Having kept many of the details about her wildly public life private for more than 20 years, Britney Spears’ memoir The Woman in Me is making up for lost time and then some.
Britney Spears has spent the last two decades not telling her story.
Her life has been the subject of more clinical dissection than most wildly famous people, thanks to the many court documents filed during the course of her conservatorship, which lasted from Feb. 1, 2008, until Nov. 12, 2021. And there have been countless attempts to peel that onion from the outside.
But aside from the pieces of the puzzle the 41-year-old has sporadically shared on Instagram, glimpses inside her private world have relied mostly on stuff other people have had to say.
Yet it felt for a long time that Britney really wanted to say more, though it was anyone’s guess when—or if—she’d ever be in that zone. And even once she announced she’d be writing a memoir, who knew what to expect from the mercurial pop icon?
Well, if you put your money on OMG, you win: Britney has torched her veil of secrecy with The Woman in Me, which tackles everything from young stardom and Justin Timberlake to what it felt like to lose her legal right to make choices and eventually recover her strength to resist.
The Woman in Me by Britney Spears
In this powerful memoir, Britney tells her own story on her own terms.
As her revelations inspired one explosive headline after another leading up to the book’s Oct. 24 release, Britney wrote in an Oct. 20 Instagram post that her intent was not to offend or “harp on my past experiences”—but rather to put whatever she shared behind her for good.
“I have moved on and it’s a beautiful clean slate from here!!!” her post read. “Either way this is the last of it and s–t happens!!!”
In any case, after years of keeping it all inside, you could say she’s set herself free. Here are the biggest bombshells from Britney’s memoir, The Woman in Me:
First Kiss With Justin Timberlake
Britney Spears met Justin Timberlake when they were Mouseketeers on Disney Channel‘s The Mickey Mouse Club in the early 1990s along with Christina Aguilera and slightly older talents including Keri Russell, Ryan Gosling and Tony Lucca.
Though it would be some years before they dated, falling for each other when she went on tour with *NSYNC, Britney writes that she and Justin shared their first kiss while playing Truth or Dare during a cast sleepover with—insert irony here—a Janet Jackson song playing in the background.
Britney Had an Abortion While Dating Justin Timberlake
Among the devastating low points Britney describes about dating Justin, she shares that she had a medical abortion because his position was that they were both too young to become parents. She underwent the process at home, she writes, recalling Justin lying on the bathroom floor with her and strumming his guitar during what she calls “one of the most agonizing things I have ever experienced in my life.”
She still isn’t sure if she made the right choice, adding, “If it had been left up to me alone, I never would have done it. And yet Justin was so sure that he didn’t want to be a father.”
E! News reached out to Justin’s rep and did not immediately hear back.
But as various Justin-centric anecdotes in Britney’s book made headlines ahead of its release, a source shared that the 42-year-old is working on new music, plus he and wife Jessica Biel are feeling great and keeping busy with sons Silas, 8, and Phineas, 2.
To read more on what she spilled in this book, buy her book for $17 on Amazon to get more hot gist.
Cc Natalie Finn