Yahoo News The five biggest revelations in Britney Spears' book The Woman in Me
Free from her conservatorship, the pop star finally tells her life story in the candid book
Britney Spears has opened up about her glittering pop career and turbulent personal life in a new memoir, titled The Woman in Me. The tell-all book has been billed as an "brave and astonishingly moving story" about "fame and freedom" in the wake of her 13-year conservatorship.
But what revelations can readers expect? As it arrives in bookshops across the UK, here are five of the biggest bombshells from The Woman in Me...
1. Her conservatorship
Between 2008 and 2021, Spears was under a conservatorship, which gave her father Jamie Spears the ability to manage her life in multiple ways.
In the book, she says the legal arrangement "stripped me of my womanhood". She adds: "I became more of an entity than a person onstage. I had always felt music in my bones and my blood; they stole that from me."
2. Her abortion
Spears says she had an abortion during her relationship with Justin Timberlake, who she dated between 1999 and 2002, because he "wasn't happy about the pregnancy" and "didn't want to be a father".
Spears writes: "He said we weren't ready to have a baby in our lives, that we were way too young. If it had been left up to me alone, I never would have done it."
3. Her head-shaving incident
The Toxic singer also speaks about why she shaved her head in 2007. The singer says the infamous incident was a way of "pushing back" against "people telling me what they thought of my body".
She was "out of [her] mind with grief" at the time after losing a highly publicised custody battle with ex-husband Kevin Federline.
4. Her 'brawl' with Colin Farrell
Spears claims she had a brief fling with Colin Farrell in early 2003, in the wake of her split from Timberlake, after meeting the Irish actor during the filming of his action flick SWAT.
"We wound up having a two-week brawl," she writes. "Brawl is the only word for it – we were all over each other, grappling so passionately it was like we were in a street fight."
5. Her 'terrifying' VMAs performance
Spears admits she was "terrified" when performing with a snake wrapped around her shoulders at the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs).
"All I knew was to look down, because I felt if I looked up and caught its eye, it would kill me," she writes of the albino Burmese python, which hissed at her during the rendition of I'm a Slave 4 U.
How to buy Britney Spears' The Woman in Me
Britney Spears' book is on sale now at retailers including Waterstones, Blackwells, Amazon and WH Smith.
The e-book is available via the Kindle store, Apple Store, Google and Kobo, while an audiobook version read by actor Michelle Williams can be downloaded on Audible.
The Woman in Me is out now
