight]” (151). Spears feels empty and loses all of her passion for the things she used to love doing. She feels like her father “stripped [her] of [her] womanhood, made [her] into a child” (151). Despite how incapacitated her father makes her out to be, the many awards she wins for her work during this time refute that version of the narrative.

Spears starts dating Jason Trawick, with whom she initially has a good relationship. Spears’s mother and father get back together in 2010 after being divorced for eight years, which Spears views as a betrayal—her mother aligning herself with her father, becoming further complicit in his abuse and corruption. Trawick proposes to Spears, and they get engaged. In 2012, when Trawick is made her co-conservator, Spears’s feelings for him change, and she breaks off the engagement. On tour, no one is allowed to drink alcohol. Spears feels like a child with no freedoms. She’s not producing much music that she feels proud of. Her father accepts a residency on her behalf to perform in Las Vegas.

The Las Vegas residency begins toward the end of 2013. Spears enjoys it as much as she can and gains a lot of confidence while performing. She starts taking energy supplements, recommended to her by a boyfriend. Her father finds out and is angry. Even though the supplements are over-the-counter, not prescription, he sends her to rehab again. 

After a month in rehab, Spears goes back to performing in Las Vegas. Her father puts her on a diet where she eats “nothing but chicken and canned vegetables” (160) for two years. Her body no longer feels like her own. Meanwhile, her family continues to profit off of her work. They stay in beach houses that Spears bought and eat and drink extravagant meals bought with her money. Despite the fact that Spears does 248 shows in Las Vegas, each of which makes hundreds of thousands of dollars, she is only given a weekly allowance of $2,000. One night, when she takes the dancers from her show out for dinner, she wants to pay the tab for the whole group but is unable to because she does not have enough money in her allowance account.

Spears starts teaching dance classes to kids. In 2014, she pushes for an end to her conservatorship. She approaches the court and puts forward her father’s “alcoholism and erratic behavior” (164) as a reason to end the conservatorship, but the judge refuses her request.

Spears starts working with songwriters Julia Michaels and Justin Tranter. They write an album together, and Spears feels her passion for music returning. She calls the album Glory at her son Sean’s suggestion. Around the same time, Spears starts dating Hesam Asghari. She also starts taking her energy supplements again, and when her father finds out, he forces her to start attending Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meetings four times a week. Spears is inspired by the stories she hears from the women in her group. 

Jamie forces Spears to attend AA meetings, even when she is exhausted. Lynne does not speak up for her. The limits on her freedom continually wear her down. One day, her hairdresser suggests that her schedule is too busy; Spears never sees that hairdresser again.

Spears finds small ways to rebel against the conservatorship by holding herself back while performing. This changes when she releases her album Glory. She starts to get her passion back and believe in herself again. She and Asghari become closer and start thinking about having a baby together. Her father refuses to let her get her IUD removed. His control becomes suffocating. All of her movements are monitored, even when she goes to the bathroom, and none of her calls or texts are private. She vows to escape from her father’s control.