Britney Spears Reflects On Her Father’s ‘Control’ Over Her Body During Her Conservatorship

Pop star Britney Spears is sharing new details about her father, Jamie Spears, in her upcoming memoir, “The Woman In Me.”

The “Toxic” singer was subject to a conservatorship that lasted from February 2008 to November 2021 following her public mental health breakdown in 2007. During that time, her father was in control of her financial and personal affairs.

In her memoir, Britney reflected on the life her father forced her to lead during her conservatorship, making it clear that it made her “feel sick” reflecting on how her father and associates had full “control” over her.

In an excerpt from “The Woman In Me” published by People magazine on Thursday, Britney reflected on living under her father’s control during her controversial 13-year conservatorship.

“Thirteen years went by with me feeling like a shadow of myself. I think back now on my father and his associates having control over my body and my money for that long and it makes me feel sick,” she wrote. “Think of how many male artists gambled all their money away; how many had substance abuse or mental health issues. No one tried to take away their control over their bodies and money. I didn’t deserve what my family did to me.”

In another excerpt from “The Woman In Me” published by People magazine on Tuesday, Britney revealed that her father used to call her “fat” and made other critical comments about her appearance.

“If I thought getting criticized about my body in the press was bad, it hurt even more from my own father,” she wrote. “He repeatedly told me I looked fat and that I was going to have to do something about it.”

In another excerpt, she explained that the constant criticism over her appearance was why she shaved her head in 2007. “I’d been eyeballed so much growing up, I’d been looked up and down, had people telling me what they thought of my body since I was a teenager. Shaving my head and acting out were my ways of pushing back,” she wrote.

Unfortunately, she lost all control over her appearance during the conservatorship. “But under the conservatorship, I was made to understand that those days were now over. I had to grow my hair out and get back into shape. I had to go to bed early and take whatever medication they told me to take.”

In another excerpt published by People magazine on Tuesday, the “Circus” singer said that she felt like a “robot” during her conservatorship.

“I became a robot. But not just a robot — a sort of child-robot. I had been so infantilized that I was losing pieces of what made me feel like myself,” she wrote. “The conservatorship stripped me of my womanhood, made me into a child. 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.”

“This is what’s hard to explain, how quickly I could vacillate between being a little girl and being a teenager and being a woman, because of the way they had robbed me of my freedom,” she continued. “There was no way to behave like an adult, since they wouldn’t treat me like an adult, so I would regress and act like a little girl; but then my adult self would step back in — only my world didn’t allow me to be an adult.”

“The woman in me was pushed down for a long time. They wanted me to be wild onstage, the way they told me to be, and to be a robot the rest of the time,” she added. “I felt like I was being deprived of those good secrets of life — those fundamental supposed sins of indulgence and adventure that make us human. They wanted to take away that specialness and keep everything as rote as possible. It was death to my creativity as an artist.”

Britney Spears' tell-all memoir "The Woman In Me" is scheduled for release on Tuesday, October 24, 2023.