why don't they just let me live?

"my prerogative" by britney spears & the woman in me memoir

Warning: This entire newsletter is about Britney Spears’ memoir The Woman in Me, so if you haven’t read yet . . . spoilers will abound.

I just finished Britney Spears’ memoir and I have so many thoughts I decided to sit down on a Saturday night and write them all out.

On Childhood Trauma

Listen. I consider myself a bit of a student of the celebrity memoir genre. I have read a LOT of them. And I can tell you that one thing they have taught me, above all else, is that a Celebrity with Issues always, always began as a Child with Trauma. I used to assume that Anthony Kiedis’ addiction problems began because he was in a band in LA, with easy access to drugs and alcohol and surrounded by a lot of people who were in that scene. But Kiedis was smoking and drinking with his dad when he was in middle school. Demi Moore’s early years were pretty rough. Jessica Simpson described her own heartbreaking abuse. Matthew Perry almost named his own memoir Unaccompanied Minor because of how much his solo plane flights back and forth between his divorced parents fucked him up. Chester from Linkin Park and Dolores from The Cranberries didn’t write memoirs, but both had childhood trauma that caused them a lot of pain throughout their lives.

The point is, I was not surprised at all to learn about the disfunction in Britney’s family even before she became famous, with a dad who drank and got angry and critical and a mom who shared White Russians with a 14yo Britney as a bonding exercise and otherwise seemed to check out a lot. Britney’s paternal grandfather institutionalized two separate wives, which is pretty chilling when you consider how that same move became part of Britney’s dad’s playbook with her later.

On Justin Timberlake

Who didn’t know Justin Timberlake was a piece of shit, raise your hand.

A lot is being made of this moment that Britney describes in her memoir, where she got pregnant with Justin’s baby but he wanted her to get an abortion because he wasn’t ready to be a father. They did it at home, so that no one would find out, and while she was lying on the bathroom floor in the worst pain of her life, he sat with her and strummed his guitar.

It gives real “Push” energy, I know.

I also thought that moment was heartbreaking. And in light of Justin’s seemingly self-centered behavior elsewhere, the idea that he would think STRUMMING HIS GUITAR would be the comfort she would need is just . . . well, the satire in the Barbie move is almost too spot-on, huh?

You know what, though? I could move past some of that stuff. I could “forgive” Justin the way Britney has “forgiven” him, as Lance Bass is “urging fans” to do (I’m sorry; I stumbled upon this while Googling for this newsletter; I love you, Lance, but READ THE ROOM). They were both so young when all of this happened. They were both under a lot of pressure. I could even see, in some warped way, that in a relationship between two people who loved music and had originally connected over music, maybe there was something almost cluelessly sweet about him strumming his guitar (I’m reaching here, I know, I’m really trying!!!)

But the fact that he let the narrative of their break-up go one way, when he knew it wasn’t the truth. The fact that he let her twist in all those interviews, all those tabloid stories. The fact that he built his whole solo career marketing plan around that narrative. The fact that he saw the way she suffered for the decade after that, and didn’t seem to spare her any compassion at all.

And he did it to Janet Jackson, too, around the whole Wardrobe Malfunction incident, so you can’t say this was one-off behavior. So as far as I’m concerned, Lance, there’s nothing to “forgive” Justin for because he didn’t do anything to me; but he sure has shown his character and I won’t be forgetting that anytime soon.

(if you end up reading The Art of Catching Feelings, clock my girl’s dickbag ex-husband’s name, I’m just saying!!! that was on purpose!!!)

On That Diane Sawyer Interview

I’ve always hated the interviews where the entire point is: “People are saying this about you. How does that make you feel?” First of all, it’s chickenshit — you get plausible deniability as an interviewer because you never said those things, you’re just reporting on how other people are saying those things. And second of all — how do you think it makes them feel?! This interview was so gross on every level.

On Crossroads

I LOVE the movie Crossroads. Not a week goes by that I don’t go, “Na na na na — like that?” as if I’m coming up with “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman” on the spot. So of course I was interested to hear what Britney would say about filming it.

It turns out she really didn’t like the experience of acting in a movie! She said it was unsettling, how she felt like she started to become this character. She was trying to take it really seriously, and essentially do “method acting” without knowing that’s what it was. She felt herself starting to talk and walk more like Lucy from Crossroads than like herself, and it was an out-of-body experience until one day she was walking around CVS with a friend and she felt herself abruptly snap out of it.

Will Smith’s memoir has a similar story, actually, where he describes an early role where he played a street-wise con man character. He said it actually affected the romantic relationship he was in at the time, because he literally didn’t know who he was anymore — if he was coming home as “Paul” or as “Will.” We hear stories all the time about how acting in really dark roles affects actors — I was not at all surprised to learn that Elliot Page was fucked up by An American Crime, for example, because that is one movie I wish I’d never seen, that’s how much it fucked ME up. I can’t imagine having to live it every day.

So as silly as it might seem, putting cute, lovable Britney Spears playing a cute, lovable teenage girl in a movie up next to Heath Ledger playing the Joker or something, it made total sense to me. I would imagine that could be an extremely unsettling experience, especially for someone who wasn’t trained to do it. And I think Britney has a very malleable quality to her, in a way, which makes her more susceptible to these kinds of things and is probably one reason why she doesn’t think she’s particularly “good at being famous.” But more on that later.

On Pressure and Mental Health

It just so happens that earlier this week, I listened to the audiobook for Maria Bamford’s Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult. It’s a really good memoir — funny and entertaining and extremely honest. A friend sold it to me by saying that Maria was very open about how she made money as a comic, and since one of my top questions about any creative person is “how are you making money??” I was instantly intrigued. Maria has also dealt with many mental health struggles throughout her life, which have been a cornerstone of her comedy act and which she discusses in the book with such self-deprecation and vulnerability and candor.

Anyway. Maria told a story about the filming of her show Lady Dynamite, and how she told them in negotiations for the show that she NEEDED the 12-hour turnaround that actors are supposed to be guaranteed per the union agreement. She had just gotten out of psychiatric treatment, she was on a new medication that made her foggy and tire easily, and she couldn’t do the show if she had to leave the set and then turn around and come back too quickly without the chance to rest.

Of course they said that was fine, but then of course as the filming went along they started to ask to push it. The shoot got delayed, so many other people were dedicated to staying with even shorter turnarounds, couldn’t she . . .? Wouldn’t it be okay if . . .? Just this once . . .? And I could feel the pressure she must’ve felt in those situations, where you want to be a team player, you don’t want to be “difficult,” but also you need this accommodation! You asked for it for a reason! You are being asked to do a lot and you’re not going to be able to do it under these conditions!

I felt that same pressure from Britney’s memoir, and it only got worse once she was under the conservatorship and didn’t even have the agency to be able to ask for an accommodation, much less receive one. She mentions times when she wanted to take a break from touring, for example, where they were just like, “No.” There were too many people relying on the Britney Machine to keep going, some of which (like her absolute villain of a father), who wouldn’t even have to do any of the work, they just couldn’t allow her to stop because then the money stopped.

On Madonna

“Me Against the Music” is one of my favorite videos of Britney’s, so I loved hearing about how the song came about and how inspiring Britney found Madonna. Apparently Madonna delayed the start of shooting while they fixed a problem with her white suit, and that was an eye-opening moment for Britney because she didn’t know you could advocate for yourself like that. Amidst all the sad parts, I liked hearing about other female artists in particular who inspired Britney, like Madonna, Paula Cole, and Mariah Carey; or ones who were especially kind to her (Paris Hilton!).

On Sex and Bodies

I don’t even know what to say. It’s truly fucked up, the ways that Britney got sexualized by everyone — including the people behind-the-scenes helping to create her image — and then got punished for it. She needs to be sexy to sell records. She’s too sexy to be a role model for kids. We’re obsessed with her relationships (even as a child competing in Star Search the host grills her about boys!). But we needed to think she was a virgin. Like. What the fuck.

And then when her body changes — when she gets older and has had kids and maybe she doesn’t work out as much, maybe she’s got MENTAL HEALTH STUFF because she’s GOING THROUGH IT, whatever — we laugh at her judge her for it. It’s disgusting. Honestly who could ever blame her for shaving her head or taking naked pictures on her own terms or anything else she wants to do. I can’t even imagine what it would take to reclaim any feeling of agency over your own body after it’s become the subject of such public consumption. And then to hear the ways her family also shamed her about it, controlled what she ate and how she was allowed to look and monitored when she went to the bathroom. Jesus. You’d catch me shaving my head, screaming the entire time.

“At what point did I promise to stay 17 for the rest of my life?” Britney asks at one point, and oooof. She didn’t!

On the Conservatorship and Money

Money stuff just gets under my skin. There was a scene in an otherwise very lighthearted Sophie Kinsella novel where the family are all being mooches, pressuring the main character into shelling out money she doesn’t have for this dinner, and I STILL think about it because that’s how much it bothers me. Reading about the way Britney Spears’ Villain Dad took control of her money, paying himself a higher salary than even the allowance he deigned to allot her, to the point where she tried to take her dancers out to dinner and her CARD DECLINED, where her family is enjoying a beach vacation house SHE PAID FOR but is not allowed to enjoy herself because she’s BUSY WORKING TO EARN THE MONEY TO PAY FOR ALL THEIR SHIT . . . I mean, I had to stop the audiobook and pace around my house. It got me so mad.

I know Britney Spears’ conservatorship is, at this point, much discussed and the subject of many documentaries, etc. But it truly is CHILLING. She could go out every night and get drunk; she could shave her head a thousand times over; she could lash out at any paparazzo who wouldn’t stop harassing her; and none of that meant she shouldn’t be allowed to have autonomy and control over her own life. Like I think it’s telling that they didn’t just go after custody of the kids. If they truly felt the issue was that the kids were in danger then fine, go to court and work out a supervised visitation schedule and a case plan. And if they truly felt she simply wasn’t competent to handle her own financial affairs, there are ways she could have oversight over her finances that didn’t extend to oversight over her whole life. And if they truly felt that she was a danger to herself, they could’ve listened to her when she said the one person she didn’t want to be in charge of her life was her father. Appoint someone else. Set up the rubric by which she could get out from the conservatorship if she “got her life together.” The fact that it wasn’t set up in any of these ways just shows the bad faith from everyone involved.

And then once the conservatorship was in place, you could see the factors that would help perpetuate it — they had the power to throw her in rehab anytime they wanted. If she said she didn’t have a substance abuse problem, well, that’s what someone with a substance abuse problem would say. They could throw her in a psychiatric hospital. If she said she didn’t need treatment, well, that’s what someone in the middle of a psychotic break might say. Then there’s the constant threat of not being able to see her kids if she fought it. Fuck, it’s bleak.

On Kevin Federline

Why Britney was with Kevin, in a nutshell: “He held me as long as I wanted. Had anyone ever done that before?”

When someone doesn’t have any love or support system in their life, is it any wonder they go looking for it wherever they think they can find it? Isn’t this the origin story of so many bad things?

On Marble Floors

At one point, Britney told a story about moving into her “dream home” with Kevin Federline and how she went absolutely overboard about all the floors being marble, even though people kept telling her it was too hard, wood would be better, etc. “I think I knew then that I had become weird,” Britney says.

I appreciated this story because it does often seem that celebrities are quite weird! That all that money and fame warps something in their brains, where suddenly they are screaming at the lighting people on set or preaching the miraculous powers of some extremely niche health lifestyle product or whatever. And I wonder — do they know they’re weird? Or are they so inoculated to it at this point that it all seems normal?

We’ve also all had the experience of making a Big Thing out of something relatively innocuous, and then later being like, ohhhhhh that was about more, wasn’t it. So yeah, it totally made sense to me that this new, young mom with tons of money and a crumbling marriage would go absolutely out of her mind if she can’t get Calacatta marble or whatever.

On Artistry

It’s easy to think of pop stars like Britney Spears as not being real artists. They often don’t write their own songs — or at least not without a lot of help. They have a lot of people around them for styling, choreography, everything to do with shaping their image and their brand. Even in high school, when I listened to a lot of punk music and was probably at my most pretentious (a rite of passage for a 16yo, c’mon), I remember liking Britney. When the “I’m a Slave 4 U” video came out it’s all we wanted to talk about in Spanish class, to the point where the teacher told us we’d have to do it in Spanish, then. (Me gusta el video! Si, yo tambien . . . es muy caliente? The conversation wasn’t scintillating, but we tried.) I had the DVD that went along with Britney’s greatest hits album, and I played her cover of “My Prerogative” over and over. I still sing this one around the house all the time. Talk to me about Drive Me Crazy and “(You Drive Me) Crazy.” My sister did gymnastics routines in the living room to that one.

So like I said, I was a fan. I thought she was a great performer. But I have to admit that I didn’t give a ton of thought to Britney Spears’ artistry, per se. But it was something I was really struck by, listening to her memoir, and which added another layer of sadness for everything she went through. Because of course she loves music. Of course she loves to dance. Of course she has talent and intuition and a real ability to communicate with her audience. There’s a lot of creativity and artistry in all that, and it’s tragic to see it smothered.

If you want to know the moment in her memoir that made me cry later, when I was talking about it with my husband on the back porch: she described performing in her Vegas residency, and how she would purposely try not to move her hair very much. She knew her long hair was a symbol for people, and that’s what they wanted. For her to toss her head, look sexy, give it a little sass. And she didn’t want to give it to them.

So here’s this woman, who loves to dance and perform, who’s having this experience that should be other-worldly amazing — a residency in Vegas! in front of a crowd who loves you! — and she’s holding back. She won’t even move her hair. And she knows in a way she’s only letting her fans down, she’s only letting herself down, but she’s also so full of rage and sadness and has nowhere else for it to go. So she won’t move her hair.

I don’t know, man. That got to me.

On the Audiobook

Despite devoting an entire newsletter to Britney Spears’ memoir, I will be the first to admit that I am not super up on some of the behind-the-scenes stuff about it. Only after I posted about listening to it on Instagram, for example, did a friend reach out to me about some “weird” stuff surrounding it — the fact that Britney doesn’t read the audiobook herself, all press and interviews were done via email, photos were sent in rather than being taken by a professional photographer, etc. Another friend posted a review on Instagram and included in the caption: “Knowing the amount of lawsuits she was sent by different celebrities (not the exact number, but it was a lot) and how many pages the book was supposed to be (342), I want those missing chapters. I want all of the truth, but the NDA’s haven’t expired yet . . .”

(I WANT to be up on this stuff btw, so if you know anything or have a good resource on it, let me know!)

So. With the caveat that maybe there is a lot I don’t know, my response to those points after listening to the audiobook would be:

• Britney says in the introduction to the audiobook (which she does narrate herself, in kind of bafflingly bad audio? Like it has the audio quality of a voice note, which I did find a little strange in an otherwise highly produced audiobook) that she didn’t want to narrate because reliving the events was quite traumatic. That makes a lot of sense to me! And also — narrating an audiobook is hard. It’s not something everyone is suited to do. I love a celeb memoir narrated by the author, but there’s also precedent for memoirs to be narrated by someone else. Ryder Strong from Boy Meets World narrates Anthony Kiedis’ Scar Tissue for example.

• Plus: who wouldn’t want MICHELLE WILLIAMS to narrate their memoir? She does an incredible job, truly. Her ability to mimic Britney’s Southern accent and the slight rasp in her voice was uncanny — there were whole stretches where I forgot I wasn’t listening to Britney herself. And her impression of Justin Timberlake doing a cringe-y “Black accent” when meeting Ginuwine is as good as the internet has been saying it is.

• There ARE parts of the book that feel a little “light.” Whole sections that seem brushed over, sequences of events that get narrated in a kind of “This Is How I Spent My Summer Vacation” essay style, etc. One of my biggest complaints against a lot of celebrity memoirs — certainly Britney is not alone in this — is that you can kind of tell when there are places they just don’t want to go, or things they are still too close to, etc. You don’t always get the deep insights you were hoping for. Given that a big part of Britney’s story has been all the ways she has been forced to be public about things she would’ve rather been private about; and forced to live a private life that the public didn’t find out about until later . . . I would imagine this particular book presented quite a challenge to its ghostwriter. It did the job, I found it very interesting (OBVIOUSLY, hence this newsletter!), but as a memoir — if we’re talking about structure, writing style, etc. — it wasn’t my favorite. (A few favorites, off the top of my head: Jessica Simpson, Gabrielle Union, Elliot Page, Jennette McCurdy, probably a bunch more I’m blanking on)

On Matthew Perry

This is a little strange, I know, but literally as I was writing this post, as I was typing the whole paragraph about celebrities and childhood trauma and Matthew Perry’s own story, I found out that he died. His memoir was another one that I had a lot of thoughts about after I read it. In fact, I’d written down one quote from it that really stayed with me:

“You have to get famous to know that it’s not the answer. And nobody who’s not famous will ever truly believe that.”

I understand why we get so fixated on celebrities — they’re larger than life. They play such a big part in our own lives. They’re the voices that soundtrack some of our most memorable moments; they’re the actors in shows that have been in our living rooms for years. We feel like we know them. We’ve built parts of our own identities around them. We need them to stay the same for us. We need them to be different for us. We need them to be something . . . for us. Because the world is hard and we need whatever momentary joy or distraction or pleasure we can get from a song or a book or a sitcom or whatever.

But the world is hard for them, too. I think it’s good to be reminded of that. I think it’s good to be reminded of the humanity behind every single person, no matter how far away they are or how different their life might be from yours. No matter even if their life seems much better than yours, even when it might be worse in ways you just can’t see.

Anyway. I hope Britney is happy, and that she’s somewhere dancing and hugging her kids or whatever she wants to do. I’m very sad about Matthew Perry and hope his loved ones are able to mourn in peace.

I’ll be in your inbox again this week — with the cover reveal for The Art of Catching Feelings! — but I appreciate your patience with me through this most indulgent surprise-drop weekend newsletter.

With Love, from Alicia