Hello Beautiful People! Welcome to a new review! For this review, I get into Britney Spears memoir The Woman in Me. I’ll be real I was never a huge fan of Britney’s music (I am not much of a pop fan in general, to be honest) but I remembered wanting to check out the book when I heard it came out, knowing that it was one of the first big things she did after getting out of her conservatorship with her father. It was a really interesting read, and I enjoyed getting to learn more about her life, so let’s get into it!
My Review
As I said before I never was a huge fan of Britney’s music, but there was no denying when a song of hers would come on the radio that it would be a catchy tune. Not to age myself too hard but I was born the year Baby One More Time came out. I say this because when I was the age where I started to become more aware of things like celebrities Britney’s name was never brought up positively. Sadly I think I became more aware of her career in her, for lack of a better way of putting it, downfall in the media, and this was not a pretty time for her.
I remember that even as a kid I didn’t understand why people treated her and talked about her the way they did. It felt unfair and cruel to me. I remember when she shaved her head and everyone said she had lost her marbles I thought that maybe she just wanted a new haircut, I didn’t see what was so bad about it. I remember standing in the grocery store aisle as a kid and seeing a photo of her in a bikini on the beach on a magazine cover that claimed that she was fat and lazy. I didn’t understand why they would talk about her that way when her body looked like every other woman’s body I had seen. I was really interested in checking out this book because I think many women my age built their image of how to be the ‘perfect woman’ based on how the media treated women they didn’t like, such as Britney Spears. In the early and mid 2000’s the media was brutal, I mean it still is but not in the way it was back then. I wanted to hear her side of things and how her treatment by the media, and honestly the world, affected her life.
The Woman in Me focuses heavily on the early stages of Britney’s career, and how they shaped the later stages. Further, how the media and tabloids’ desire to catch her in a bad situation, or looking unstable, became the reason that her family was able to get complete control over her and her career. I gave The Woman in Me an 8.5/10. I found the book to flow really well and enjoyed getting to go through the years of her life with her. There were a lot of things in this book that I learned about Britney that I had never known, and I am glad she finally got the opportunity to speak her truth. After reading this I felt like I understood why she is the way she is and her decisions more. I remember when the conservatorship ended people were horrified that she was posting almost nude photos on Instagram. I knew it had to be a sense of control for her, but I was glad to read her reasoning behind her decisions and why she chose to take power back in this way. I mean after reading the book it all made sense, and while I wasn’t weirded out when she did it at the time, I was glad she got the platform to talk about it more. Really I am glad she got to talk about everything.
I remember as a kid when the leave Britney alone trend started. This ultimately turned into the Free Britney movement years later. Even as a kid, I agreed that the world needed to leave this poor woman alone, but yet a large group of adults just couldn’t get this message. I don’t believe that Britney was ever unstable enough to need to go into that conservatorship, and sadly it was just a perfect storm of gaslighting and people taking advantage of her vulnerability that got her into that spot. I think the lawyers and judges who were on her cases deserve some type of punishment for what they did to her as well. The judgements made on her were not based on facts but just on assumptions.
I felt terrible reading about the different experiences she had been through that were not presented in an accurate light. She shared some things about her past relationship with Justin Timberlake that just straight-up disgusted me, and I am not really sure how that man is still famous today for what he did and how he threw her under the bus. I also enjoyed getting to hear her side of the story with what happened with her children. I think reading this fully explained why her mental state became unstable, and any mother who is kept from her children would probably act similarly. I think it’s completely unfair that her children were able to be kept from her based on how the media presented her and her parents spoke about her. It was just a lot of people for a lot of her life who felt like they could control her and that she would just go along and be fine with it.
Overall an exciting and good read. If you enjoy memoirs, especially celebrity memoirs I would really recommend checking this one out. Britney was silenced for a lot of years so it’s nice to get to support her as she works on taking control back of her life. I hope that her life continues to go well and that maybe at some point she and her children will find a way to work things out.
I hope you enjoyed this review! Feel free to follow me on my socials @baddiebookreviews to be kept up to date for when I release a new review!
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