Britney Spears book – The five biggest revelations from singer’s new memoir

Released yesterday, the book follows the popstar as she recounts the last 20 years of her life in the spotlight – weighing in on her treatment by the media, her former romantic partners and her controversial conservatorship.

From 2008 to 2021, Spears was placed under a conservatorship controlled by her father Jamie Spears, who assumed control of all her legal and financial affairs. Following a protracted campaign from fans – dubbed #FreeBritney – and a dramatic legal battle, the conservatorship was brought to an end in 2021.

The Woman in Me contains a number of candid revelations about her personal life, including details of her custody battle with ex-husband Kevin Federline.

Here are some of the biggest takeaways from Spears’s new memoir:

Losing her virginity at the age of 14

Spears shares that she lost her virginity to her brother Bryan’s best friend when she was 14 “and the guy was 17”.

“As a kid, Bryan was funny weird, in the best way. But when he was a senior, he became king of the school, an absolute badass,” she writes.

“His senior year, I started dating his best friend, and I lost my virginity to him. I was young for the ninth grade, and the guy was seventeen.”

She recalls how the relationship “ended up consuming a lot of my time” and that Spears would leave school to “spend the afternoon with him”.

“The age difference between me and that guy was huge, obviously – now it seems outrageous and so my brother, who was always very protective, started to hate him,” she writes.

Abortion during Justin Timberlake relationship

In one of the first excerpts released from the book, Spears sheds light on her decision to have an abortion during her relationship with Justin Timberlake, whom she dated from 1998 until 2002.

Spears says she “agreed not to have the baby” because Timberlake “definitely wasn’t happy” that she was pregnant and was “so sure he didn’t want to be a father”.

She writes: “Abortion was something I never could have imagined choosing for myself, but given the circumstances, that is what we did.”

Explaining that the procedure was carried out at home to ensure secrecy, Spears describes the physical pain of the hours-long medication abortion as “excruciating”.

“I kept crying and sobbing until it was all over,” the singer recalls. “It took hours, and I don’t remember how it ended, but I do, twenty years later, remember the pain of it, and the fear.”

Elsewhere, Spears admits she’d been unfaithful in her relationship with the NSYNC frontman, explaining she’d kissed choreographer Wade Robson – but claims Timberlake had cheated on her first.

Learning about #FreeBritney in rehab

Spears first learnt about #FreeBritney in 2018, while she was “locked up” at a rehab facility in Los Angeles’ Beverly Hills. In 2008, the Grammy winner was placed under a court-ordered conservatorship controlled by her father, Jamie Spears, following a series of public breakdowns.

When Spears tried to fight against the legal arrangement that left her unable to make any personal or professional decisions for herself –10 years after it was imposed – Jamie allegedly forced her to undergo further mental health evaluations and checked her into rehab.

“My father said that if I didn’t go, then I’d have to go to court, and I’d be embarrassed,” she wrote.

It was during her stay at the centre that a nurse showed her videos of fans banding together to #FreeBritney, adding: “That was the most amazing thing I’d ever seen in my life.

Britney Spears superfans raid Waterstones on launch of her new memoir

‘Why I love taking pictures of myself naked’

Spears explains Instagram has become a way to reclaim her body after years of being photographed by other people.

In a section about her social media activity – including sharing videos and photographs of herself “naked or in new dresses” – she writes: “I know that a lot of people don’t understand why I love taking pictures of myself naked or in new dresses.

“But I think if they’d been photographed by other people thousands of times, prodded and posed for other people’s approval, they’d understand that I get a lot of joy from posing the way I feel sexy and taking my own picture, doing whatever I want with it.”

Her sex life being ‘outed’ by Timberlake

Spears notes how some people pointed out that Timberlake’s admission that they were sexually active “depicted me as not only a cheating slut but also a liar and hypocrite”.

After their breakup in 2002, Timberlake revealed he had slept with Spears – who claimed she was a virgin – during an infamous radio interview.

“Given that I had so many teenage fans, my managers and press people had long tried to portray me as an eternal virgin – never mind that Justin and I had been living together, and I’d been having sex since I was fourteen,��� she writes in her book.

“Was I mad at being “outed” by him as sexually active? No. To be honest with you, I liked that Justin said that. Why did my managers work so hard to claim I was some kind of young-girl virgin even into my twenties? Whose business was it if I’d had sex or not?”

Spears says the conversation around her virginity also “took the focus off me as a musician and performer”.

“His talking about our having had sex never bothered me at all, and I’ve defended him to people who criticised him for doing it,” she writes.