Britney Spear's book

[Mooshamoo]

Her autobiography is out today. Did anyone read it. Honestly it's shocking.

What they put her through under the conservatorship. It's really awful. It's nearly unbelievable.

She wasn't allowed to eat what she wanted. She wasn't allowed to see her children.

Her father would lock her up in psychiatric centres if she disagreed with him .

Really awful.

She does mention that in the book.

Just ordered this off Amazon, looking forward to reading this,

Does anyone else feel there are lots of holes in this book? I can't help feeling the book is highly edited. She is direct and to the point, but it feels skimmed in places. Maybe lawyers or the inability to articulate, as she is still trying to process the abuse.

She could say much more about her children's father and how her father constantly emotionally beat her down. There's a lot of parental alienation from her ex and her father.

Does anyone else feel that her father and Kfed collaborated at the time to push her over the edge?

The New Yorker article is excellent and uses independent sources. The article collaborates a lot with what she says in the book.

I also find it very worrying the sheer amount of people, including on this thread, who think Britney should go back to having a conservatorship because she appears to be mentally ill. Maybe she is, but why not say you think she needs help and guidance; therapy, counselling, medication, time to heal, someone to help repair her relationship with her sons. Or something. Why should she need people to control her again the way she was before?

The caveat might be “oh, but not her father, he shouldn’t be in charge again, but someone else” should control when and where she works, how much of her own money she is allowed to spend and on what, what she eats, what kind of contraception she uses… why is that all necessary?

I am astounded at the number of people whose threshold for complete removal of a person’s autonomy is so low. As the arguments about whether it was “for the best” there are mechanisms that allow for helping to keep her and her children safe that don’t involve a blanket removal of her liberty. If someone isn’t safe to drive you can ban them from driving, it doesn’t justify having control over her contraceptive choices, who she sees, what she eats and where she lives. Even saying that she isn’t fit to look after her children and they want nothing to do with her doesn’t justify that.

Funny part is Kfed (her ex) and her boys turning against her, yet she’s the one who’s been the financial provider for all that lot for many years. Apparently she’s an “unfit” mother but a very “fit” sugar mamma.

I think the question people need to ask themselves is. If this were a 40 year old lady with no money or assetts, dancing around on instagrams sometimes having a pop at their family on social media. Would anyone need to have full control of their lives? Absolutely not these people can’t get a call back from
mh services for love nor money

Fully agree.

The obsession with her virginity, the sexualised comments about her body, a Governor saying she would shoot Britney...: disgusting.

That a judge and her team created and maintained the conservatorship as she was "too mentally unwell" to parent/have autonomy over her body and life BUT she was well enough for a World Tour, albums, Vegas residency & to star on American Idol & How I Met Your Mother.

I hope she finds peace & happiness

I read the first part of this thread yesterday, I hadn't read the book yet as I'd been saving it for the weekend. All the comments about 'I'd take anything she says with a pinch of salt' and about how she's clearly unhinged because of her instagram etc. already pissed me off, but I thought I'd wait until I read it before making comment.

The book isn't the ramblings of an insane woman like many seem to assume. It's very measured and thoughtful, and she admits she made mistakes and had issues - haven't we all. Of course it's going to be her side of the story, all memoirs are, but to suggest that none of it should be believed because she suffers with her mental health is disgusting.

God forbid a woman should 'embarrass herself' by having poor mental health. The comments people make about her instagram when she's literally doing nobody any harm are awful.

It would seem that women aren't allowed to make mistakes, get drunk, take drugs, struggle with addiction, or have mental health problems - it's just too embarrassing. The only women who are allowed any indicresions are the already dead ones, Amy Winehouse, Caroline Flack etc.

I'm not saying 'be kind' because that's just vomit inducing but please don't say that someone shouldn't be believed about anything just because they have poor mental health.

I’ve just finished reading it, it made me cry to think what she’s been through.

does she have mental health issues? Absolutely.

did she need her every liberty taken away from her? Absolutely not.

that’s the bottom line.

she wasn’t allowed to shower in private. She couldn’t go to the bloody toilet when she wanted. She wasn’t allowed to buy herself a pair of trainers. She didn’t like a particular dance move, as she thought it was too complicated, so her father shipped her off to a psychiatric institute. He told her repeatedly she was fat, he body shamed her and told her he was in control of everything, despite being a known alcoholic with financial problems.

this is all fact. Corroborated and backed up by court documents, and witnesses.

no one deserves to go through any of that.

Her entire life she’s been shamed, judged, frowned upon, and not just by her family. By the media. The internet. The whole fucking world. Is it any surprise she broke down?

she’s never had any stability or anyone who loved her for HER. Not for who she is, how much money she has or what she can do.

the way that people are talking on this thread, it shows why it’s essential to keep talking about mental health and how the stigma is very much still here.

I have read the book, and we have to realise this is britney’s truth and her truth Only. However, we all know that there are three sides to every story

A lot of the stuff that she’s saying is not true. For example, she’s saying she only smoked weed once when she was 17 when in fact on one of the episodes that she did for her reality show with Kevin chaotic, they were high AF in Amsterdam

she states that night that she was taken away in ambulance was due to a ‘little’ episode of depression. you don’t get taken away in an amubulance for PPD and sectioned for a minor episode, she was a danger to herself and her kids.

i don’t disagree she had post partum depression and i think everything else on top of it obviously made it worse.

what i took away from it mostly is that she is NOT over JT and the end of that relationship was the beginning of her downfall unfortunately. The fact that she still keeps his letter says so much.

"It's impossible to read The Woman In Me and not feel sad and outraged on Spears' behalf." BBC

So true. I am about halfway in, so it will get even worse. Heartbreaking.

That's really unfair. When you see interviews of her when she was younger, she seems very level headed when she talks about her ambitions of having a family.

Psychologists have said that her parents are the ones who are narcissists. And the problem in Britney's case is that she became incredibly famous at 16 and suddenly all these people were taking advantage of her because her parents raised her to take their abuse.

I've now finished the book. The most striking part is how greedy and ungrateful her family appear to be, including her sister Jamie Lynn. Britney will always be estranged from them and I can't blame her.

I haven't read the book but I think Britney has been treated appallingly.

How did her sister fit in with everything though? Was she complicit with the dad?They seemed so close when Jamie Lynn was younger but appeared to drift when she became pregnant at 16.

I wonder if JL has her own tale to tell as I'm sure her parents flipped out over the pregnancy. Especially as it seemed like she was being groomed for a life in the spotlight too

I feel like J-L is the golden child in the family and also narcissistic herself
her and her husband have said they believe she should have been in a conservatorship

I think Brit was actually quite self reflective in her book. She said something about how she reverted back to being a child during the conservatorship because she was literally not allowed to make any decisions - including what/when to eat, what to wear, how to have her hair…. She was literally treated like a five year old, yet with the rational knowledge that she was an adult.

if you think about it, it’s pretty bloody clear how that would really mess you up, especially knowing that she was making millions of dollars yet not even allowed to buy a pair of trainers.

I honestly think that conservatorship caused more harm than good.

Just because you're mentally unwell doesn't necessarily mean you have to be under someone's care. It's more complicated than that. Personal liberty should take precedence unless absolutely necessary.

Do people really think that anyone who is mentally ill should be subject to the sort of control she says she was subject to?

And do people think she would have been subjected to it if she'd been male?

The real story of The Woman In Me is how Spears has survived an experience that she specifically likens to a witch-trial – a form of gaslighting through which women have been going for centuries – when signs of independence, eccentricity and creativity, not to mention anger and depression at their own powerlessness, are interpreted as mental illness, and used as an excuse to lock them away and control their lives. This is the forensically convincing account of the madwoman in the attic of pop. And it is not pretty.

The Telegraph